33. The Crumbling House #2
“You go talk to the people who know you,” she says. “Not so they can tell you who you are, but so you can hear yourself say it out loud to someone who won’t flinch. The hearing yourself say it is the work, sweetheart. The flinching is the test.”
She turns another page without bothering to right the stupid book, so I leave her to her non-reading and walk home.
The flinching is the test.
What does that even mean?
It’s still running through my head when I’m almost to the apartment staircase, but laughter makes me pause.
Hudson’s laughter, specifically. It’s a sound that occurs in nature roughly four times a year and is the sound of a man who’s too tired to maintain his typical professional restraint. Or when he’s with his sister.
The laughter is coming from the open side door of Cole’s garage.
Keep walking, Junie. Just keep walking.
“My colleague at the firm thinks the cases are connected,” Hudson says, making me pause. “We won’t even have to do much.”
“He can’t be that stupid.” That’s my brother’s voice. “She thinks Tommy’s done this before?”
“Yes,” Hudson says. “She said he’s probably been doing this for over a decade.
If it’s true, we won’t even have to get our hands dirty.
Just a few strategically placed—fuck, that hurt—tips, and he’ll go down without ever having to involve Junie, the Brookline house, or what fucknuts did to cover it all up. ”
“I don’t care what we have to do,” my brother growls. “Tommy will pay.”
I’ve never heard Nolan sound so…vicious.
“Goddamn it,” Hudson curses again, and I round the corner to peek inside.
The men in Cole’s garage all appear to have been drafted into a small war.
Hudson’s at a folding table with both hands bandaged.
Two of his fingers brandish fluorescent green Band-Aids that look as though they were applied without supervision, and a hot glue gun sits in front of him like a weapon he hasn’t defeated yet.
There’s a cluster of small wooden objects beside him.
“Hurry up,” Stanley whispers. “I’ve got to get it over there.”
What the hell is Hudson doing that he burned himself that many times?
Fen is on the floor with paint covering every available surface—his forearms, the back of one hand, a streak across his cheekbone, the entire knee of his pants. He’s holding up three different swatches against a tiny piece of wood. And he’s muttering. In French.
Fenway Jones does not speak French.
Nolan’s in the back of the garage with dirt up to his elbows, a smear across his forehead, and what is unmistakably a small green sprig of holly caught in the collar of his shirt.
He’s holding a tray of something miniature.
Model trees, maybe? Shrubs the size of a thimble?
And he’s planting them onto a small foam square with the focus of a surgeon. There are freaking leaves in his hair!
My brother—the doctor who took great pride in “scrubbing in” all throughout his residency—has leaves in his hair.
They’re all so busy that none of them notice me. Not even when Stanley and Hud have a tug-of-war with a pile of scrap wood that Stanley wrestles free before fleeing the garage with it.
Why would Hudson willingly wreck his hands? Or Fenway? He thrives on his public perception, yet here he is, covered in freaking paint.
And the only other time I’ve seen my brother get dirty like this was when they tried to build me a she-shed in our backyard so I would have somewhere quiet and private to go to study.
“Jesus Christ.” Hudson sees me first.
He drops the hot glue gun, which somehow doesn’t start a fire. Fen looks up, and his paint deck slides out of his hands. Nolan, who usually has the most situational awareness of anyone, sees me last, and only because everyone is now staring at me.
“Junie,” Hudson says. He’s panicking. Hudson does not panic.
“Ah, you’re bleeding.” I point to his forearm.
“I’m aware.”
“Why is there a leaf in Nolan’s hair?”
“Landscape design,” Fen says. “He’s making the entire foliage from scratch because we broke the 3D printer. He’s been at it since dawn, so go easy on him. The landscaping is a…complication.”
“Why is your face purple?” I can’t seem to take everything in. There’s just too much to look at.
“Two coats,” Fen says. “Provence Lavender. It’s for the front door, and I will not apologize for the choice.”
“Why is Hudson wearing reading glasses? In public.”
Hudson finds his aging eyes a weakness he can’t wrestle into submission.
“He’s refused to admit that he’s been prematurely presbyopic for three years,” Nolan says, finally putting down his tray. “Today, the doll furniture won.”
I stare at all three of them as if I’m meeting them for the first time. They look haggard—as though they went up against a tornado and the tornado said hold my fucking beer.
There’s movement to my left, and when I turn, Cole steps out from behind the larger of the two long tables.
