Page 36 of At First Spark
Her eyes stay on the building, her face angled just enough that I catch the shift in it when she says his name. It isn’t softness exactly. It’s deeper than that. Grief worn smooth at the edges from repetition but no less heavy for it.
“He talked about converting it into a private cottage,” she says. “One stand-alone room for couples or long stays. Private porch. Garden path. Original beams exposed if we could save them.”
She sayswelike the plan still lives in the present tense. Maybe for her, it does.
I look at the building again and try to imagine it the way she’s describing it. Not wrecked. Not open to the sky. Whole. Intentional. Wanted. It isn’t hard. And that bothers me more than it should.
“Come on,” I say.
Her gaze shifts. “Where?”
“Front porch. We’ll wait there until the marshal gets here.”
“We?”
I hear the challenge in the single word and decide not to take the bait.
“You think I drove out here to leave you standing in the yard by yourself?”
“That would’ve been nice.”
“No, it wouldn’t have.”
She gives me a look and heads toward the porch anyway.
Rook trots ahead, his bent tail moving in an uncertain half-sway as he tests the boards one paw at a time. I follow a step behind her, close enough to catch her if she hits a weak spot, far enough that it doesn’t feel like crowding.
The porch holds.
Barely.
There’s damage here too—soft boards near the far railing, one section dipped lower than the rest, old stains darkening the wood around the base of the columns. I clock it all in the same sweep.
Lark unlocks the front door and pushes it open.
The smell inside is different in daylight too. Not better. Just clearer. Mildew. Old rot. Cleaners she was already using. Smoke from the fire rides in over everything else.
She steps into the foyer and stops and I do the same right behind her.
Sunlight cuts through the dirty front windows, turning dust visible in the air. It catches on the worn banister of the staircase, the torn wallpaper, the contractor bag near the wall she must have filled yesterday. The place looks like it’s halfway between ruin and resurrection, too broken to ignore but not beyond saving.
It makes sense, suddenly, that her father wanted it. It also makes sense why she’d fight for it with a garden hose and bad judgment.
Lark looks over her shoulder at me. “I know what you’re thinking.”
“I doubt that.”
“You think it’s too much.”
I glance past her into the parlor, where old water stains bloom on the ceiling like maps of some country nobody would choose to visit.
“I think it needs work.”
“That’s diplomatic.”
“It’s accurate.”
She turns fully now, one hand still on the edge of the door. “Most people walk into places like this and only see what’s wrong.”
