Chapter 6
Lauren’s hands were already sticky with a mixture of citrus stripper, ancient paint, and sweat by the time the mid-morning sun had cleared the haze and found its way through the inn’s tall lobby windows.
She crouched at the foot of the grand staircase, coaxing the edge of her scraper under another brittle layer of cream—then gray—then, for a few inches, the original white beneath, before the tool caught and the curl snapped off.
At this rate, she’d need a new set of knuckles by lunchtime.
Above her, Evan worked three steps up, fitting a spindle into the freshly cleaned groove of the banister.
He didn’t need to mark the spacing; he just sighted down the line, pressed, and listened for the subtle click of wood seating into place.
With each spindle, he ran his thumb along the join, then leaned back to check for straightness.
If something was off, he’d just look at it until the answer came—no cursing, no muttering, just a patient recalibration, like a mechanic with all the time in the world.
Sawdust shimmered in the slanting light, settling on Lauren’s hair, her forearms, the toes of her sneakers.
The whole room smelled of sanded oak and sweet varnish, underscored by the lingering tang of old plaster and the faint, clean note of lake air leaking around the new windows.
She scraped, wiped, and scraped again, pausing every so often to stretch her hands or roll her shoulders, which had started to ache in a familiar, not entirely unpleasant way.
“Spindle,” Evan said, hand outstretched.
Lauren fished one from the cardboard box by her side, checking for nicks before passing it up. “You know you could just take the box,” she said, but he only grunted, which she’d learned meant “I prefer it this way.”
He worked in silence for a while, the rhythmic tap of the rubber mallet and the soft rasp of sanding blocks forming their own kind of background music. Eventually, he said, “Half of these needed re-cutting. Originals were a quarter-inch thinner.”
She found herself smiling. “They made up the difference with paint.”
Evan held up a spindle and twisted it, examining the grain. “And probably didn’t expect someone to care enough to do it right.”
Lauren set her scraper on the drop cloth and flexed her fingers, which were trembling slightly from effort. “There’s something satisfying about it. Like you’re—” She stopped, searching for a word that didn’t sound embarrassingly earnest. “Rescuing it. Or at least giving it a second chance.”
Evan didn’t look down, but his voice softened. “Could say the same for the inn.”
She wasn’t sure if he meant to pay her a compliment or simply state a fact, but she took it either way. “You always this philosophical before lunch?” she asked, wiping a bead of sweat from her brow with the back of her wrist.
He finished the spindle he was working on, then lowered himself to sit on the tread just above her, arms resting on his knees. “Only when I run out of shop talk.” He gestured to the gouged banister. “You’re doing that the hard way.”
“I’m doing it the only way I know how,” Lauren said, picking up the scraper again.
“Could speed things up with a heat gun.”
She shrugged. “I like seeing it happen slow. Plus, I already set the smoke alarm off once.” The memory still made her wince.
“Noted.” Evan wiped his palms on his jeans and reached for the next spindle.
They worked like that for another hour, punctuating the silence with the occasional comment about grain pattern, wood filler, or the merits of various sanding grits.
Sometimes she caught Evan watching her hands, the way her nails were chewed down and the polish half gone, but he never said anything about it.
Instead, he matched her pace: when she took a break, so did he.
When the box was nearly empty, Evan rested his arms on his knees again and said, “I did a whole interior like this once. Up north, right on the edge of the Porcupines.”
Lauren blinked, surprised to hear him offer something personal without prompting. “For work?”
“For family,” he said. “My wife—” He paused, then started again, “My late wife. Her grandparents built the place in the thirties. She wanted it restored to how she remembered it as a kid. No shortcuts, nothing ‘modern.’”
Lauren tried to picture it: long nights stripping floors, hands numb from shellac and solvent, maybe the smell of woodsmoke seeping into everything. “Did she help?”
“She was good at telling me when I missed a spot.” Evan’s voice had an undertone of amusement, but also something that made Lauren look up.
She waited for him to say more, but he only rotated the last spindle in his hands and focused on a knot in the wood, tracing it with his thumb. After a few moments, he said, “She didn’t live to see it finished.”
Lauren swallowed. “I’m sorry.”
He nodded, as if he’d already filed the sentiment away for later. “It’s a good house. Still standing. That’s what matters.”
They sat quietly for a bit, the only sound the clink of her scraper as she chipped at a stubborn patch near the base of the railing. Lauren considered saying something—anything—to change the subject, but nothing felt right.
Instead, she set her tool aside and stretched her legs out in front of her, crossing her ankles.
“Some days I think maybe there’s a future for me that doesn’t start and end with the word ‘divorce.’” She felt her face heat but kept her voice level.
“But then I see what’s left to fix here, and it’s like… what am I doing? Who am I kidding?”
Evan finally looked at her, not smiling exactly, but with an expression of dry amusement. “That’s a low bar, Henshaw.”
She barked a laugh, the sound catching her off guard, and was surprised to feel something close to relief in her chest.
“Maybe that’s all I need for now,” she said. “A low bar. One I can actually clear.”
He tilted his head, considering. “You’ll do more than clear it.” He said it simply, like he was stating a fact about the weather.
They went back to work. She handed him the last spindle, and he slid it into place with a gentle but decisive tap.
Together, they stepped back to look at the line of oak, clean and even, marching up toward the second-floor landing.