He’s holding a graphite pencil, there’s a smudge of charcoal on his temple, and he has dark circles under his eyes.
My heart hurts a little at the sight of him.
This isn’t the version of Cole who’s hiding something but the Cole who’s working with his hands because his mind can’t calculate next steps yet. And he let all his brothers in to help him.
“Hey, Junie.” He’s subdued, reserved. I don’t like it at all.
“Hi.” My hand lifts to an awkward wave that’s so reminiscent of when I first showed up here that I want to slap myself.
“I…” Cole drags out the syllable, like a man choosing each word as he watches for landmines.
“Can I show you something? I mean, if you’ll come with me.
It’s…” He glances at my brother, who not-so-casually shoos him on.
“It’s not finished yet. But it’s far enough along that I can show you, and I’d rather show you imperfect than wait until I have it polished and pretend I had it under control all along. I—don’t. But I’m learning as I go.”
“Where?” I ask as Hudson drags Fenway through the open door.
“Papa’s fishing hole,” Cole says.
On his other side, Nolan’s nodding, silently encouraging me to take this chance, but his eyes tell me he’s on standby if I need him.
“Okay,” I say, and Cole’s entire face changes. He doesn’t smile per se, but his shoulders straighten and some of the exhaustion is replaced by…something else.
Papa’s fishing hole is a clearing at the back of The Haven’s property where the marsh opens to the inlet and the cordgrass goes gold in the late afternoon light. I’ve walked by here multiple times, but I’ve never ventured far into the overgrown grass driveway sheltered by an arch of trees.
We make our way deeper down the drive in silence. When the trees open up again, it’s to an old wooden dock that’s probably been there as long as Cole’s been alive.
The light hits the water at an angle that makes the surface look like it’s been hammered by hand. And unlike the rest of The Haven, there’s no one else here. Cole’s kept this private, untouched and unsullied by the community he created.
At the end of the dock, there’s a small folding table with a sheet draped over it.
Cole walks me toward it, directing me over a piece of wood that looks like it needs to be replaced, but he doesn’t touch me. His hand doesn’t find the small of my back, and he doesn’t perform any of the choreography we’ve learned about each other over the last couple of months.
I find I miss it more than I thought I would.
We’re standing shoulder to shoulder at the end of the dock. Mere inches separate us, but they feel like miles.
Cole removes the sheet.
It takes me a moment to process what I’m seeing.
Then the corner of my lips twitch without permission.
It’s a really rough version of a small house, similar to the ones he used to make at my table in Boston.
There’s a plywood foundation, balsa walls primed but not painted.
The roofline is sloped one way, and not the other.
It’s a Lowcountry detail Cole would never get wrong.
It shocks me how much I remember about this process.
You can tell the other guys helped because it’s kind of a mess and not the strict attention to detail Cole demands. This was built with love by all the guys who stand in my corner.
And the more details I take in, the more…personal it feels.
It’s the footprint of a house someone could live and be comfortable in even if the walls are dripping glue and the table wobbles with the waves beneath the dock.
There’s a porch facing the water, and a cutout where I hope a window will go. Along one wall is a long room with two desks set perpendicular to each other under a shared cork wall. The desks have crooked joints, and a good strong wind would probably knock them over, but I get the gist.
Two desks.
Light from two directions.
One office.
“What is this?” I finally ask.
“This,” he gestures toward the model. “Is us, in structure form.” He speaks so quietly I lean in to hear him. Then, he lays a roll of blueprints next to the model. “These are designs I’ve been working on for six years.”
Six. Years.
“I’ve been designing a house for the teenage version of you I knew. Every time I missed you, I worked on a new room. Every time the guys would mention you in a text, I’d perfect another corner. I was building a museum for the person I lost.”
At some point, my gaze shifted so I’m looking up at him and not out at the water.
“But then,” he clears his throat. “You made that video. And I understood who you’d become, and in real time, the dream home I was designing for you became…
wrong. I knew I didn’t have a lot of time, so I asked the guys for help.
We’ve been in that garage every hour Nana Mae hasn’t dragged us home to sleep.
We did our best, but it’s not perfect, and it’s not even close to finished. ”
He tugs on the back of his neck. “We kind of had to rush it over here when Marley told us you parked at the clubhouse.”
My gaze slides from him to the model. Everyone had a hand in this.
“It’s not for me,” I say, reading the rooms like my favorite book.