Chapter 15
Olivia
"Ineed a moment."
I turned my back on Lucia's terrifying news and Ben's shocked face, and I walked toward the house.
My boots crunched through patches of snow that had blown onto the subflooring, then hit bare plywood with hollow thuds. The wind howled through the open frame, a low, mournful sound—the house singing its own emptiness.
I stepped over the threshold. Or what would have been the threshold, if there were walls, or doors. If this were a home instead of a crime scene.
Inside, the world opened up.
The space was aggressive in its scale. Cathedral ceilings soared thirty feet overhead, the yellow pine beams crossing in complex geometric patterns. Triangles within triangles. It was beautiful, even in this raw state. It was the kind of craftsmanship that required vision.
Ryan had designed this.
I could see his hand in every choice. The proportions were generous, confident. The window openings were framed to capture specific views—one looking toward the rolling hills, another framing the distant flash of the reservoir.
He had thought about the light and the angles. He had thought about everything except how he was going to pay for it.
The fireplace rose up the back wall, a massive column of river stone that stopped halfway to the ceiling abruptly, as if they'd simply run out of money or time or will. Tools sat abandoned at the base—a trowel crusted with gray mortar, a level, a bucket of mix that had hardened into stone.
It looked like the rapture had happened, like the workers had simply vanished mid-shift.
I walked deeper into the space.
The rough plumbing stubbed up through the subfloor showed where the kitchen would go, marking out an island that would face the view. The staircase opening was already framed in the floor above, a dark rectangle leading to a loft that didn't exist yet.
He had stood here.
I stopped in the center of the room, shivering as the wind cut through my coat.
Ryan had stood exactly where I was standing now. With her.
I imagined them both.
Not as ghosts, but as the people they were last week. Ryan pointing up at the beams, sweeping his arm across the view, explaining his vision. Lucia listening, nodding, reflecting back to him the image of the Great Architect he so desperately wanted to be.
Maybe they had kissed here, leaning against the unfinished stone. Spread blueprints on the plywood and argued about tile samples.
Maybe he had been happier in this cold, unfinished shell than he had ever been in our warm, finished home.
The thought made my throat close.
I walked to one of the massive window openings and looked out. The view was stunning. Gray hills rolled into white snow, and the dark ribbon of Route 9 cut through the valley below.
This was what he had chosen. He'd traded our marriage for this view, our safety for these beams.
He had chosen this. A half-finished dream in the middle of the woods. And he had stolen my safety to build it. Every beam above my head was bought with my equity. Every stone in that fireplace was a month of my mortgage.
I pressed my palm against a rough-cut post. The wood was freezing, damp from the snow. It felt solid.
Behind me, the plywood creaked.
I didn't turn around.
"Olivia." Ben's voice, low and careful.
His boots scuffed against the plywood behind me, then stopped. I could hear his breathing in the quiet, closer than I expected. The awareness of him prickled along my spine.
Then he was beside me at the window opening. Close enough that I could smell the cold air still clinging to his jacket, could feel the warmth radiating off him despite the wind. He didn't touch me, but his presence blocked the worst of the cold.
We stood there, looking out at the same view. The reservoir was a dark smudge in the distance. The place where physics had finally caught up with Ryan’s ambition.
"He always talked about a span like this," Ben said quietly. "Back in college. He used to draw these massive timber frames in the margins of his notebooks."
I looked at him. His eyes were wet.
"I told him he was dreaming," Ben continued, his voice thick. "I told him a ceiling this high, this wide—timber alone couldn't hold it. That he'd need steel reinforcement. That it was too much weight."
He reached out and touched the beam next to my head, running his thumb over the grain. "He proved me wrong," Ben whispered. "Look at these joints. The way the beams lock together. He figured it out." His voice cracked. "He was good, Liv. He was so damn good."
The praise hurt worse than an insult. It was true. Ryan was brilliant, and he had hidden that brilliance from me, saving it for this secret place.
"He never showed me the drawings." My voice sounded small in the massive room. "He never told me he still wanted to build this."
"I know."
We stood there in silence. The wind pushed through the frame, making the whole structure creak and settle. The house sounded alive and restless.
"I don't know if he loved me," I whispered.
The words fell out of my mouth before I could stop them.
Ben kept his eyes on the hills, his jaw tight.
"Or if he just loved this more," I continued. "This version of himself. The man who could build the impossible thing." I pressed my hand harder against the wood until splinters bit into my palm. "I gave him eight years of my life, Ben. And he still needed... this."
"Liv—"
"Don't," I said. "Don't tell me he loved me. You don't know that. Nobody knows that except him, and he’s dead."
Ben stayed quiet—he didn't offer a platitude or try to fix what couldn’t be fixed. He just stood there, a solid presence in a house made of air.
After a long moment, I felt his hand settle on my shoulder.
His touch was heavy and warm. An anchor.
I leaned into it, just an inch. Just enough to feel that I wasn't the only solid thing left in the world.
"I should talk to her," Ben said, his voice rough. "We need to figure out the loan. We need to see the paperwork."
I nodded, staring at the reservoir. "Okay."
His hand squeezed my shoulder once—hard—then let go.
I heard his boots retreat across the plywood, the sound fading as he walked back toward the trucks, leaving me alone in Ryan's cathedral.
I stayed at the window, watching the light fade over the hills, wondering how much a dream cost before it bankrupted you completely.