Chapter 4 #2
"That was my grandparents' life," she said finally.
Her voice had dropped, gone soft with memory.
"Their wedding present from both sets of parents was money for the foundation.
They poured the concrete themselves—Gran in her work boots and Pop with his back brace, neither of them knowing the first thing about construction.
My grandmother used to say she learned as much about marriage from that project as she did from the pastor who married them. "
He could hear the memory working on her, pulling her back to a time before any of this. He kept his gaze forward, giving her the space of not being watched too closely.
"They raised my mom here," she said. "Right in that building.
They raised half this town's kids at that dining room table—summer jobs for teenagers who needed pocket money, first dates in the parlor, anniversary dinners in the private dining room.
When they got too old to run it themselves, they handed me the keys and said, 'We trust you, Sabi. You'll take care of it.'"
Her hand dropped back to her side.
"I did," she whispered. "I took care of it.
I painted and patched and saved every extra dollar for repairs instead of vacations.
I learned how to fix a leaky faucet, unstick a window, and sweet-talk the ancient boiler into lasting one more winter.
I kept the lights on. I kept the doors open.
It wasn't perfect, but it was mine. It was ours. "
He heard each word like a weight stacking up on her shoulders.
"And now..." She cut herself off. Her throat worked, muscles jumping beneath the skin. "Now there is no house. No inn. No front desk where I stood every morning. No keys on the hook by the door. No anything."
Her shoulders curled inward a fraction, as if trying to protect something tender beneath her ribs.
He shifted just enough that his arm brushed hers through the fabric of her jacket. A small contact, nothing more. "You're still here."
She gave a short, humorless breath. "You keep saying that like it's a consolation prize."
"It's not a consolation prize," he said. "It's the thing that matters most to the people who care about you."
She stared straight ahead. "I don't have a home."
"You have mine for as long as you need it."
"I don't have a business."
"Not this one," he said. "That doesn't mean you have nothing."
Her head turned slightly, like she was half considering the words and half resisting them with everything she had.
He didn't push. He could feel the line she was walking, and it was razor-thin. Too much weight from him, and it might snap entirely.
"I don't have a place anymore," she said. "Not really. There isn't a spot in this town that's mine. Not a corner, not a room, not even a hook to hang a coat on and say, 'That's where I live.'"
He wanted to argue. Wanted to point out that everyone in Copper Moon knew her name, her face, and her story. That there were a dozen people who would claim her as theirs without hesitation. That she belonged here in ways that had nothing to do with floor plans or property lines.
He didn't. The words would bounce off her right now, useless as stones thrown at armor.
Instead, he said, "It feels like that right now. That doesn't make it permanent."
She let out a slow breath. "It feels permanent."
He glanced at her profile again. Her eyes looked too bright, glassy with tears she was refusing to let fall. Her mouth shook once before she pressed her lips together hard enough to stop the trembling.
"Last night, I had a home," she said quietly.
"I had guests sleeping in rooms I had prepared for them.
I had bookings stretching out for the next three months.
I had a pantry full of food and a ledger that at least pretended to balance if I squinted hard enough.
" Her fingers flexed at her sides, curling and uncurling.
"Today, I have a bag of clothes that aren't mine, a toothbrush Bree picked up at the drugstore, and the knowledge that someone wanted me wiped off this hill. "
Heat surged up the back of his neck again, hotter this time. He swallowed it down with effort. Anger would not help her. Not now.
"You still have your land," he said.
She made a small, rough sound. "A field full of debris."
"It's more than that."
"It doesn't feel like more."
"I know," he said softly.
She tilted her head back, eyes fixed on the skeletal lines of what had been the second floor.
For a moment, he thought she might cry—the tears were right there, shimmering at the edges of her lashes.
She didn't let them fall. He had watched her break the night before, sobbing into his shirt until she had nothing left to give.
Now there was only a hollow tightness in her expression, like she had wrung herself completely dry.
"What now?" she asked.
The words dropped between them, heavy and honest.
He could have given her a list. File the insurance claim.
Talk to structural engineers about what could be salvaged.
Sit down with Diaz and go over everything she remembered about Gavin.
Make a plan, then make another plan when the first one falls apart.
He knew the steps. He had seen people walk them before, watched them put one foot in front of the other through the worst days of their lives.
But that wasn't what she was really asking.
She turned her head, finally looking at him head-on. Her eyes searched his face. "What am I supposed to do now, Colby?"
He held her gaze. "Right this minute?"
"Yes."
"Right this minute, you stand here as long as you need to." He kept his voice steady, an anchor in the wreckage. "You let yourself see it. You let yourself hate it. You let yourself feel whatever you're feeling without trying to push it down or package it up into something manageable."
"And after that?" she asked.
"After that, we take it one piece at a time." He lifted his chin toward the ruins. "We figure out what can be cleared. What can be saved. What needs to be rebuilt or torn down or left alone."
"We," she repeated.
"Yeah," he said. "We."
He didn't dress it up. He didn't qualify it with conditions or timelines. The promise sat there between them, simple and solid as stone.
She looked back at the ruins. Her shoulders were still hunched beneath the weight of everything that had happened, but the line of them changed, just slightly. Less like she was bracing for the next impact. More like she was shifting under the load to see if carrying it was even possible.
"What if I don't have it in me?" she asked, barely above a whisper.
He answered without hesitation. "Then I'll have it in me for both of us until you do."
Her fingers flexed again at her sides. He watched them, watched the way they relaxed by a fraction, the white-knuckle grip on her own palms easing just enough to let blood flow back.
The ruins stayed the same. Black, broken, unmoved by anything they said or felt.
The question she had asked did not disappear. It lingered in the air around them, heavy with everything it contained.
What now?
He didn't have an easy answer. He wasn't sure one existed. He had only the certainty that whatever came next—the insurance battles, the investigation, the long road back to something like normal—she would not be standing at the edge of the wreckage by herself.
He intended to make sure of that.