Meryl looked at the shelves, then at the raw pine leaning against the wall. For a second, something flickered in her face again. Then it was gone.
“Maybe we keep it simpler,” she said. “They’ll still work.”
His bear bristled.Yesterday, she cared about how they would look in the room. Whether the finish would pick up the warmth in the floorboards. Now she just wants them done.
Spencer looked at her steadily. “You didn’t want simple yesterday. You wanted them to feel like they belonged here.”
Meryl folded her arms. “Yesterday I didn’t have a major design firm trying to pin me down for a call.”
There it was.
Not cruel. Not cold. But clear enough.
Spencer glanced at the shelves, at the wall, at the room they had been slowly coaxing into itself piece by piece. Then back at her.
“So now it’s just about getting things finished?”
Her jaw tightened. “Now it’s about being sensible.”
His bear paced restlessly inside him.Sensible!
“Meryl,” Spencer said, quieter now, “this place matters to you. You know it does.”
She looked away first.
“Right now,” she said, “I need to focus on what needs doing.”
Meryl’s phone pinged again from the table. Her eyes darted toward it, and Spencer saw the shift in her posture—the subtle straightening of her spine, the way she seemed to gather herself back into the professional woman who had first arrived at Pine Cottage.
“I should check that,” she said, setting down her pencil.
Spencer watched as she read the message, her expression becoming more resolved with each second. When she looked up again, something had settled behind her eyes.
“They want to move the call up to tomorrow morning,” she said. “They’re eager to get the team in place.”
“And you?” Spencer asked quietly.
“I need to be prepared.” She glanced around the room, at the half-hung shelves, at the trim they’d planned to finish this afternoon. “We should focus on getting the visible things done first. The things that would matter for showing the house.”
Showing the house. The words were like a punch to the gut.
She’s already planning for after. For when she’s gone. Stop her. Tell her,his bear growled, low and distressed.
“Meryl,” Spencer began, his bear pushing the words up through his throat. “There’s something you should know…”
She looked at him, waiting, and the words died on his tongue. Because telling her now, when she was already pulling away, would feel like manipulation. Like trying to hold her with obligation when she wanted to go.
Tell her. Tell her what she means to us,his bear howled in frustration.
“Let me at least fix the shelf,” Spencer said instead, reaching for the level. “We can do it quickly, but we should do it right.”
Meryl hesitated, then nodded, stepping back to give him room. As Spencer carefully loosened the screws and adjusted the bracket, he felt her watching him. Not with the warm attention of before, but with a kind of practical assessment—the gaze of someone calculating time against results.
When he finished, the shelf was perfectly level.
“There,” he said, stepping back. “Now it’s done properly.”
Meryl nodded, but her eyes had already moved on to the next task, the next item to check off her list. “Let’s get the rest up before dinner. We can do the living room trim tomorrow morning before my call.”
