Grace at the Blue Cypress

1. The Call

The Call

The street was quiet when Jenna pulled into the neighborhood.

As quiet as suburban Atlanta ever got, just before dawn, before the day started moving.

A row of nearly identical brick homes glowed hazily under the early light, their lawns trimmed while sprinklers hissed softly.

She parked in front of the third house on the right, one of her renovation projects, and killed the engine.

This was her favorite part of the day: the drive in before sunrise, an audiobook murmuring through her speakers, and coffee hot enough to sting.

For an hour or so, she could believe that the world was orderly, predictable, and fixable, before the traffic thickened, the phone began buzzing, or anyone needed her to make something right.

She stepped out into thick, already humid air and grabbed her clipboard from the passenger seat, the chemical smell of fresh caulk and old drywall hitting her as she unlocked the door and stepped inside.

The site was still, just the way morning jobs always were before the trucks began pulling in.

No compressors, no radios, no hammering.

Her crew would start trickling in soon, but Jenna liked getting there early.

It gave her time to see everything before anyone could explain it away.

Inside, the house was in that in-between stage, floors gleaming, walls newly patched, and every surface still smelling slightly of paint and sawdust. Sunlight caught on floating dust, making the air look heavier than it actually was.

The new cabinets were in, pale maple against fresh Sheetrock, but even from across the room, something felt off.

She crouched, squinting along the line of the uppers, and frowned. Not level. Not even close.

She sighed, setting her coffee down on the counter. Of course, it wasn’t right.

Pulling her phone from her pocket, she hit Mark’s number, and he picked up on the second ring.

“Morning, boss,” he said, his voice still rough with sleep.

“Hey,” she said, pacing as she talked. “I’m at the Brookhaven job. I thought you said the cabinets were fine.”

“They are, it’s the hinges. The doors look crooked, but—”

“It’s not the hinges.” She stopped at the end of her pacing line, staring hard at the wall. “The whole run is off. Looks like the laser was set low.”

A pause. Then a resigned exhale. “I’ll be there in twenty.”

“Bring your level.”

He chuckled softly. “Wouldn’t dream of showing up without it.”

Jenna smiled despite herself. That was the thing about construction: something was always wrong.

Nothing ever went exactly as planned; lumber bowed, deliveries ran late, and walls hid surprises you didn’t want to find.

But she liked that about it. Problems had solutions.

Things broke, and you fixed them. Life didn’t usually work that way, but buildings did.

Then her other phone buzzed. The Florida number. It was rare for someone to call her personal line this early.

Jenna’s stomach tightened when she saw the name: Aunt Marilyn.

Her aunt never called. They kept up through text messages, Facebook posts, and the occasional birthday or Christmas card, but phone calls were rare. She immediately worried about her mom, though if something were wrong, Grace would’ve called. Her sister always called.

She hesitated, thumb hovering over Decline, then answered. “Hey, Aunt M. Everything okay?”

The silence stretched too long. When her aunt finally spoke, her voice was thin and trembling.

“Jenna . . . honey, something’s happened . . . it’s Grace.”

Jenna straightened instinctively, pen halfway to her clipboard. “What about her?”

“She—” Her aunt’s voice wavered. “She collapsed at the bakery this morning. They took her to the hospital, but—”

Jenna’s grip on the pen tightened. “But what?”

Her aunt’s words were tumbling over each other: something about stress, her condition, the divorce, her cardiologist’s warnings. But Jenna couldn’t hear any of it.

A sound came through the phone, limp and broken. “She’s gone, sweetheart.”

The world stopped.

Coffee sloshed over Jenna’s hand, but she didn’t feel it as the air thickened around her.

“What?” The word cracked. “No, she—no, Aunt M, she’s not.”

“I’m so sorry,” her aunt whispered. “They tried, honey. Her heart just couldn’t take any more.”

Jenna’s knees gave out before her mind caught up. The clipboard clattered beside her.

“Not Grace,” she said, voice shaking. “She can’t be gone. They can’t both be gone. It can’t just be me.”

Her aunt’s voice faded, replaced by another one, the one she’d heard ten years ago, Grace’s voice.

Jenna heard the tears in Grace’s voice before she even spoke.

“Grace? Are you okay? What’s wrong?”

