Epilogue Olivia
A YEAR LATER
The Walsh Construction office smelled like coffee and sawdust and the particular brand of controlled chaos that I had come to understand was just how Ben operated.
There was a system here—I'd found it buried under six years of invoices and handshake agreements and Dave's color-coded Post-its that nobody except Dave could decode—but it was a system that worked, the way a crooked picture frame works if you've lived with it long enough to stop seeing the angle.
I'd straightened it. Mostly.
My desk was in the corner by the window.
Linda had been doing the books here for eleven years and knew where every body was buried, financially speaking.
She'd looked at me on day one, her expression that of a woman reserving judgment.
By the end of week two she'd started leaving me coffee without being asked. I took that as a good sign.
Ben had stopped at my desk on his way out that morning, before the crews went out, and left a granola bar next to my keyboard without comment.
I didn't particularly like granola bars.
He knew that. It was the only kind left in the house because I kept forgetting to buy more and he kept eating the others first.
I ate it anyway.
Outside the window the yard was busy. Two crews going out.
We had the Hadley job and the new commercial fit-out in Framingham that had come in last month, the kind of contract that six months ago would have stretched the company thin.
Now we had the people. Dave had been quietly hiring since summer, good guys, a couple fresh out of trade school and one older fellow named Garrett who'd been doing finish carpentry for thirty years and had the hands to prove it.
The expansion had been Ben's idea, funded by his cut of the Route 9 sale, built on my spreadsheets and Dave's execution. That was roughly how most things worked around here.
The Route 9 LLC had dissolved in July, the same week the sale closed.
Lucia had gotten her two hundred thousand, same as agreed.
The bank had gotten the rest, and what remained after that had been split between Ben and me and the crew — Collins, Frank, Walt, and the others who'd shown up in the cold.
I'd filed the dissolution paperwork myself, which felt appropriate: one last document to catalog, one last record to close.
Collins appeared in the doorway at nine, still in his jacket, holding a paper bag from the bakery down the street. He set it on my desk as a peace offering, or possibly a bribe.
"I have a question about the Hadley invoicing," he said.
"The answer is no, you cannot expense the lunch you bought yourself last Tuesday." I didn't look up. "Or the Tuesday before that."
He pointed at the bag. "Almond croissant."
"Still no."
He grabbed a chair, flipped it around. "How's the new place?"
"Good." I pulled up the invoice. "We finished unpacking last weekend."
"Ben let you organize his kitchen?"
"Ben's kitchen is now my kitchen." I glanced at him. "He's adjusting."
"How's he adjusting?"
"He moved the coffee mugs back to the wrong cabinet twice. I moved them back twice. We haven't discussed it." I returned to the screen. "Go do your job."
He grabbed the paper bag but left the almond croissant, which meant he did actually want something and hadn't asked yet, and headed for the door. Then he stopped.
"I named the truck," he said.
I looked up. Collins had bought a truck with his share of the Route 9 payout.
Good one, late model. He'd also bought his mother a new dishwasher, made some questionable decisions involving his college roommate and a set of golf clubs, and then sat down with a financial advisor and put the rest somewhere sensible.
He'd told me about the financial advisor unprompted, with the pride of a man who had surprised himself.
"Diane," he said. "After Frank's wife. She's tough and she's never wrong."
I stared at him.
"Don't tell Frank," he added.
"I sure won't."
He disappeared into the yard.
Dave appeared in the doorway minutes later, blueprints under his arm. "Framingham permit office needs the updated site plan."
"Already sent it. Approved this morning."
He looked at me over his reading glasses, then made a sound that in Dave's register passed for impressed and disappeared.
The office settled back into its working quiet. Phones, keyboards, the distant sound of a saw from the yard. I worked through the morning the way I'd been working through mornings for three months now.
The house on Oak Street had sold in October.
I'd packed eight years into cardboard boxes and been surprised by how little of it I'd wanted to keep.
The good dishes and the books. The photo albums, though I hadn't opened them yet.
And the glazed ceramic bluebird from Ruth's kitchen windowsill, which she'd pressed into my hands on moving day without explanation, and which now sat above my desk catching the afternoon light.
I hadn't asked her why. I thought I understood.
Ben appeared in the doorway just before noon, jacket on, keys in hand.
"Hadley site," he said. "Back by three."
"Window delivery is at two. Someone needs to sign."
"Dave—"
"Framingham walkthrough."
"Collins—"
"Dentist." I held out a clipboard. "Sign the Miller invoice before you go."
He crossed the room, signed without reading it because he trusted me and we both knew it, and handed it back.
Then he stood there a beat in the way he sometimes did—like he'd meant to leave and forgotten to.
He picked up his coffee from the corner of my desk where he always left it, always forgot it, always came back for.
Then he leaned down and kissed the top of my head. Simple, unhurried, as if he'd been doing it for years.
"Three o'clock," he said.
"I'll be here," I said.
I listened to his boots cross the yard, his truck's engine turning over.
I turned back to my screen.
I knew Ben took his coffee black because buying creamer required a level of forward planning he couldn't be bothered with.
I knew he slept on the right side of the bed and had given me the left without making it a conversation.
I knew he was a morning person in the way people who work with their hands are morning people — not cheerfully, just functionally, already thinking about the first problem of the day before his feet hit the floor.
He ate the good granola bars first without noticing there was a difference. I'd stopped buying the ones he liked just to see how long it would take him to notice. Three weeks in, he still hadn't.
I was learning him.
Room by room. Detail by detail.
And I was in no hurry to stop.