Page 16 of Gracie Harris Is Under Construction

“Cool. No problem on the interviews,” he says, and then pauses. “The walls in this house are solid, but I’m still gonna be pretty noisy with some of the work. I don’t want to get a fame-adjacent writer out of her creative flow. Should we have a bat signal or something you can throw up if I’m annoying the hell out of you?”

If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he was now obviously flirting with me. Remembering terms that I just used, likecreative flow, and being concerned about my writing process? I make a note that this behavior is also very attractive to me. I recover quickly and play it cool.

“No need to worry,” I explain. “I grew up in a busy house and I’m a mom to two kids. I can block out any and all noise, but I appreciate you asking.”

He starts digging around in his back pocket and pulls out the little gold key to the front door. Just as he’s about to hand it over, I wave him off.

“It’ll be convenient for you to have that. If I’m working from The Drip, you’ll be able to come right in and I’ll see your truck in the driveway when I get back, so I won’t have to worry when the door is unlocked.”

He slips it back into his pocket and a look crosses his face that I can’t quite put my finger on. I suspect it has something to do with me expressing stranger-danger concerns to his brother a week ago (which James surely told him about) and now hearing me tell him less than two hours after we’ve met that he can keep a key to my house.

“Most days I’ll get here around nine if that’s okay with you,” he says.

“Totally fine. I’m an early riser. The kids used to wake us up so early when they were young, and my body never really adjusted back,” I respond. “Honestly, I’ll be up and around by seven most days. Don’t be shy.”

“Got it,” he says as we walk toward the door.

We exchange the typical pleasantries that new acquaintances share when saying a first goodbye. I stand in the doorway just long enough to do a stiff, unnatural wave when he turns to get into his truck. Then I close the door and snap back into mom life.

“Benji, Ava,” I call up the stairs. “Time to go explore town for a bit and grab an early dinner before camp tomorrow!”

In the five minutes it takes to wrap up their tablet games, I fire off a note to the group text. They were all convinced James was setting me up to be the subject of a true-crime podcast with some story about an imaginary brother.

Good news—the contractor is REAL and is going to work out. Definitely not a serial killer. With all due respect to James, he is not the cuter brother. Lots of work from the coffee shop for me! NO DISTRACTIONS. Finished memoir, here I come!

Chapter 8

I knew this morning wouldbe hard, but for some reason I foolishly thought that the excitement of spending the summer writing and just havingme timewould make it all a little easier to bear. How wrong of me.

Instead, it’s 5:30 a.m., and I’ve woken up with tears already rolling down my face just thinking about leaving the kids in a few hours. My subconscious got so sad that it made me crywhile I slept. On the upside, at least my tear ducts are fully functional again. I can feel the stress building in my body, too, because the leg twitch that’s been bothering me since theMaisy Showappearance is on the brink of reemerging.

The scared mom in me wants to run into their rooms and yell,Camp is canceled!but I know they need this summer just as much as I need mine. They missed camp last year because of Ben; they can’t miss it this year because of me.

A few weeks ago, Ava came into my room after lights out and asked if she could talk. As any parent of a twelve-year-old can tell you, the conversations that follow “Can we talk about something?”vary wildly from hilarious to heartfelt to horrifying. Crushes, broken hearts, girl drama, grief, test jitters, SEX. I didn’t know where this one was going to land.

“The first thing I want to say,” she started, “is that I really love and miss Dad. So much.”

I told her, of course, that we all do.

“The thing is, I’m tired of being the sad girl that everyone pities because her dad died,” she said bluntly. I could tell that she’d been working herself up to the conversation for some time. One thing she and I have in common is our need to rehearse conversations in our head before we have them out loud.

“Camp is my first opportunity to just be me again,” she added. “I don’t want the sad faces and people checking on me constantly. I want to be able to talk about stupid, fun stuff with my friends. I want people to be able to complain about their parents without suddenly looking at me and feeling bad because I don’t have half of mine anymore.”

“I get that,” I assured her. “Trust me—I understand more than most.”

She sat straight up and gave me her serious face. “What I would like you to do is call the camp and ask them not to bring it up. And definitely not to pull me into the nurse’s hut for an ‘emotional check-in’ every few days. Ask them to just let me benormal.”

Her entire life, I had thought of Ava as Ben’s mini, but here she was admitting to the same internal dialogue that I’d been having for months. The Maisy interview may have tipped the scales, butthisis the thing that kept me from selling the house, kept this wild plan on track to go on sabbatical and to live in Canopy for the entiresummer. The ability to befree. To be me. To not be the woman with the dead husband’s ashes on her bookshelf. To go into a damn grocery store and not run into someone who says, “Oh, sweetie, how are you doing…really?”

I looked forward to the anonymity that Canopy would give me. Sure, I expect to run into readers and others who know about my situation, but it’s fundamentally different.

The first time I went on a short work trip to Charlotte four months after Ben died, I sat at the hotel bar to have a drink after a busy day of meetings. I made small talk with a sweet old couple sitting on the stools nearby. We covered the normal topics: what we were doing in town, where our favorite dinner spots were, and what future travel plans we had. Then the question that always comes along eventually with sweet old couples on a trip together: “What about you, Gracie—are you married?”

I took a breath and answered, “No. I’m a widow.”

The wife said, “Oh, what a shame. You’re so young, though; I’m sure you’ll find love again.” And then, the next thought came out: “Gracie, you seem like a woman who would know about the new exhibit at the Mint Museum. Am I right about that?”

They didn’t pry, which I appreciated, but what also struck me was how dispassionate the response had been…in agood way.There was no emotion tied to it, unlike every single person I ran into in Chapel Hill. Being loved and appreciated in my adopted hometown is great, but it can also be stifling. At that moment, with the Fahertys from Richmond, Virginia, I felt free to be me for the first time since Ben died.

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