Chapter 10 - Forty-Eight Hours
By noon, the community center was swarming with people. Eleanor had not called high-priced contractors; she had called the neighborhood parents, local high school shop teachers, and her volunteer network.
Harrison arrived within an hour, stripping off his suit jacket and tossing it onto a dry table. Beside him came a crew of Vance Enterprise facility technicians carrying heavy-duty industrial dehumidifiers and replacement lumber.
"You didn't have to come," Eleanor told him, wiping drywall dust from her forehead.
"Try stopping me," Harrison replied, already helping a carpenter lift a damaged partition wall.
For two days, nobody slept more than three hours. Eleanor orchestrated the entire recovery like a seasoned commander. She redesigned the ruined floor displays into hanging ceiling mobiles, salvaged the watermarked canvases by turning them into layered collage murals, and fed seventy volunteers three square meals out of a makeshift kitchen in the basement.
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Toby sat in the corner with a box of dry sponges, diligently wiping down plastic folding chairs with utter dedication. "I’m the assistant director," he announced proudly to every passing volunteer.
Watching Eleanor move with fierce grace, solving crises with calm ingenuity and treating every laborer with profound kindness, Harrison felt something deep within his chest shift irrevocably. She was not merely surviving her freedom; she was transforming into a force of nature.
