Six months after their small, private wedding, Elena stood on a patch of empty lot in a neighborhood that had never had a library of its own, a hard hat slightly too large sliding down over her eyebrows, a shovel in her hands that felt heavier than she'd expected.
"You're supposed to actually dig, not just admire the shovel," Adrian said beside her, laughter tucked into his voice, his own hard hat sitting far more naturally on him than hers did.
"I'm building suspense," Elena said. "Every good groundbreaking needs a little suspense."
A small crowd had gathered for the occasion — her father, beaming with a pride he'd never quite managed to hide since the day the diversification deal closed; her mother, standing a little apart but present, the two of them slowly rebuilding something stead
