The corner of Owen’s mouth twitches—his now-familiar micro-smile. “You did good work today. For a beginner.”
Coming from him, it lands like a gold medal. Or a slow clap from a notoriously hard-to-impress judge on a baking show.
“High praise from the demolition dictator.”
“I preferrenovation autocrat,” he deadpans.
I laugh—tired, genuine, surprised. Every day with Owen is like finding out a statue can blink.
We haul the last of the debris into his truck. As he secures the tarp, I turn to look at the house.
It’s gutted now. Raw and exposed. It looks worse than when we started—but also... more honest. Like it’s stopped pretending.
I snap a photo—sunlight slanting through a missing wall, catching on dust motes that hang like glitter in the air.
A before-before. A new baseline.
“See you tomorrow?” I ask as Owen closes up.
He nods. “Eight o’clock. Wear something you don’t mind ruining.”
“Bold of you to assume I have anythingleftI mind ruining.” I gesture to my dust-streaked flannel. “This was thegoodone.”
“You’ll need more. It’s the unofficial uniform.”
“Is that a Maple Glen mandate? Five flannels and a pair of suspenders to be granted full citizenship?”
“The suspenders are optional until your fifth year,” he says, completely deadpan.
I blink.
Then laugh.
It’s not just the joke. It’s the fact that Ialmost missed it.He’s sneaky, this one. Dry and layered like a perfect pastry. A stoic mille-feuille.
“I’ll start my collection,” I say, smiling.
As I drive back to Marge’s, dust in my hair, bruises on my shins, and Owen’s laugh still playing on a loop in my head, I feel something unfamiliar settle into my chest.
Not comfort, exactly.
But weight. Substance. The start of something real.
I’ve spent my life gliding over surfaces—new jobs, new apartments, new cities—never stopping long enough to see what was underneath. Never asking if the foundation was sound.
But this house?
This disaster of a project?
It’s making me look down. Dig deeper. Face the rot I’ve painted over for years.
Foundations matter.And mine—like this house—needs work.
The thingno one warns you about in small towns is the silence. Not peaceful, birds-chirping silence—I meanconversation-stopping, head-turningsilence. The kind that happens the second you walk into a room and everyone suddenly remembers they have urgent, meaningfulstaringto do.
That’s the silence waiting for me at 8:07 AM when I push open the door to Maple Hardware. The little bell above the door might as well be a warning siren:Attention! Outsider approaching! Adjust gossip volume accordingly!
Owen, who walked in three seconds ahead of me, doesn’t seem to notice the social temperature drop. He nods at two guys near the paint section who immediately lean into a whisper. I catch fragments—”auction house”and“Sequin Shack”—before they dissolve into badly suppressed snickers.