“Jenna . . . it’s Brooks.”

The memory slammed into her so fast she almost dropped the phone.

She pictured the rain-slick highway from the news photos, headlights bleeding too bright across the wet road, and Brooks’s truck bent wrong. It was the kind of image you wish you hadn’t clicked.

She remembered the sound of Grace’s sobs, the way she’d tried to stay calm for their parents, but her voice kept breaking. And later, their mother’s cry, low and animal and endless.

They said the road had been wet. They said the drunk driver had drifted over the line. They said a lot of things. None of it mattered.

The rain had dried, the wreck had been cleared, but it couldn’t be erased.

The image would remain forever: metal twisted, glass scattered like salt, and her brother’s smiling face frozen in a picture from the paper.

And now Grace.

For a second, it felt like Brooks had just died all over again, the old grief crashing back at the exact moment a new one split through her.

Her aunt’s voice came back through the line, unsteady. “Your parents. . . they’re not taking it well. They shouldn’t be driving. I’m at the hospital now—”

Jenna pressed her fist to her mouth, trying to breathe around the pressure in her chest, but not quite able to.

At some point, the call disconnected. She did not remember pressing the button.

Outside, she heard the first truck pull up, doors slamming, voices calling to each other. The workday was starting, whether she was ready for the world to turn again or not.

Grace’s name still echoed in her head, the same way Brooks’s had ten years ago. There was that same pause before the words, and the same hollow drop in her stomach when they were spoken.

Now it was her aunt saying her sister’s name, and everything inside her wanted to rewind, to unhear, to trade places with the Jenna from yesterday.

The house still smelled of paint and caffeine, as if the world hadn’t moved an inch. But it had.

Grace was gone. Brooks was already gone. Their parents, older now and worn by what they’d already survived, shouldn’t have to endure another funeral.

Jenna stared at the crooked cabinet on the wall and thought about how easy it was to fix wood when it split. You just filled the seam, clamped it tight, and waited for it to hold.

If only people worked that way.

Jenna didn’t remember standing up. One moment, she was on the floor; the next, she was at the kitchen counter with her laptop open among paint samples and a half-empty coffee cup, staring at the screen like it might tell her what to do next.

The noise outside grew louder, boots on pavement, men greeting each other as they came in. Someone said her name, asked a question, maybe two. She didn’t look up, and the words dissolved into noise.

She opened her calendar: meetings, bid reviews, and site visits. All suddenly felt meaningless. Her fingers began moving despite it all.

She called her assistant, forcing her voice into something steady that didn’t quite sound like her own.

“Hey, it’s me. Something happened. I’m . . . I’m going to need to step away for a few days.”

A pause. “Are you okay?”

She almost laughed. Okay. The word didn’t even fit in her mouth. “Just—cancel everything for the week and forward my calls. I’ll text you when I land.”

“Land where?”

Jenna hung up before answering, then she booked a flight to Tampa. 4:45 p.m., Delta. She had no idea what she typed into the last box, something like family emergency or funeral.

When she looked up again, Mark was standing a few feet away, mid-sentence, pointing at the crooked cabinets. His voice sounded far away, like it was coming through water.

“—so if we pull them now, we’ll need to patch the wall again, but if we wait for the replacements—”

She blinked, realizing the crew was all here. Her throat tightened. The room felt too small.

“I can’t—” Her voice cracked. She shut the laptop hard, the sound sharp in the silence. “I can’t do this right now. I just . . . I have a family emergency.”

She grabbed her keys off the counter. Mark started to say something, but she was already moving.

Whispers followed her out the door, fading with the sounds of boots scuffing against the new floors and tools clattering somewhere in the distance.

Outside, she got into her truck, the too-bright sunlight blinding her as she slammed the door like punctuation.

She didn’t cry. There wasn’t room for that yet.

Her body had gone on autopilot: driving home, packing a bag, checking the time.

Her hands moved, but her brain didn’t. By the time she reached the interstate toward Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, the sun had shifted, slanting across the windshield in dizzy gold stripes.

The traffic streaked around her in a fog of brake lights, billboards, and people singing in their cars.

Her phone kept lighting up with work calls.

They were being forwarded, but still flashed across the screen before routing to some unknown extension, meaningless numbers from a world that suddenly didn’t matter.

