Chapter Six - Holt #3
“He hated eating on sites,” she says. “Said it slowed him down. But he always brought enough for both of us anyway.”
“What kind of jobs?”
Her fingers tighten once around the paper wrapped around her sandwich. “Restorations. Historic homes. Inns. Old churches. Anything with enough damage to scare reasonable people.”
A ghost of something moves through her expression.
“He said new builds were for people who wanted to control outcomes. Old places were for people who respected stories.”
That hits me harder than I expect. Probably because I understand that more than I should. Not the restoration part. The respect. The willingness to stand in front of something damaged and decide it’s still worth the work.
I look toward the house behind us.
Toward the open windows, the stripped-back hall, the room she slept in because there was nowhere else.
“Sounds like he knew what he was talking about.”
She finally looks at me then. There’s grief in her face. But not the fresh kind. Not the loud kind. Something older. More settled. The sort that changed shape enough to live alongside a person instead of taking them under.
“He did,” she says quietly. “Most of the time.”
I nod once and look away before the moment can deepen into something neither of us has enough energy to carry right now.
By midafternoon, the work gets harder. The easy cleanup is gone. What’s left is heavier. More physical. More stubborn.
I haul debris from the back hall while she strips damaged materials into piles she can sort later.
We argue twice over what can be saved. She wins once.
I win once. The third time turns into us both kneeling in the same narrow stretch of floor, pulling opposite ends of a warped board while Rook barks at the noise like it’s a personal betrayal.
The board finally gives all at once. Lark jerks back. So do I.
She loses her balance on the dusty floor, and her shoulder hits my chest just as I grab for her automatically.
The room stills as my hand lands at her waist. Her palm catches on my forearm. And for one second, we’re too close in a way that has nothing to do with work.
Dust moves in the shaft of light cutting through the hall window. Her breathing catches. Mine does too.
The line of her throat is right there. The faint pulse at the base of it. The smudge of dirt near her jaw. The fact that her hand is still wrapped around my arm like she forgot to let go.
Then Rook shoves his cold nose directly into my knee and destroys whatever that was.
Lark pulls back first. Fast enough that the loss of contact feels immediate.
“Right,” she says, too quickly. “Okay.”
I sit back on my heels and drag a hand down my face.
“Yeah.”
The single word sounds rough. The room feels smaller after that.
The rest of the afternoon moves in uneven starts. Enough work to keep us occupied. Enough awareness to make all of it feel different.
By the time the sun starts to drop, the inn is cleaner, boarded, and somehow even more clearly wounded than it was this morning. Damage is easier to see once the dirt gets stripped away.
Lark stands in the foyer with her notebook again, making lists, revising lists, rewriting a section near the bottom under pressure that almost tears the page.
I lean against the front doorframe and watch her for a second before she catches me.
“What?”
“You done?”
“No.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
She exhales hard and closes the notebook. “I’m tired.”
There’s enough frustration packed into the confession that it sounds like she resents the need itself.
I nod toward the door. “Then we leave.”
Her eyes flick toward the stairs. Toward the hall. Toward the back of the house.
Like she’s trying to inventory the work by looking at it harder.
“It’ll still be here tomorrow,” I say.
“I know.”
But she says it the same way she said fine earlier. Like agreement and resistance are living in the same breath.
I hold out my hand. She looks at it, then at me.
“What?”
“Keys.”
Her mouth tightens. “I know where I put them.”
“Good. That’ll save us time.”
She stares for one second longer, then reaches into her pocket and drops the keys into my palm.
“I’ll have one of my brothers grab your SUV and bring it to my house, okay?”
“Why? I can drive it, you know.”
“I know, but it would make me feel better, please?” she says with the tiniest pout in her bottom lip that assures me as a child Lark got everything she ever wanted. And that wasn’t about to change now.
Rook heads for the door before either of us does, clearly done with all human complexity for the day.
We load up in silence, knowing the Marshal only approved us to stay through the day.
The drive back to the farm is quieter than this morning's. Not because there’s nothing to say. Because there’s too much.
The sun has started its drop, light shifting gold over the fields and marsh as we pass through town.
Main Street is busier now. People out walking.
A couple arguing lightly over flower pots outside the nursery.
Kids with ice cream near the boardwalk. Life moving as if no one’s carriage house burned last night, as if no old inn sits at the edge of town held together by lists and grief and one woman’s refusal to let it fall.
Lark watches all of it through the window.
“What?”
The word lands a little too quickly. I hadn’t realized I was caught.
“Nothing.”
“That’s not true.”
“No,” I say. “It isn’t.”
She waits.
I keep my eyes on the road.
“You don’t know how to stop.”
A long silence follows that.
“That’s rich coming from you.”
Fair.
I let the corner of my mouth move just enough for her to catch it if she’s looking.
“You notice that.”
“You pace when you think,” she says. “You scrub counters that are already clean. You water plants like it’s a tactical operation.”
I glance at her then. She’s watching me openly now, one brow slightly raised, like she’s waiting to see if I’ll deny it.
I don’t.
Instead, I say, “You watched me water plants.”
She faces forward again, but not before I catch the faint color moving up her neck.
“That wasn’t the point.”
No. It wasn’t. That’s what makes it worse.
We reach the farm with the kind of tension sitting between us that doesn’t break when the engine shuts off. It lingers all the way through the walk to the porch, through the door opening, through the warm light inside.
Mom’s at the stove when we come in. She looks up, takes one glance at both of us, and knows something shifted.
Mothers should not have that power.
“How’d it look?” she asks.
Lark answers first. “Manageable.”
I look at her. That’s one word for it.
Mom catches the glance and says nothing about it, which somehow feels more dangerous than if she did.
“Wash up,” she says instead. “Dinner’s almost ready.”
Lark stiffens just slightly. “You don’t have to feed me.”
Mom gives her a look over one shoulder. “I know.”
Then she turns back to the stove and adds, “I’m going to anyway.”
That stops the argument before it starts.
Rook trots into the kitchen and sits near Mom like he’s been here for years. She drops a piece of carrot to the floor without even looking.
I don’t miss the way Lark watches it happen. The quiet surprise. The ache that follows it.
The sink water runs warm over my hands, washing off the last of the grit from the inn, while behind me, the kitchen fills with ordinary things—pots, plates, Claire moving between counters, Rook’s nails clicking against the floor, Lark standing just outside the room like she isn’t sure whether she belongs in it.
I dry my hands and glance back. She’s still there. Still halfway in and halfway out.
I jerk my chin toward the table. “Sit down.”
Her eyes narrow. “You really enjoy telling me what to do.”
“No,” I say. “I enjoy watching you pretend not to need obvious things less.”
Mom laughs softly under her breath, and Lark catches it. And for the first time since the fire, I see a full smile threaten.
It doesn’t fully win. It gets close.
Because by the time dinner ends, and the dishes are done, and the porch light is the only thing left between us and the dark, I’m going to have a much bigger problem than lack of sleep.
Because proximity has weight. Because grief recognizes steadiness. Because sometimes the most dangerous thing in a house isn’t the stranger in your bed. It’s the moment she stops feeling like one.