The hardware store aisle smelled sharply of sawdust and rubber, and the fluorescent lights hummed faintly above. Cara shuffled through rows of screws, half-listening as her dad explained the difference between wood and sheet metal fasteners. She nodded absently, her mind far from the conversation. Then, the clerk approached\u2014an older man with a smudged name tag reading “Frank.” <\/p>\n
“Need help finding something?” he asked with a gravelly voice. Before Cara could shrug him off, her dad jumped in, detailing their project: a new birdhouse for the backyard. <\/p>\n
Frank\u2019s face softened. \u201cUsed to make those with my daughter. She hated sanding the edges but loved picking the colors.\u201d He chuckled, tapping a bright blue-painted screw bin. “Still got her favorite color here.”<\/p>\n
Cara blinked, suddenly aware of her father\u2019s easy smile and the hopeful gleam in his eye. She noticed his hands\u2014calloused, steady\u2014carefully cradling a box of nails. She hadn\u2019t joined him on a project in years.<\/p>\n
“Let\u2019s grab the blue paint,” she murmured. Her dad\u2019s quiet “okay” carried more weight than she’d expected.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A bag of nails, a splash of blue, and a bridge mended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":728,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_wp_convertkit_post_meta":{"form":"-1","landing_page":"0","tag":"0","restrict_content":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-everyday","category-fiction"],"_wp_attached_file":null,"_wp_attachment_metadata":null,"_thumbnail_id":"728","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storyisinfinite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storyisinfinite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storyisinfinite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storyisinfinite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storyisinfinite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=729"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/storyisinfinite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storyisinfinite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storyisinfinite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storyisinfinite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storyisinfinite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}