Page 19

Nora leaned closer, her face near mine as she studied the faded markings. “Expansion joints. Reinforced foundations. They planned for growth.”

“More than that.” I pulled another blueprint, then another. “The buildings were designed to work together. The party walls shared loads, and service corridors linked the rear basements. The whole block worked as one.”

That explained why Nora’s footing could damage Pearl’s wall.

“I didn’t know this existed.” The defensive edge had gone out of her voice. “Frank talks about his grandfather’s craftsmanship. He’s never mentioned that the whole block was designed together.”

“He might not know. These have been down here for decades.” Nora held the corners flat while I photographed each sheet from directly above, then took close-ups of the handwritten notes and load paths. I checked every image for glare and legibility before moving to the next plan. The originals would stay in the archive. The photographs would come with me. “It changes the approach. If the infrastructure is already integrated, we can update the shared systems instead of rebuilding one building at a time.”

“And the floor inside my shop?”

I made myself say it straight. “The west footing still needs repair, but this plan shows the floor system transferring part of its load through the party wall into Sweet Provisions. I may be able to shore that portion from Pearl’s basement instead of opening as much of your floor.”

“Part?”

“Part. Not all. I’m not going to stand in a basement and promise you an estimate I don’t have.”

She sat back on her heels. “You sound excited,” she said.

“I am excited.” I looked up and found her watching me instead of the drawings. “They understood something I’ve been saying badly since I arrived. The block works because the buildings support one another.”

“And you see that as support for your plans.”

“I see proof that old buildings can change without losing what they are. The founders designed this block to adapt, and later renovations buried the connections.” I gestured at the paper around us. “Preservation was never supposed to mean paralysis. We forgot how the block was built to change.”

Nora didn’t answer right away. The bulbs buzzed overhead.

“My father used to say that seeing the past clearly was the only way to build the future honestly.” She touched the edge of the oldest sheet, tracing the handwritten notations. “He was wrong about most things, but he might have been right about that.”

“What happened with your father?”

It was none of my business. I asked anyway.

Her hand stilled on the document. “When my engagement ended, my father sided with Thomas. Thomas’s father belonged to the same club, and apparently that mattered more than I did.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. Holly Creek became my family after mine turned me away.” She pulled her hand back. “People here mean it when they show up. That was new for me.”

I wanted to tell her about the Christmas my father spent on the phone with someone in Fresno. I stayed quiet. She’d just trusted me with something true. Answering with my own pain would turn it into a trade. “I’m sorry,” I said again. It was the worst phrase in the language, and the only one that wasn’t about me.

She sat back on her heels and studied me in silence. Some of the tension left her face.

Graphite and dust smudged the side of her hand, from holding the corner down. We’d been kneeling on a stone floor for an hour and a half and neither of us had suggested standing up.

A strand of hair had fallen across her cheek. I wanted to tuck it behind her ear, cup the back of her neck, and find out whether she would kiss me back. Instead, I asked about her knees.

“Your knees have to be killing you,” I said.

“They are.”

Neither of us moved. Overhead the bulbs buzzed, and somewhere upstairs a door shut, and I thought about how easy it would be to put my thumb on the edge of that smudge.

Owen’s text lit up my phone on the crate beside us.

Owen

Festival committee, six o’clock.