She ignored every single one. She just wanted to go back to the version of the day where her biggest problem was a crooked cabinet.

She tried to think through her active projects, to ground herself in something familiar, but her brain was cloudy. She couldn’t even remember which houses were hers or which deadlines she’d already met.

At the airport, everything moved too fast.

The parking lot shuttle was crowded. A man brushed her elbow and muttered an apology without truly acknowledging her. She was grateful for his disregard.

The driver made jokes over the loudspeaker about weekend travelers. Everyone laughed.

Inside the terminal, the noise swelled with the sound of rolling bags, coffee orders, and flight announcements.

The normal hum of people living their normal lives.

She checked her bag, answered security questions automatically, and stepped out of her shoes at TSA. The line shuffled forward, inch by inch, with fluorescent light buzzing overhead.

Ma’am, laptop out of the case. Step through. Have a great day.

Each kindness stung.

Have a great day. Enjoy your flight. See you next time.

She nodded, unable to speak. How could she have a great day? How could she enjoy this flight?

The overhead train voice chimed cheerfully as the doors closed: “Next stop: Concourse B. B for Burgers and Beverages, which you can find at all of our concourses.”

Someone laughed as the recorded voice repeated it, bright and unbothered.

She clung to the rail as the train jolted forward. For a moment, she imagined staying there, just circling the airport forever, never boarding, and never landing anywhere real again.

But when the doors opened, she stepped out because that’s what you do. You keep moving.

Concourse B buzzed with the motions of wheels dragging over tile, the smell of coffee, the echo of names over the PA, and the sound of laughter spilling from a bar somewhere, loud and alive.

Her gate sat directly across from a Bakery Atlanta Bread Company kiosk.

It wasn’t anything like the Blue Cypress, more chain, more soups and salads.

But still, the word bakery was enough to make her pause.

Aunt M had said something about the stress of running the business, and the guilt began to set in.

Jenna stood there for a moment, staring at the case, remembering the smell of cinnamon and yeast, and the sound of Grace’s laugh floating from the kitchen. Then someone brushed past her, and the moment broke.

She checked the screen again. B6—On Time.

When they called her zone, she stepped forward automatically and scanned her ticket without remembering having pulled it up on her phone. The gate agent smiled, “Have a good flight,” and Jenna nodded, because that’s what you do.

The jetway smelled like metal and recycled air. Someone ahead of her laughed loudly, and a baby cried somewhere behind her. She found her seat, stowed her bag, and buckled in.

The man beside her was excited about his beach vacation. He showed her photos of a rental house with a pool and palm trees, the kind of place people went to feel alive. She smiled politely and nodded at the right times. The sound of her own voice felt foreign.

When the flight attendant handed her a napkin and a tiny cup of club soda, she whispered, “Thank you,” because that’s what you say. Because the world hadn’t stopped for her, even if she needed it to.

She’d never been on a plane headed home before. Not for birthdays, not for holidays, not even when Grace begged her to visit the bakery. There was always a reason to stay away: deadlines, budgets, inspections, some urgent thing that couldn’t possibly wait.

Aunt Marilyn’s four kids had all graduated from high school while she was gone.

Some of them had married, some had babies she’d only seen in pictures.

She hadn’t even realized her aunt’s marriage was falling apart until Grace mentioned that Sal had moved out, and by then the papers were already filed.

Whole lives had unfolded without her, and she hadn’t been there for any of it.

But the Blue Cypress had always been there, whether she showed up or not.

It was where Grace learned to braid dough before she could spell her name, where Jenna learned to count by sorting change in the register drawer, and where Brooks spent half his childhood perched on the counter, taste-testing whatever Grace pulled warm from the oven.

It was a sanctuary of flour on the counters, bread cooling by the window, and Grace humming off-key in the back.

It had survived Grandma Hart’s passing, recessions, hurricanes, and one broken heart after another.

But when Brooks died, Jenna couldn’t stand to walk through its door. She told herself it was too painful, too many memories, but deep down, she knew better. The bakery was where everything still worked when she didn’t, and she couldn’t stand that.

Now, at thirty-four, she was finally on a plane. This time, not to start something new, but to face what she’d left unfinished.