Page 5 of Gracie Harris Is Under Construction

A sign with beautiful script writing greets me at the entrance.Books: your reward for having an attention span.I’m a sucker for clever signs anywhere, and Pageturner is very good at them.

Coffee in hand, perched by the front window, I finally let myself take in that this is a big day. June 3. It’s the first official day of my sabbatical from work. For the last year, I have somehow pushed through a full-time job, an unexpectedly popular biweekly column forThe New York Times, drafting my memoir, and—oh yeah—somehow kept my and the kids’ lives on track despite losing the person we loved most in the world.

I wasn’t sure Carol, my real-life boss, would even agree to let me take a three-month sabbatical after my month of bereavement leave a year ago. I’m the lead marketing manager for a state tourismmagazine, and the staff is small. Every person matters. Marketing doesn’t fully capture what my three-person team does—we also run social media, email promotion, and special events. All on a shoestring budget and lots of desk lunches.

Carol is nothing if not a consummate saleswoman, and having a fame-adjacent writer on staff (but, ironically, not writing for the magazine) became something she could brag about. Also, she definitely wants a reason to nepo her freshly graduated niece onto the staff as a paid intern. Win-win.

What Carol doesn’t know but probably intuits is that today starts my trial run to see if I can just be a writer. I think she’s onto me, though, because yesterday she offered to pay me freelance for an essay about my “summer vacation in the great state of NC,” as she called it. When she said the word “vacation,” my leg twitch briefly acted up.

I can see the headline of my article now. “Lonely in the Mountains of NC: The Top Ten Hikes for Depressed Widows.” Maybe I can include some tips for finding bears and offering yourself as a sacrifice.

Most people take a sabbatical to get away from work, but it feels like I’m diving headfirst into more work than I’ve ever had before—including the final push to get my memoir out the door for editing. Nothing about writing tens of thousands of words for my unfinished memoir sounds like a vacation. But if the full manuscript draft is not done by mid-August, we will not hit our aggressive printing deadlines, and if that happens, a late-spring release for next year is out of the question.

I’m deep in thought when a short, middle-aged woman quietly approaches me.

“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to bother you, but are you Gracie Harris, the writer?”

I nod and smile, aware that this conversation is about to be equal parts endearing and overwhelming. This isn’t my first rodeo.

“I just wanted to come say hi. My name is Dee. I live in town, and I kept hoping I’d run into you one day. I follow you on social media and I just love your writing. It got me through a really dark time when my brother died last year a few months after your husband. It’s been so hard, but you’ve helped so much.”

I relay my usual sentiments—that I’m humbled to be a part of her journey, that hopefully she’s realized how strong she is, and that grief really is a son of a bitch. Everyone always laughs at that last part.

A year ago, I would have never believed you if you told me that I would be comfortable (and even welcoming) with strangers approaching me in coffee shops and grocery stores and doctors’ offices. Because of the first essay, people usually don’t try to hug me, but I often initiate or at least shake their hands after a little conversation.

For the first few months after the regular column started, I was able to remain completely anonymous—just a random sad widow with a byline that showed up in the Thursday Styles section ofThe New York Timestwice a month. Sometime around Thanksgiving, things shifted in a big way. All it took was a few more essays going viral and the subsequent social media followers hopping on board for things to change. My feed was full of pictures of me, Ben, and the kids. For a decade, my Instagram was just me sharing silly and sweet family photos with a hundred people, but once readers startedto follow me, a shift occurred. They could put real faces to the sad story. I don’t post the kids anymore to help with their privacy, and I’ve hidden the old family posts, but my face is now easy to find.

Here in town, people sometimes look at me in public with that strange side-eye that says,I think I know you, but I don’t know how, and they plaster on a friendly smile, wave, and walk away. Most people who do approach me are like Dee, and over time, I’ve come to appreciate them. On a few occasions when I’ve felt particularly tender, I’ve invited the person to join me for coffee and to talk a bit more about what we’re both going through. The weird thing about grief is that it’s often easier to open up to strangers. Grief is reflected back and forth, but it’s not personal. They don’t know Ben, and I don’t know their loved one. It’s the grief alone that binds us.

When Dee politely excuses herself after a minute, I snap myself back into reality and remember that today is also a big day because there is something else I need to do. I can no longer put off the task that’s been at the top of my list for a month: call James.

James is my real estate agent. Well, not my agent here at home, but the one Ben and I used to buy our vacation house in Canopy, a cozy mountain town four hours west. The place wherewewere supposed to spend our summers while the kids attended sleepaway camp. The place wherewewould celebrate Thanksgiving and maybe even Christmas some years. Where our future grandkids would come to spend weeks withus. It’s not that anymore.

It’s just a stupid house with a million problems that I need help with.

Rather than call James, though, I open my laptop and email him instead. Chicken.

Hi James,

Thanks again for keeping an eye on things over the past year. I’ve decided to keep the house, at least for this summer. I need time to figure out what to do in the long-term.

As you know, the house is what can be generously described as a hot mess, and I would rather spontaneously combust than attempt a single DIY project. It’s livable, but barely. I’ve got a list of things I want done, but of course, I have no connections. Do you have any GC recommendations? People you trust? You know, just someone who can do electrical, plumbing, drywall, and literally every type of general repair.

Gracie

P.S. At least it has Wi-Fi!

Chapter 3

Canopy is a classic mountainretreat that swells every summer with visitors and families dropping their kids off at sleepaway camps. The locals blend with seasonal visitors and backpackers alike, creating an atmosphere that’s vibrant, jovial, and intensely charming. It instantly feels like home.

That’s how Ben and I discovered Canopy several years ago—dropping Ava off at her first one-week introductory camp session after she finished first grade. I was a camp kid, but Ben was not, and he was too nervous to leave the area, so we booked a house a few blocks from downtown. By the third day, we had both fallen in love and decided that we would buy a house for the family there as soon as we could afford it. It took some time, but we made that dream a reality.

We saw the house on Wilson Street for the first time on a rainy February afternoon last year. It was the first of three houses we toured with James that day and the one that turned into the obvious choice.

Ben wanted a house close to downtown. He wanted to be ableto walk a few blocks and grab coffee, lunch, or a new book. Ever the social butterfly, he felt it was crucial to have easy access to other living, breathing people he could strike up conversations with. I was much more interested in the idea of multiple acres of privacy a little farther away from town. Something that would offer complete quiet and relaxation in the mountain air—something different from what we already had at home.

Like so much else in our married life, the house on Wilson was full of willing compromise. Ben wanted to go for a modern, new home on a lot nearby (that they had torn down a perfectly adorable ranch house to build). I wanted the secluded old farmhouse with tons of character five miles east.

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