Chapter 5: Mending Fences

The morning after the storm, Cal stood in his backyard with his hands on his hips, staring at the massive oak branch that had effectively made him and Lena unwilling partners in property repair. The tree service had quoted him seven hundred dollars just for removal, and that was before they even started talking about fence reconstruction.

He'd barely slept, his mind churning over the fact that he'd agreed to take on Lena's shelving project. Just business, he'd told himself repeatedly, but the lie sat heavy in his chest. Nothing with Lena had ever been just business, just simple, just easy.

The sound of her back door closing made him turn. She emerged wearing gardening gloves and old jeans, her hair pulled back in a practical ponytail. She looked younger like this, more like the girl who used to help him build forts in these same woods.

"Morning," she called out, her voice cautiously neutral. "I got three quotes on tree removal. The lowest is Peterson's Tree Service at six-fifty."

"I already called them. Seven hundred." Cal pulled out his phone to show her the estimate. "Split down the middle, that's three-fifty each."

"That works." She approached the fallen branch, running her hand along its bark. "What about the fence?"

And there it was—the question that had kept him awake most of the night. The fence between their properties had been a blessing and a curse. High enough to provide privacy, sturdy enough to create clear boundaries. With it gone, he could see directly into her kitchen window, could watch her morning routine if he wanted to torture himself.

Which he absolutely did not want to do.

"I was thinking six feet," he said, pulling out the measuring tape from his tool belt. "Solid privacy panels. Cedar, maybe pine if you want to keep costs down."

"Six feet?" Lena's eyebrows rose. "That seems a bit... fortress-like."

"It's standard for property lines."

"The old fence was only four feet."

"The old fence was falling apart." Cal stretched the tape measure along the damaged section, not meeting her eyes. "Six feet provides better privacy."

"Privacy from what, exactly?" There was an edge to her voice now, a challenge he recognized from their teenage arguments. "Are you planning to host wild parties? Practice nude sunbathing?"

Despite everything, Cal felt his mouth twitch toward a smile. He caught himself and scowled instead. "I like my privacy."

"So build your six-foot wall, then. But I'm not paying for a privacy fence when a simple boundary marker would do just fine."

Cal straightened, his jaw tightening. "It's a shared fence line. We need to agree on specifications."

"Fine. Four feet, split rail, like the original."

"Six feet, privacy panels."

"Four feet."

"Six."

They stared at each other across the fallen branch, both stubborn as mules, both refusing to give ground. It was so familiar, this dance of wills, that for a moment Cal forgot why he was supposed to be angry with her.

Then reality crashed back in.

"You know what?" He threw the measuring tape down, his frustration boiling over. "This is exactly why I didn't want to deal with you. You waltz back into town after ten years and immediately start making demands, expecting everyone to bend to your vision of how things should be."

"My vision?" Lena's voice rose, her own temper flaring. "You're the one insisting on building the Great Wall of Willow Creek! I'm trying to be reasonable here."

"Reasonable? You want to talk about reasonable?" Cal stepped over the branch, closing the distance between them. "What was reasonable about disappearing without a word? What was reasonable about ignoring every letter I sent? Every message I left?"

The words exploded out of him, ten years of buried anger and hurt finally finding their voice. He saw Lena flinch, saw her take a step back, but he couldn't stop now.

"You want to know why I want a six-foot fence? Because I don't want to look at you every morning and remember what it felt like to believe someone actually meant it when they said they loved me."

Lena's face went pale, but her chin lifted in that stubborn way he remembered too well. "You think this is easy for me? You think I wanted to come back here and face... this?" She gestured between them. "I had my reasons for leaving, Cal. Good reasons."

"Such as?"

"You wouldn't understand."

"Try me."

She opened her mouth, then closed it again, something like panic flashing in her brown eyes. "It's complicated."

"Bullshit." Cal's voice was raw now, all his careful control finally cracking. "You know what's complicated? Spending a decade wondering what I did wrong. Wondering if anything we had was real, or if I was just some small-town phase you had to outgrow."

"That's not—" Lena started, but her phone rang, cutting through the tension like a blade.

She glanced at the screen and her entire demeanor changed. The color drained from her face, and her hands actually trembled as she answered.

"Mom? What's wrong?" Her voice shifted into something Cal had never heard before—fear, barely controlled panic. "Slow down, I can't... what do you mean the insurance isn't covering it?"

Cal watched as she turned away from him, her free hand pressed to her forehead. Even angry as he was, he couldn't ignore the distress radiating from her small frame.

"How much?" Lena's voice cracked. "Mom, that's... I don't have that kind of money right now. The shop isn't even open yet, and the startup costs..." She was pacing now, tight circles around the fallen branch. "No, don't apologize. We'll figure something out. We always do."

There was a long pause while she listened, and Cal saw her shoulders shake once, quickly, before she straightened them again.

"I know you're scared. I'm scared too. But the treatments are working, right? The doctors said..." Another pause. "Okay. Okay, I'll call the financial office tomorrow. Maybe we can work out a payment plan."

She ended the call and stood with her back to him, her shoulders rigid with the effort of holding herself together.

"Lena?" Cal's anger evaporated, replaced by something that felt dangerously like concern. "Is everything okay?"

She didn't turn around. "Everything's fine."

"That didn't sound fine."

"It's none of your business." But her voice broke on the last word, betraying her.

Cal took a step closer, his protective instincts warring with his common sense. "Your mom—is she sick?"

Lena's laugh was sharp and bitter. "Like I said, it's complicated."

"What kind of treatments?"

"The expensive kind." She finally turned to face him, and Cal was shocked by the exhaustion in her eyes. This wasn't the confident woman who'd showed up at his workshop with her sunshine smile. This was someone barely holding on. "The kind that make you choose between paying for medicine and paying rent."

The pieces started clicking together in Cal's mind. Her sudden return to Willow Creek. Her determination to make the flower shop work. The way she'd looked genuinely panicked when the grocery store run-in threatened her fresh start.

"How long?" he asked quietly.

"Two years since the diagnosis. Six months since the insurance started denying claims." Lena wrapped her arms around herself like armor. "So there's your answer about the fence. I vote for whatever's cheapest, because I need to save every penny for things that actually matter."

She started walking toward her house, leaving him standing among the storm debris with more questions than answers. At her back door, she paused without turning around.

"And Cal? You want to know why I left? It wasn't because I didn't love you. It was because I thought I was ruining your future. Turns out I was just making room for someone else to ruin mine."

The door closed behind her with a soft click, leaving Cal alone with the wreckage of more than just fencing. For ten years, he'd carried a story about Lena's betrayal, about her choosing city dreams over small-town love. But the woman he'd just seen—exhausted, frightened, carrying burdens she couldn't share—didn't fit that narrative at all.

He looked at the fallen branch, at the gap in the fence that had forced them into this conversation, and wondered if some storms were meant to tear things down so you could finally see what was really underneath.

The question was whether he was ready to let go of his anger long enough to find out what the truth actually looked like.

Or if some bridges, once burned, were meant to stay that way forever.