Chapter 9
HAZEL
Sun found me before the alarm did—thin bands through salt-streaked glass, bright enough to force my eyes open and my spine into something like resolve.
Determination isn’t a feeling—it’s a list. I reached for my notebook on the pillow, flipped to yesterday’s scrawl, and drew a hard line under the top three items.
· Porch rail (loose/rotted)
· West room leak (temporary patch)
· Shutters (rehang two, maybe three)
I wrote coffee above all of it, underlined twice, then took a quick shower. When I got out, I pulled my wet hair into a bun so tight it stole a heartbeat and gave it back sharper. Jeans. T-shirt. Sneakers already dusted from yesterday.
Downstairs, Maude was already moving—tea kettle sighing, radio low, the morning news mangled by static. She slid a mug toward me the second my feet hit the kitchen tile.
“You’ve got that look,” she said, amused. “The one that says you’re fixin’ to wrestle the island.”
“Just the porch,” I said, blowing on steam. “Maybe a shutter if the porch doesn’t kill me.”
“Hardware store’s on Johns Island,” she said, as if I’d already asked. “Take the main out, turn right at the second light past the bridge. Looks like a shack that’d sell bait, but the man inside will know what you need. His name’s Burl.”
“Burl?”
“Short for something, long for everything. Tell him Maude sent you.”
I smiled despite myself. “Any chance Burl sells whole porches?”
“Only in pieces,” she said, every word a pat on the cheek. “Don’t forget screws that won’t rust and paint that won’t sulk. And a good drill. Not the cheap kind.”
My stomach dipped at that. “A drill,” I echoed, as if drills were in the same species as staplers. “Right.”
Outside, the day had that particular marsh brightness that makes everything look freshly made. I locked the door without thinking, checked it once because the habit refused to die, then climbed into my little rental car and let the island unspool.
Halfway down the drive, I realized I couldn’t keep doing this for long—borrowing mobility.
If I was going to be here a full year, I’d need something of my own.
A car, probably. The thought made me wince; in Chicago, wheels were optional.
My whole world fit between the L, the corner market, and the coffee shop that knew my order before I spoke.
Independence there meant proximity. Here, it meant gasoline and maintenance and insurance—more expenses on a list already getting too long.
Still, when the road curved beneath the oaks and the first slant of sunlight hit the windshield, I felt something that wasn’t exactly dread.
The air smelled like promise. Like possibility I didn’t have to schedule.
Maybe that was what my grandmother had meant to teach me when she tied me to this place for a year—not punishment, but permission.
Live oaks arched over the road like old ribs, Spanish moss combed by the wind. The bridge was a ribbon over the intracoastal, water flashing hard light on my windshield. The world smelled like salt and something green that didn’t care what I called it.
I’d been to Kiawah once as a child—one week of sugar cookies and sea air that felt cleaner than the city’s.
Now I was learning it on purpose. Where the road curved like a question.
Where the golf carts multiplied. Where the post office hid behind palmettos and polite money.
Johns Island was messier, which comforted me: produce stands with hand-painted signs, two goats sharing a bale of something, and a church marquee that promised forgiveness.
Burl’s place didn’t look like a hardware store so much as a dare. Weathered clapboard. Handwritten hours in a window that needed washing. A busted lawnmower sulking by the door. Inside, it was organized chaos: aisles stacked to their own ceilings, the smell of lumber and oil and dust.
A man materialized from behind a tower of five-gallon paint buckets, tall and narrow as a rake, hair gone white at the temples but eyes young with mischief. “You’re not from around here,” he said, delighted, the way some people say welcome.
“No,” I admitted. “Kiawah. The Bradford Inn.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Lord, I haven’t heard that name in a minute. You must be the granddaughter. You’ve got Nora’s chin.”
I pressed my mouth into a smile that didn’t quite fit. “I—yeah. I need screws. And wood … stuff.” Lord. “The porch rail’s loose. And the shutters are barely hanging on. Also there’s a roof leak, but I’m not stupid enough to climb up there yet.”
He laughed, a happy wheeze. “Maude sent you?”
“She did.”
“Well then. We’ll outfit you proper.” He moved like a man who’d been navigating his own maze for decades, plucking items with the care of a florist arranging thorns.
“Exterior screws. Stainless. A box big enough to make you feel brave. Wood hardener. Two-part epoxy. Sandpaper—course, then fine. Safety glasses. Caulk for the windows. Gun to shoot it with. And a drill.”
