into his little green notebook.
One more thing you need to know about my grandpa.
In the corner of every piece he builds — somewhere low, somewhere hidden — he carves a tiny honeybee.
Smaller than a dime.
“So the work can prove it’s mine,” he told me when I was nine, “even when I’m not around to.”
By the final week, that room looked like a magazine spread.
Then one afternoon my phone rang.
“Emily,” Grandpa said, “you are not going to believe what these people just tried.”
The Hales had thrown a reveal brunch that morning — ten friends, mimosas, a charcuterie board sitting right on Grandpa’s brand-new window bench.
They walked their guests through the room.
They complimented everything.
Vanessa took photos for her friends, one hand posed on the shelving.
Then Garrison pulled Grandpa toward the kitchen doorway — just far enough that everyone could still hear.
He said they’d “
