Total pages in book: 116
Estimated words: 112249 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 561(@200wpm)___ 449(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112249 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 561(@200wpm)___ 449(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
“Are you okay?” Gracen asked him.
Nader shook his head, but she could see his unsteadiness clearly. “I don’t know.”
He could have been answering Gracen’s question. Or Delaney’s. Chances were, she thought, while watching the two fire trucks push back against the flames, it might have been his way of answering both.
Delaney grabbed Gracen and pulled her close when the windows of the top apartment above the pizza joint blew out.
“Did everybody get out?” Gracen dared to ask.
Nader couldn’t tear his gaze away from the fire. “I really don’t know.”
Chapter 15
June gave way for July the same way it always did in the valley town with beautiful days and hot nights. More people walked on the boardwalk in the mornings and evenings. The water saw far more activity from boaters from up and down river. Prom and graduation week kept the Haus and its owners busier than any other time of the year, but nobody complained.
With back-to-back appointments and wedding schedules being added to their bookings, it didn’t look like summer planned to let up where work was concerned. Gracen was grateful for the non-stop pace—except for her Tuesdays and Sundays spent with Mimi at the manor, no exceptions—because it kept her mind off thinking about things that were out of her control.
“Weird, huh?” Delaney asked, slipping in beside Gracen at the Haus’s front windows.
She hadn’t even noticed her friend’s approach until Delaney spoke. Not even gripping the broom she’d been using to sweep the entrance tighter could help Gracen shake off the way she’d zoned out as the sky darkened outside.
“What’s weird?” she asked Delaney.
Her friend nodded at the view provided by the windows, but her gaze was on something across the river. “Checkered’s. It’s still weird to look across and see ... well, that.”
The hole in the backdrop of the other side of town couldn’t be missed. For the first few days the hole had been black, charred, and still smoldering. Delaney even asked if they could close the Haus that first Monday and Tuesday just because the three women constantly found themselves at the front windows staring across the river at what used to be.
More than a few times over the last month, Gracen watched as people rolled through town and slowed down to survey the damage to the familiar pizza joint. For most, the place had been standing longer than they were alive so to see it gone—entirely—was enough to make people pay attention.
Gracen and Delaney ate supper at their kitchen table together nightly while the machines came in next door to pull down what remained standing of the business and its apartments. The two barely exchanged a few words as the public safety hazard, deemed as much by the powers that be in town, crumbled before being hauled away by dump trucks.
Not even the garage where she spent that first night laughing and talking so easily with Malachi had survived the blaze. All that remained was the lot of land where the building once stood on the street over from their house. Two weeks after the crew came in to demolish and remove the remnants of the blaze, another team from a fencing company upriver spent the day installing a chain link fence around the property line.
Apparently, the owner donated the land to the town. There’d been too much damage, and the insurance payout was better kept in their pocket than bothering with a rebuild of the old structure, according to the owners. Delaney had a chance to speak with the man’s daughter when she came in for a fill on her color the week after the fateful fire—it didn’t seem like Checkered & Cheese would be back.
“What do you think they’re going to use it for?” Gracen asked.
Delaney shrugged under her loose summer dress—her favorite attire, but only good during the warmer months. “Maybe a community garden?”
Gracen scoffed at that. “What? Who did you hear that from, now?”
That was news to her. Even the local paper had no inkling about the future use of Checkered’s old lot according to their coverage of the fire. The Valley Tribune was also the first place to confirm what everybody had witnessed the night when Checkereds burned.
It was an arson.
Nothing about the fire was accidental.
Delaney grinned wider while Gracen waited for her to squeal on the source of her gossip. “No one told me, but that’s what I’d use it for.”
Of course.
She wasn’t surprised.
“And knowing the neighbors and community,” Gracen said, “you’d probably be the only one over in it doing all the weed pulling and picking, too.”
“I think I could get more than just me involved.”
Oh, probably.
“A community garden wouldn’t be so bad,” Gracen told Delaney.
It just wasn’t her thing, personally. Gracen might find a lot of peace and enjoyment in the outdoors, but not necessarily when her fingernails were caked in dirt. Mimi had kept a small garden of tomatoes, radish, and carrots—usually with some string beans thrown in for good measure, too—every summer, but she never could convince Gracen to do more than pick fresh veggies off the vines.