Unbraced Timber
Clara Miller has long provided the invisible labor holding her family's coastal estate together. But when a high-profile fundraising gala forces a breaking point, she uncovers a buried legal betrayal that changes everything.
Fictional story. Contains themes of emotional mistreatment, family financial deception, and structural property disputes.Chapter 1: The Timber and the Dust
By late Saturday morning, Clara Miller’s forearms were dusted in fine cedar ash, her knuckles scraped raw from securing forged iron brackets into two-hundred-year-old pine. Outside the carriage house at Blackwood Estate, fog rolled off Penobscot Bay, dampening the coastal pine needles and turning the lawn a slick, bruised green.
Inside, the atmosphere was suffocatingly dry. A high-efficiency dust extractor thrummed in the corner, vibrating against the flagstone floor like a restless heart. Clara had been working since dawn, replacing dry-rotted joists and leveling the mezzanine floor so her brother’s autumn fundraising gala could proceed without a floorboard collapsing under wealthy donors.