“How bad is it?” She nodded toward the courtyard.
“Not bad. Branches, mostly. Lattice came off the gazebo. One of the pavers cracked.” He gestured with the mug. “Nothing structural. We got lucky.”
“Need help?”
The question surprised him. She saw it in the way his expression changed. He’d expected the cold shoulder or a fight. Not this.
“I’ve got an extra pair of gloves in the wheelbarrow,” he said.
She found them tucked under a coil of rope. Brown leather work gloves, too big for her hands. She pulled them on anyway and picked up a fallen branch from the pathway.
They worked without talking. For the first few minutes it was awkward. She was too aware of the space between them, where he moved, and whether he was watching her. She kept her eyes on the ground and focused on the simple mechanics of carrying and stacking. Branches went in the wheelbarrow. Palm fronds went in a pile near the garden shed. Smaller debris she gathered by hand, filling a bucket with chunks of bark and scattered leaves.
After a while, the self-consciousness faded. The work settled into a rhythm. She cleared the pathway between Captain’s Watch and Sea Glass while Clint hauled the wheelbarrow to the dumpster and came back empty. They moved around each other without bumping or coordinating.
She caught herself noticing things. He tested each fence post with his hand before moving on, checking for looseness. He paused at every cottage to scan the roofline, the windows, and the foundation. He wasn’t just cleaning up. He was taking inventory of the whole property, cottage by cottage, making sure nothing was compromised.
He cared. That much was obvious. It had always been obvious. He cared about this place the way she used to care about a frame. Completely and obsessively, down to the details no one else would notice.
She dragged a heavy sea grape branch to the pile and wiped her forehead with the back of her glove. The sun was fully up now, burning through the post-storm haze, and the air smelled like wet earth and cut wood.
Clint wheeled another load away. When he came back, he picked up one end of the fallen lattice section and looked at her. She grabbed the other end without being asked. They carried it to the garden shed and leaned it against the wall.
“I can reattach that this afternoon,” he said. “Just needs new screws.”
“The gazebo looks okay otherwise.”
“It’s solid. I rebuilt the frame two years ago.” He said this without pride. Just a fact about a thing he’d done.
They kept working. The courtyard slowly emerged from under the debris, the stone pathways reappearing, the fire pit cleared. She raked sand off the pavers while Clint bundled the last of the branches with twine. The bucket she’d filled sat by the garden shed, and the wheelbarrow was parked beside it, empty now.
When there was nothing left to pick up, they stood near the memorial bench in the cleaned courtyard. Melissa peeled off the work gloves and flexed her fingers. Her palms were red and damp.
Clint wiped his forehead with his forearm. He looked at the courtyard, then at her, then away. He shifted his weight.
“I shouldn’t have said what I said.” The words came out rough, like he’d rehearsed them but they still didn’t sit right in his mouth. “Last night. During the storm. It wasn’t my place.”
She’d prepared for this moment without knowing she was preparing. All morning, while they worked in silence, some part of her had been turning his words over, testing them against her life here. The lighthouse at dawn and the locked-down portfolio. The polite distance she kept from everyone.
“You weren’t completely wrong,” she said.
He looked at her. The guarded expression cracked open just enough for her to see real surprise underneath.
“I am hiding.” She cleared her throat. “I’m just… I don’t know how to stop.”
She waited for him to push. To offer advice or some blunt assessment of what she should do about it. Everyone else had. Emily, gently. Winnie, sideways. Even Cassidy, once, over drinks.
He didn’t rush in. He stood there with his dirty hands at his sides and looked at her for a few moments. “I get that,” he said.
She felt the knot inside her loosen. Just a fraction, just enough that she could take a full breath for the first time all morning.
“For years now, I’ve been introducing myself to people as someone who photographs architecture. Like that’s who I actually am.”
“Is it?”
“No.” She almost laughed. “It’s who I’m pretending to be because the real version did something she can’t take back.”
He was quiet for a moment. A mockingbird started up somewhere in the sea grape hedge.