The banister, where Lauren had stripped it back to bare wood, glowed a soft honey-gold in the sun.
For the first time since she’d started, she saw the staircase not as a project or a problem to be solved, but as something quietly, undeniably beautiful.
She placed her palm against the smooth rail, feeling the warmth of the wood and the ghost of all the hands that had come before hers.
She looked up, following the curve of the banister to the landing above, and just stood there for a moment, letting herself imagine what it might look like when the work was finally done.
Behind her, Evan collected the drop cloths and stacked the empty boxes with a practiced efficiency that didn’t ask for thanks. When he was finished, he paused at the foot of the stairs. “Looks good,” he said softly. “You should be proud.”
Lauren nodded, not trusting herself to speak. For the first time in months, her mind wasn’t racing ahead to all the things that could go wrong. She let her hand rest on the railing a moment longer, then left the staircase, feeling lighter than she had in a very long time.
***
By late afternoon, the sawdust had settled and the light from the western windows flared golden on the banister’s fresh oak grain. Lauren was still in the foyer, down on her knees with a hand broom and dustpan, when the front door creaked open and the twins tumbled in, school bags in tow.
Olivia paused in the threshold, blinking like she’d stepped into the wrong house. Sam overshot her, then stopped dead two paces ahead, his mouth open just enough to reveal the missing bracket on his orthodontics.
Lauren straightened, feeling suddenly self-conscious in her old gym shirt and paint-spattered yoga pants. “Hey, guys. Watch your step—don’t track in any more grit, please.”
Neither twin moved.
Sam was first to recover, dropping his bag with a thud and giving the lobby a slow, 180-degree scan. His eyes snagged on the staircase and the clean run of new spindles. “Whoa.” Then, because he had an image to maintain, he added, “Still smells weird in here.”
Olivia set her bag down with more care, silent, and drifted toward the base of the stairs. She stopped, took out her sketchbook, and flipped quickly to a blank page. Then, instead of sitting, she crouched on her heels and angled the book, pencil already moving in quick, short strokes.
Lauren watched her daughter’s head tilt, a curtain of hair falling forward as she squinted at the curve of the rail. “You like it?” she asked, unable to keep the hope out of her voice.
Olivia didn’t look up. “That curve is perfect,” she said, just loud enough to register.
Lauren smiled, then glanced at Sam, who was poking the newel post with a careful finger, as if it might collapse under scrutiny.
Before she could make a joke about his skepticism, the porch door banged open and Evan appeared, a box of light fixture parts under one arm and his hair dusted with what looked like the inside of a vacuum bag.
He saw Sam and gave a nod. “Good timing. I need a set of hands out here.”
“Okay.” Sam shrugged, but Lauren could tell from the way he stuffed his hands into his hoodie pocket and jogged to catch up that he was, in fact, eager to help. She watched from inside as the two disappeared onto the porch.
On the staircase, Olivia drew without looking away from her subject, the tip of her tongue pressed to the corner of her mouth.
After a few minutes she stood, braced her foot on the second step, and kept going, her gaze now tracking the way the banister coiled upward. She flipped the page and started over.
Lauren didn’t want to interrupt, so she sat on the third step, using her knee as a makeshift shelf for the dustpan.
The house was so quiet that for the first time since she started coming here, she could hear the tick of the old regulator clock in the hallway.
She watched Olivia sketch, watched the rhythm of her pencil and the faint, satisfied exhale when a line came out just right.
“Do you want a snack?” Lauren ventured, softer than necessary.
Olivia shook her head, then stopped drawing just long enough to say, “In a bit.” She worked for another minute, then turned the sketchbook around and held it out for Lauren to see.
It was the staircase, rendered in clean lines and gentle shading, the banister’s sweep perfectly caught, the sunlight blocked in behind it with soft, smudged graphite.
Lauren stared at the drawing, at the place where Olivia had signed her initials in tiny script at the bottom corner, and felt a pinprick of something behind her eyes.
“This is beautiful,” she said, careful not to sound too breathless about it. “You’re really—this is amazing, O.”
Olivia’s cheeks colored. “It’s just a sketch.” But she didn’t take the book back, letting Lauren look as long as she wanted.
Outside, the sound of a drill started, followed by muffled conversation—Sam’s voice low and flat, Evan’s pitched just above it.
Lauren heard Sam say, “You sure that’s level?
” followed by Evan’s reply, “It’ll be level when you hold it steady.
” There was a pause, then a brief laugh from Sam that Lauren realized she hadn’t heard in weeks.
She set the sketchbook down beside her and listened. She felt, for the first time since buying the inn, that the air around her wasn’t buzzing with to-do lists and dread. There was just the slow, living quiet of a place in progress, and the sounds of her family starting to make it their own.
She closed her eyes for a second, letting the warmth from the afternoon light and the steady tick of the clock press into her skin. She breathed out slowly, and noticed, almost as a curiosity, that her shoulders had dropped and her jaw wasn’t clenched.
When she opened her eyes again, Olivia was back to sketching, her body curled on the landing, pencil moving in small, certain arcs.
Lauren picked up the broom, but she didn’t rush. She worked at the rhythm of the house—one careful sweep, one glance at her daughter, one ear cocked to the porch where her son was learning how to wire a light and, maybe, how to ask for help.
She was still smiling when the sun dropped below the sill and painted the hallway in gold.