Chapter 30
Tom
Richard leaned over the plans, scanning with that focus that still had the power to make Tom feel sixteen again.
“Excellent work,” his father said finally, tapping the paper. “This—” he looked up, nodding—“this is the kind of house I would have designed.”
Tom stared down at the plans. Of course it was something his father would have designed.
Tom didn’t even know what his own style was anymore.
He used to take risks. Color. Curves. Buildings that felt alive.
The morning light caught the snow globe’s glitter. The photo inside—him and Lauren, laughing under snow—gazed back at him.
He looked at the plans again and tried to find himself in them. The kid who used to sketch houses with curved walls and skylights, who’d been obsessed with how light moved through a space, not how clean the lines looked on paper.
That Tom had disappeared somewhere between paychecks and performance reviews.
He’d bowed his head to “good taste,” told himself that growing up meant paring down, polishing, compromising.
He’d traded color for credibility.
He’d traded instinct for approval.
And it had worked. He’d built a career. A reputation. A life his father could nod at.
A compromise Lauren never asked of him.
He looked at the plan again and couldn’t see a single trace of himself in it.
Neutral. Understated. Tasteful.
The words scraped against his chest.
Richard kept talking about the roofline, but Tom wasn’t listening anymore. He couldn’t stop thinking about Lauren.
Lauren didn’t follow. She was bold. He’d thought that was a weakness.
“Something wrong with the plans?” his father asked, noticing his silence.
Tom shook his head. “No. They’re fine.”
Richard nodded, satisfied. “You’re finally getting it.”
Finally getting it.
The shame came sudden and sharp.
He remembered himself, proud and stupid, showing his father a sketch full of color and wildness. It’s nonsense, Tom. Grow up.
He’d believed it.
And later, when Richard said the same thing about Lauren—about her wreaths and handmade garlands—Tom had believed that too.
He’d grasped onto his father’s palette: something boring that passed for sophistication.
The sterile blueprints with their neat geometry were suddenly unbearable.
He looked at the snow globe.
He’d spent years mistaking Lauren’s crafts for weakness.
Now he knew better.
She wasn’t the weak one.
He was.
Tom stood in the living room of Lauren's parents' house, staring at the explosion of handmade everything.
Nothing in his parents' house had been made by their hands.
He moved through the room slowly. A basket beside the couch overflowed with half-finished projects. Yarn trailing from knitting needles. Embroidery hoops. A quilted table runner that was only partially sewn.
Evidence of creation everywhere. Evidence of trying.
How do I prove it to her? How do I show it?
Tom rubbed his face and headed upstairs. Lauren's childhood bedroom.
Textbooks from college. Young adult novels with cracked spines. And there, wedged between novels was what looked like a crafting manual—
Lauren made things. She made cookies and quilts and garlands strung through the house.
Around him, Lauren's childhood room held its breath. Glow-in-the-dark stars overhead. A bulletin board covered with certificates and drawings and photos of Lauren at every age, smiling and bright and so obviously loved.
This was what Lauren had grown up with. Parents who celebrated her exactly as she was. Who hung her mother's amateur paintings like they belonged in a gallery. Who kept every craft project, every attempt, every expression of joy.
The answer had been staring him in the face the entire time.
He looked around the room. At the sponge-painted walls. Creation. Effort. Something made with your own hands that said you matter to me.
He would make something. With his own hands. Something that took effort and time and showed her—really showed her—that he saw her now. That he understood what she'd been trying to give him all along.
Something homemade and heartfelt.
Tom looked around her childhood bedroom. At all the evidence of a girl who'd grown up knowing that handmade meant love.
He'd tell their love story in her language this time.
Homemade and heartfelt. The way she'd been trying to teach him all along.