Which leaves me. And Harley.
The silence between us is a living thing, standing in the middle of the kitchen framing like an uninvited guest.
I’m busy rolling up the blueprints, my movements slow and deliberate. I don’t want to look at her. Because I know if I do, I’ll start saying the things I promised myself I wouldn’t. Like blurting how I made a $40,000 donation by selling the Audi. I’ll start trying to convince her I’m worth the rubble I’ve become.
“You’re good at this,” she says.
I stop rolling the paper.
“Really good,” she adds, her voice a little softer now. “I’ve watched you with the crew. And the way you handled Mrs. Delgado . . . you listened.”
“The crew is solid. It makes my job easy.”
Harley looks around the skeletal room once more, her gaze lingering on the modified sketch on the table. “I’ll be back tomorrow,” she says, her tone shifting back into the efficient, clipped cadence of a social worker. “Mrs. Delgado wants to review the cabinet finishes, and I need to sign off on the accessibility permits. I expect you’ll have the revised specs ready?”
“They’ll be ready.”
Heading back to the entrance, she calls, “Mrs. Delgado, we have three more appointments.”
I’m alone again.
Diego walks over, wiping a hand across his forehead. “She’s a tough one, that social worker. Smart, too. She knows her codes better than some of the inspectors I’ve dealt with.”
“She knows everything,” I murmur.
Chapter 28
Skyler
Iam not a Thompson anymore. That name doesn’t belong to a man sitting on rough-hewn pine, sweating through a twenty-dollar work shirt while the Chicago sun bakes grit into his pores. It has no place near a peanut butter sandwich on generic white bread, or a Styrofoam cup of instant noodles where sawdust flecks swirl in the yellow broth.
Around me, the site roars in a coordinated symphony. Two guys wrestle a window casing into place nearby, their voices rising over the staccato burst of a nail gun, while the generator hums a low, vibrating note I can feel in the soles of my boots. My back aches with a dull, persistent thrum, a souvenir from the hundred sheets of drywall we moved this morning.
It is the best pain I’ve ever felt. It’s honest, and it doesn’t require a PR team to spin it.
I take a bite of the sandwich, the peanut butter sticking to the roof of my mouth. I used to hate this kind of bread—too soft, too processed, lacking the structural integrity of sourdough. Now, I appreciate it. It doesn’t ask much of me.
I see her before she sees me.
Harley is walking across the lot, her movements careful as she navigates the piles of gravel and the coils of orange extension cords. She’s wearing a navy blazer and gray slacks. Behind her, Mrs. Delgado is talking to Diego near the front porch, her hands moving in excited arcs as she points toward the kitchen window.
Harley stops ten feet away. She looks at the scaffolding, then at the half-finished roof, and finally, her eyes settle on me.
I’m a wreck. I know it. I’ve got a smudge of drywall mud on my cheek and a film of sweat that’s turned the dust on my forearms into a gray paste.
She hesitates. I can see the gears turning, the old reflex to be polite warring with the newer, harder instinct to maintain the distance. She takes a breath, her gaze dropping to the cup of noodles in my hand.
“You’re going to get an ulcer,” she says.
Her voice isn’t cold, but it isn’t warm, either. It’s just an observation, like a doctor noting a patient’s poor diet.
“Salt and carbs keep the heart beating.”
I shift over on the sawhorse, making space. It’s an unspoken invitation. For a second, I think she’ll walk away, but then she moves forward.
She sits beside me.
Playing it cool, though I’m anything but, I stir the noodles, the plastic fork scraping against the sides of the cup. The silence between us isn’t empty. It’s weighted down by everything I didn’t say at the altar, everything we discussed in her father’s living room, and everything I’ve whispered to the empty walls of my new apartment.
