“Three. I watched you.”
“That third time was confirmation.”
“It was obsession.”
“Requirement.”
We’d had this conversation so many times the words had worn smooth. Mitch knew the dimensions by heart. I knew he knew. He knew I knew he knew.
The ritual was the point.
We stood in the framed kitchen and argued about counter space because arguing about counter space was easier than arguing about the thing we weren’t arguing about, which was the empty space where Sterling should have been, measuring things with that flat, assessing stare and saying less than necessary.
Mitch hooked his thumbs deeper into his belt loops. “Sterling’s going to have opinions about the counter space.”
“Sterling’s opinions about the counter space are not load-bearing.”
The grin landed. Full wattage. The kind that said Mitch Pruitt had been waiting for that exact sentence and was extremely pleased with both of us for arriving at it on schedule. He didn’t argue. He just stood there grinning at the framed wall like the wall had done something clever.
We reached the nursery door frame last. It was just studs and a rough opening, no walls yet, just air and possibility contained by two-by-fours. Mitch went quiet. Completely quiet, which from Mitch meant something significant had crossed the event horizon of his attention and was currently being processed with the seriousness it deserved.
We stood side by side for a long beat, both of us looking into the empty space where warm yellow would eventually live. The morning light came through the studs in thin gold lines, painting stripes across the plywood floor, and I could already see it. The cribs. The rocker by the window. The light that warm yellow walls would hold at three in the afternoon, the kind that made everything feel like it had always been there.
“Warm yellow,” I said.
“Not the sharp kind,” Mitch said.
“Obviously not the sharp kind.”
Another beat. The nail guns popped overhead, rhythmic and distant, and a crow called from somewhere beyond the ridge. The sound carried across the half-built house and died there, irrelevant to the two men standing in a door frame discussing paint.
Mitch’s shoulder pressed warm against mine. “Sterling’s going to walk in here and make a face.”
“Sterling is going to walk in here and feel something enormous and then immediately pretend he didn’t.”
“Same thing.”
“Basically.”
The can of warm yellow paint was already sitting in the bunkhouse. I’d bought it three weeks ago. Just one can, the test shade, because buying the whole supply felt like counting eggs before they’d even laid the chicken, and I had limits.
The can sat on the shelf above the washing machine where Sterling’s socks used to live, and every time I walked past it, I thought about the moment he’d walk through the door and see it and say nothing, because Sterling Callahan said nothing with more eloquence than most people managed with words.
I ran my hand along one of the rough studs in the nursery door frame. The wood was still green, still carrying the sap smell, and it left a faint resin tack on my palm that I didn’t wipe off.
From where we stood, I could see the east-facing window rough opening in what would be Sterling’s office. Just a rectangle of sky framed by two-by-six, but I’d specified the placement myself—south corner, angled to catch the first light, wide enough for a man to sit beside with a mug of coffee and a classified document and the expression he wore when he was pretending not to enjoy the morning.
I’d told the crew where to put it without explaining why.
Nobody had asked.
Mitch followed my gaze. His eyes landed on the window, held there for a beat, and then he looked at me with that expression he got when he’d figured something out and was deciding whether to be smug about it.
“You’re building him a brooding station,” he said.
“It’s an office.”
“With a view specifically calibrated for brooding.”
