Page 89 of Grumpy Lumberjack’s Secret

“We kept the layout exactly the same,” Josh continued. “Same rooms. Same sizes. But we added a few things. Deadbolt on every door. Security system. Motion lights. The windows are reinforced. Nobody is breaking through those again.”

I looked at the cabin. At every log, every joint, every nail that my crew had driven into the wood on their own time, with their own hands, for me. For Chloe. For Emma. Men who worked hard all day and then came here and worked harder because their boss’s home had been destroyed and they decided, without being asked, that they were going to fix it.

“The inside is done too,” Josh said. “Furnished. Dollie handled that. She said you would pick the wrong couch so she did not ask.”

I walked to the porch. Put my hand on the railing. The wood was smooth under my palm, sanded and sealed, the grain tight and even. Quality work. The kind of work I demanded at the mill and had apparently taught well enough that my crew could reproduce it without me standing over them.

I opened the front door. The hinges were silent. New hardware. I stepped inside and the smell hit me first, fresh wood and paint and the faint trace of cleaner, and then the sight of it. The living room, new furniture, a couch that was deep and comfortable and the right color, Dollie’s choice and a good one. The kitchen, new cabinets, new counters, the appliances clean and functional. Emma’s room, painted a soft purple with a new bed and a shelf for her dinosaurs. My room, our room, a bigger bed than the one I had before, new sheets, new curtains.

And above the fireplace, where Jonathan’s men had carved their message into the wood, there was nothing. Clean, smooth, unmarked wood. The wall rebuilt completely, every trace of the threat erased, replaced with the work of men who had chosen to cover hatred with craftsmanship.

Josh was in the doorway behind me.

“I cannot pay them enough for this,” I said. My voice was rough. Rougher than it should have been. I cleared my throat and it did not help.

“They do not want payment. They want you to bring your family home.”

I stood in the middle of my rebuilt cabin and looked at the walls and the floors and the windows and felt something I had not felt in a very long time. Not since before the war. Not since before Jimmy. A fullness. A belonging. The knowledge that the world, despite everything it had taken from me, had also given me this. A crew who showed up. A best friend who organized. A home that had been broken and rebuilt by the hands of people who cared.

I walked through the rooms again. Slower this time. Running my hand along the walls the way you run your hand along something you built, checking the joints, feeling the grain, confirming that the thing is real and solid and will hold. Emma’s room smelled like fresh paint. The purple was the right shade, soft and warm, and the shelf for her dinosaurs had been built into the wall at exactly the right height for a six-year-old to reach without a stool. Somebody had thought about that. Somebody had measured the height of my daughter’s arm and built accordingly, and the thought of one of my crew members, some big, rough-handed man in work boots, crouching down to measure where a little girl’s dinosaurs should go, hit me in a way I did not expect.

The bathroom had been updated. New tiles. New fixtures. The kind of small improvements that went beyond repair and into care. In the kitchen, I opened every cabinet. Checked every drawer. The plates were new. The silverware was new. Even the dish towels, folded and stacked, were new, and I suspected Dollie’s hand in that because Dollie understood that a home was not made of walls and roofs. It was made of the small things. The towels and the plates and the curtains and the way a door sounded when it closed, solid and final, the sound of something that was built to keep the world out and the people inside safe.

I pulled out my phone and called Chloe.

She answered on the second ring. “Are you hurt? What happened? Is everything okay?”

“Everything is fine.”

“Then why are you calling? You never call from the mill.”

“Pack the bags,” I said. “We are going home.”

“What do you mean home? We are home. Well, Josh’s parents’ house, but…”

“Our home, Chloe. The cabin. It has been rebuilt.”

The silence on the other end lasted three seconds. Then four. Then five. And then a sound that I recognized because I had been hearing it more and more in the weeks since she came back, the sound of Chloe Matthews crying because something good had happened and she was not yet used to good things happening.

“I will be there in twenty minutes,” she said.

“Drive safe.”

“I will be there in fifteen minutes.”

I hung up. Looked at Josh. He was leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed, watching me with the quiet patience of a man who had all the time in the world and no intention of rushing whatever was happening on my face.

My eyes burned. The kind of burning that I had not felt since the day they told me about Jimmy. The kind that comes from somewhere deep and rises without permission and does not care that you are a grown man standing in a cabin you did not build.

“Thank you,” I said. My voice cracked on the second word. I cleared my throat but it did not help. “Josh. Thank you.”

He stared at me. Then his eyes went wide. Then the corner of his mouth twitched. Then the twitch became a grin and the grin became a smile and the smile became the most amused expression I had ever seen on a man who usually kept his face as neutral as a poker player.

“Sawyer Cole,” Josh said. “Are you crying?”

“I am not crying.”

“Your eyes are red.”