I hung up and looked around my garage.
The Beast sat polished and ready.
Patton was asleep on a folded tarp.
The framed twenty-five-dollar invoice hung above the workbench.
I thought about everything that had happened.
The hurricane.
The bridge.
The crowd of frightened neighbors.
Brenda standing in her yellow raincoat with a binder full of rules.
The strange, wonderful sight of Mrs. Gable’s Buick reaching the far bank.
Then I opened the proposal template and began typing.
Project: Riverside Park Temporary Pedestrian Crossing.
Scope: Design coordination, deployment, inspection, and removal.
Estimated duration: Three days.
I reached the section labeled “Optional Aesthetic Enhancements.”
That made me smile.
I added a line for decorative railings.
Then I opened the color selection menu.
There were dozens of options.
White.
Black.
Silver.
Blue.
Evergreen.
And there it was.
Forest green.
I clicked it.
For a moment, I considered the choice.
Then I looked up at the framed invoice.
Twenty-five dollars.
Three months of arguments.
One hurricane.
One temporary bridge.
An entire neighborhood learning how to stand together.
All because a woman had decided my garden hose was the wrong shade of green.
I laughed quietly.
Then I selected forest green and saved the proposal.
Patton opened one eye.
“What?” I asked.
He stared at me.
“Don’t judge me. It’s a perfectly respectable color.”
He closed his eye again.
Outside, the afternoon sun shone across Serenity Springs.
A delivery truck passed without incident.
Someone was mowing a lawn.
Mrs. Gable’s cats watched the world from her front window.
And for once, nobody was standing in the road holding a binder.
That, I decided, was what serenity actually looked like.
THE END
