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“That sounds like Holly Creek made room for you.”

“It did.” I adjusted the strap on my bag. “I’ve spent eight years making sure nobody regrets it.”

Griffin didn’t say anything for half a block. “So when I showed up with a spreadsheet deciding which businesses were worth saving⁠—”

“You made the room feel temporary.” His expression changed. “I know that isn’t what you meant,” I said. “It is what I heard.”

The storage gate behind the community center was orange with rust. I worked it open with the key Owen had left for me at the municipal office, and the hinges groaned.

The portable stage platform leaned against the back wall under frayed tarps. Every December, the setup crew hauled it to Main Street and bolted it to the permanent concrete footings Frank’s father had poured in 1983. Griffin took one corner and I took the other. We pulled the tarps away and uncovered forty-two winters of pine and plywood.

The center beam had split.

A full break ran from the weight-bearing joist to the middle support. Water damage darkened the wood around the split. The crack had been growing for months, maybe years.

Griffin crouched and ran two fingers from the break to its end, reading the split like a failure line.

“The town’s setup crew wants that platform load-tested during the first week of December,” I said. “It has to be standing in three weeks.”

“You need a new center beam. The decking is salvageable, and most of the framing can be reused. These supports need to be replaced.” He was already photographing it from four angles. “Who built it?”

“Frank’s father. In 1983, after the original collapsed.”

“It’s good work. Whoever cut that lap joint knew what he was doing and did it by hand.” He stood. “Can Frank do the rebuild this fast?”

“No. He’s seventy-one, and his back has been out since October.”

“Then I’ll do it. I spent six summers on my father’s crews before I learned to hate his methods. I know my way around a saw and a level.” He didn’t brag, which helped. “It’ll take a week. Maybe ten days if the replacement beam isn’t in stock.”

Saying yes meant trusting him with the thing four decades of Holly Creek children had stood on to sing off-key.

“I need Frank’s approval on the design and materials.”

“Obviously.” He was already taping a note to the tarp so the next person wouldn’t lean anything against it. “I’ll document all of it so he can review the structural issues himself. If he wants to supervise, I’d rather have him than not.”

We walked every inch of Main Street after that. Griffin took photographs. I took notes. At ten, Frank Donnelly came out of the hardware store with an extension ladder and did not offer it to us.

“That gutter’s been wrong since the ice storm,” Griffin said.

“It has.”

“It’s pitched backward at the seam. Whoever hung it ran it off the fascia instead of a string line.”

Frank studied him, then handed over the ladder. In Frank’s language, that was roughly a marriage proposal. He stood beneath it while a man he had challenged in public less than a week earlier reset eleven feet of aluminum in the cold.

Halfway up, Griffin leaned sideways toward a bracket beyond his reach. I braced the ladder. “Come down and move it.”

“I have another inch.”

“You also have a skull. I assume you plan to keep it.”

Griffin climbed down. Frank moved the ladder six inches without looking at either of us. Before Griffin climbed again, he met my eyes. “Do you worry about all your site coordinators this much?”

“Only the ones who make gravity part of the work plan.”

It took forty minutes. They exchanged nine words. When the gutter was fixed, Frank went inside, returned with coffee, and handed it up the ladder without comment. I stood on the sidewalk clutching my clipboard while two grown men settled their differences with one repaired gutter and a cup of coffee.

By the time we reached the north end of the block, I was tired, Griffin had a mud stain on one knee, and a blister was forming across his right palm from gripping the ladder rail.