Marisol offered him a fig-rosemary roll, fresh from the oven. He declined.

Then she opened her laptop. Not to give up, but to learn.

Priya flipped through the photos. “Okay, the beam is undersized. But look—the wall was actually a 1920s addition to an original 1910 structure. That means the original building code when the wall was added is… fuzzy.” She pulled a worn city code book from her shelf, its pages soft as fabric. “If we reclassify this as a restoration of original volume rather than a new structural alteration , you don’t need a full engineering stamp. Just a letter of no-load impact.”

They would make her rebuild the wall. The beautiful, stupid, suffocating wall that had choked the room for ninety years.

“Ms. Vega,” he said finally, closing his clipboard. “The beam is undersized for the span. And that outlet relocation needed a separate electrical permit.” He sighed, not unkindly. “You’ll need to submit plans for retroactive permit review. Structural engineering stamp. And yes, you may have to temporarily shore the ceiling until the calculations come back.”

Thursday arrived with a sky the color of wet slate. The inspector, a soft-spoken man named Gerald with a clipboard and sensible shoes, walked the space in silence. He tapped the new beam above where the wall used to be. He squinted at the electrical outlet Hector had moved six inches to the left. He wrote things down.

For three weeks, she’d baked in that light. Her sourdough—the one with the fig and rosemary swirl—had started to sing. Customers lined up on East Martin Street. She was finally, impossibly, succeeding.

Hector shrugged. “Just pay the fine. Double permit fee, maybe a thousand bucks.”