Spencer looked at the work in front of him and knew the truth: Meryl was not just thinking about going. She was already trying to turn Pine Cottage back into something she could finish, leave, and stop loving before it cost too much.
Chapter Nineteen – Meryl
By the time Spencer left Pine Cottage, the house felt wrong in a way Meryl could not ignore.
The door had barely clicked shut behind him when the silence rushed in to fill the space he’d left. Meryl stood in the middle of the sitting room, their exchange over the shelves still ringing in her ears. His voice came back to her with maddening clarity.
Yesterday, you would’ve taken it down and done it again.
She pressed her lips together and turned away from the door. Fine. If he wanted to be stubborn about the shelves, that was his business. She had plenty of other things to tackle without him.
Meryl grabbed her notebook from the side table and flipped to a fresh page. Lists. Lists were good. Lists made everything manageable. She wrote To Finish at the top in firm letters that pressed harder into the paper than necessary.
Strip wallpaper in upstairs hall.
Sand and repaint guest bedroom door.
Clean gutters.
Fix loose boards in dining room.
Her pen moved quickly, efficiently, each item another small, conquerable task. This was how she’d always handled things—break them down, check them off, keep moving. It had worked for twenty-plus years of her mother’s restless relocations. It would work now.
She underlined Fix loose board twice, then headed for the toolbox. The step was simple enough to deal with. Just a matter of a few nails and maybe a shim. The kind of quick, visible progress she needed right now.
The floorboard creaked under her weight as she kneeled to examine the loose one. She reached for the hammer, positioning the nail over the worn wood. One firm strike, then another, and…
The nail bent sideways, the head twisting as it hit a knot she hadn’t noticed.
“Damn it,” she muttered, prying it out with more force than finesse.
She tried again with a fresh nail, aiming for a cleaner section of wood. This time it went in, but the step still wobbled when she tested it with her hand. Not fixed. Just temporarily secured.
Spencer would have taken the time to remove the entire board, check the joist beneath, and reset it properly. The thought came unbidden and unwelcome.
Meryl stood abruptly, brushing sawdust from her knees. The board would hold. That was what mattered. She didn’t need to secure the entire floor just to sell a house.
Back in the kitchen, she crossed Fix loose board off her list with a decisive stroke, ignoring the nagging sense that she’d done it badly. Next: the final cabinet doors they’d been meaning to rehang.
The door proved more troublesome than she’d expected, refusing to align properly with the frame.
“Come on,” she muttered, pushing harder than she should.
The screwdriver slipped, gouging a small divot in the wood beside the hinge. Meryl froze, staring at the fresh scar in the cabinet door she’d spent hours stripping and sanding.
Two days ago, that would have bothered her enormously. Now she just sighed, touched it briefly, and moved on. It didn’t have to be perfect. It just had to be done.
But as she stepped back to check her work, the kitchen seemed to push back against her hurry. The brass fixtures she and Spencer had chosen together gleamed softly in the afternoon light. The open shelving they’d installed revealed the neat stack of dishes she’d found wrapped in newspaper in one of Hilda’s boxes. The window looked out onto the garden where they’d cleared the brambles together, uncovering perennials that had survived years of neglect.
None of it felt impersonal anymore. None of it felt like she was just passing through.
Meryl turned away, uncomfortable with the thought. She moved into the sitting room, determined to focus on the next item. The remainder of the wallpaper in the upstairs hall needed stripping—a messy, tedious job, but one with visible results. Perfect.
She gathered her supplies: scoring tool, spray bottle, scraper. As she worked, she tried to lose herself in the rhythm of it. Score, spray, wait, scrape. Score, spray, wait, scrape. The paper came away in soggy strips, revealing layers of older patterns beneath.
But even here, surrounded by peeling wallpaper and the musty smell of old paste, she couldn’t escape the sense of Spencer’s presence. He had shown her this technique, his hands steady as he demonstrated how to score without damaging the plaster underneath. The memory of his fingers brushing hers as he passed her the tool made her chest tighten unexpectedly.
“Stop it,” she said aloud to the empty hallway.
