“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.
