Renovation week started like a military occupation with better coffee.
By Monday morning, the east-side café branch and the river-road workshop had both ceased being “future plans” and become active public events. Vans lined the curbs. Contractors moved in and out under Thomas-approved logistics. Mara had color-coded delivery schedules. Sam Ross had already turned six moving parts into one coherent operating structure with the kind of calm efficiency that made normal people feel undereducated. Dean John had entered what the family now recognized as his most dangerous state:
productive irritation.
Which meant things got done.
Too quickly.
Too beautifully.
Too expensively.
And with a level of inevitability that made everyone else feel like they were just trying to keep up with the weather.
The old bakery on the east side had been stripped by noon on Monday. Dust covers came down. Floors got assessed. Counters vanished. New shelving arrived before anyone remembered ordering it. Nina stood in the middle of the gutted front room with a hard hat balanced badly on her head and whispered, “This feels illegal.”
“It probably is somewhere,” Tasha replied from the doorway, flipping through permit copies with suspicious satisfaction. “Not here, though. Not anymore.”
Across town, the river-road lot looked even worse in the best possible way.
Old lifts pulled out.
Rusty storage bins removed.
The front office cracked open to the studs.
Three new bays marked in clean tape lines across the concrete.
One lower level access point revealed behind what had once been a very depressing cinderblock wall.
Marco saw that and had to sit down on an upturned crate.
“No,” he whispered. “No, because that’s sexy.”
Eli, standing beside him with a contractor’s coffee and no emotional defenses left, nodded slowly. “That’s the most workshop thing you’ve ever said.”
“It has a lower secured storage level.”
“I know.”
“It has drainage.”
“I know.”
“It has usable side access.”
“I know.”
Marco put a hand over his heart. “I love him.”