He handed me a cordless that felt heavier than its size suggested. I tried to look like I knew how to hold it. The drill looked back at me, unimpressed.
“Got a stud finder?” he asked, eyes twinkling.
I opened my mouth, closed it, then said, with grim dignity, “Not recently.”
He cackled. “This kind,” he said, and slapped a small plastic rectangle on the counter. “They lie half the time, but it’s good theater. Oh, and these.” He added a tape measure and a little torpedo level to the pile. “Else you’ll hang your whole life crooked.”
He rang me up, the total less painful than I feared and more than I wanted, then threw a handful of peppermint candies into a paper bag.
“Last thing,” he said. “Confidence.”
I blinked. “Do you sell that behind the counter?”
“Nope,” he said cheerfully. “That one you get from yourself.”
I carried my loot out to the car feeling absurdly buoyed. It wasn’t expertise, but it was a start. I drove back the long way on purpose, letting the island stitch itself into my head.
The inn sat where I left it, slouching with dignity. The porch waited like a patient relative—no judgment, just inevitability. I unloaded my supplies onto the steps and set my notebook on the railing.
“Okay,” I told the house. “Be gentle.”
The loose section was obvious: the middle rail dipped where the wood had gone soft, the balusters loose enough to shimmy with a stern look.
I could fix this. Probably. Maybe.
I put on the safety glasses Burl had insisted on and immediately felt like a fraud in costume. The drill’s battery clicked into place with a confidence I envied. I lined a stainless screw on the bit, exhaled, and pressed the trigger.
The drill ate air and then wood, catching suddenly, the torque twisting in my palm. I yelped and almost lost my grip, catching myself with a clatter against the post. The screw went in sideways, mocking, its head stripped.
“Great,” I muttered, heat crawling up my neck. “Perfect. Love it.”
I backed the drill off, tried again at a better angle. The screw skittered like it had somewhere better to be. I cursed softly, aware of how quiet the cove was around us—the slow ocean, a bird calling, my humiliation echoing like a bell.
“Having fun?” a low voice asked from behind me.
I didn’t jump, but my whole body sort of flinched in place, like a startled animal pretending to be a statue. I turned.
Gideon leaned in the porch doorway, shoulder to the frame, arms crossed.
Morning had cut him into something even more dangerous: clean, awake, restrained.
A plain black T-shirt hugged his chest and the ridges of his stomach.
His beard caught the light, throwing more copper than I’d noticed last night.
Those eyes—wolf-gray, mercilessly attentive—slid from my face to the drill to the screw sticking out at a rude angle.
“Fun is one word,” I said, pushing sweaty hair off my forehead with the back of my wrist. “I’d pick a different one, but yes. Fun.”
He glanced at the railing. “You’re fighting the grain,” he said mildly, like he was telling me something about the weather. “And the bit’s wrong.”
“I bought the one Burl told me,” I said, defensive because I felt ridiculous.
His mouth twitched like it wanted to be a smile and wasn’t sure he should. “You’re using a Phillips on a star drive.” He nodded at the screw head, the shape plain as a lesson. “Torx. Less cam-out. Saves the cussing for when it counts.”
“I’m not … cussing,” I lied.
“You are,” he said, the amusement warmer now. “But quietly.” He bent, slow enough I could watch every inch of muscle and bone make decisions beneath cotton, and plucked the correct bit from where I’d set it on the steps without realizing. “May I?”
Something in me unclenched that had nothing to do with the railing.
“Please,” I said, the word coming out more breath than sound.
He moved to my side. He fitted the Torx bit, checked the battery with a simple click, then set the drill in my hands again. The weight felt different when he handed it back—like he’d transferred something I couldn’t name.
“Stand here,” he said, stepping behind me.
I did. The space around me changed temperature.
He didn’t touch me. He didn’t have to. I could feel the heat of him, the press of his presence at my back.
“Square your feet. Closer.” I swore my soles moved of their own accord.
“Now brace the heel of your hand against the rail, not your wrist.”
“Okay,” I said, and I adjusted. The drill steadied.
“Good,” he murmured, and that single word sank clear down my body. “Set the screw straight. Let the tool do the work. You’re thinking too much.”
“Um hmm,” I said, and realized I was smiling. I lined the screw, breathed in—soap and skin and man—and squeezed the trigger.
The screw bit true, clean and satisfying. The sound of it seating—metal to wood, problem to solution—was indecently good.
“Again,” he said softly.