one
Noah
“I’m sorry, Noah. I didn’t see it coming. Nobody did.” My lawyer’s voice is tinny in my earpiece, yet it sucker-punches me. “You’ve got four months left.”
I take a deep breath and nudge my glasses back up, swallowing the expletives she doesn’t deserve. Messenger and all that.
Although Tamberly’s the lawyer who assured me we had a 99 percent chance of winning in court, so maybe she needs to feel the pain?
But that’s not who I am. Instead, I keep it all in, my stomach twisting in agony, my head pounding, as I focus my gaze outside my bedroom window. On the gardens of Lilyvale, our family home, and on Emerald Creek, the town our ancestors founded—everything we’re about to lose.
“They don’t care that it violates my… rights? Or something?” I bite back. We’ve had this discussion countless times. The family trust requiring me to marry by a certain age is antiquated at best.It should be dismissed as the insulting remnant of a time when deeds were written with a pen dipped in ink.
We challenged it after Dad passed. Losing probate stung, but the appeal looked solid. I wasn’t worried.
“I’m assuming none of your siblings are married or about to be?” Tamberly continues in a shaky voice. When I merely grunt, she adds, “I’m taking this to the Vermont Supreme Court, file a stay…” Her words blur into a buzzing in my ears.
My disbelief leaves place to something akin to panic. It’s too late for more legal action. Four months from now, when I turn thirty-two unmarried, our home, the orchards, the plumbing business—everything the Callaways own—will be controlled by Dad’s third wife. His gold-digging widow.
Knowing her, everything will be sold off to the highest bidder by Christmas, the cash financing her lavish lifestyle far away from Emerald Creek.
And the store I run, our family’s pride, will belong to the town, which probably seemed like a good idea on paper decades ago, but not in the age of minimarts.
Because not a month goes by that a developer doesn’t offer us a fortune for Lilyvale and its surrounding gardens, bulldozers at the ready to erase our childhood home and make place for cookie-cutter vacation rentals. Not a week ends that a chain hasn’t approached us to turn the store into its umpteenth glass-and-metal, in-your-face ugliness stocked with mass-produced shit and self-checkout horror stations in the heart of our historic town.
I can almost see Gail’s drool hitting the floor as the smell of our impending blood awakens her true instincts.
“Noah?” my younger sister, Lane, calls from the hallway.
I interrupt Tamberly. “Any publicity on this yet?” I ask in a hushed tone. I’ve managed to keep my siblings in the dark sothey can live their lives without pressure. I don’t need this to blow up now. Not until I’ve tried everything.
I’m the eldest by far. Griff was born when I was seven, Beck when I was nine, and Lane when I was ten. I’ve always been their protector—part nature, part the way life shaped me. When my birth mother walked out, it was just Dad and me, and I grew up faster than my years. Then Dad met the woman I came to call Mom, and life was sweet—until she died way too young, and Dad nearly lost his mind. By then, both parents had praised how protective I was, reminding me that with age came responsibility. So when it all fell apart, I stepped up and parented my siblings.
That shit that’s about to hit us? It’s mine alone to carry.
“A good chunk of the details were filed under seal, and so far, nobody seems interested,” Tamberly answers, offering me a shred of reassurance.
She offers to discuss our options, but before I can lash out that these are insultingly narrow, the grandfather clock in the dining room starts striking. Slow yet inexorable, it reminds me that life goes on for others, and I need to show up. “I’m actually going to a wedding,” I say as I button my shirt, the irony not lost on me. “Not mine,” I add bitterly before ending the call.
I glance at my open door as impatient footsteps resonate down the hallway.
Lane barges into my bedroom. “Who was that?” she asks as she presses a deep red tie against my shirt.
“No one,” I answer with a forced smile.
She rolls her eyes playfully. “Oooh… something you’re not telling me?”
Where do I start? “Nothing like that, no.”I wish.“It was the lawyer.”
“Boring.” Smoothing the tie with the back of her hand, she says, “This one was Dad’s. He’d want you to wear it. Look good for the town.”
Today is the wedding of the town’s only mechanic and our pastry chef, with the whole town invited to celebrate Colton and Kiara. I’d been looking forward to it—until five minutes ago.
“What did she want? Her name’s Tamberly, right?” Lane squints at me. “You seem worried.”
I shrug for Lane’s benefit. “Nothing. Just… some tax shit.”
“Let that go for today,” she tells me. “Stop grinding your teeth, and show your dimples.”
