“I run toward problems,” I say, because bravery sounds better. “I am a woman of action. Also poor spatial reasoning.”
Jack’s gaze flicks to the twine. The cut ends are clean. Too clean. He doesn’t touch them, but I see the calculation land behind his eyes.
“It was just loose,” I say quickly. “Things shift. It’s gusty. Physics.” I do that bright laugh again, the one that sounds like property damage. “I’m fine.”
“Mm.” He studies the teenager, who is apologizing to the banner like it has feelings. “You should stand over here.” He guides me three steps left, positioning me between two picnic tables, out of the path of—what?—rogue hay, runaway goats, joyriding idiots?
It should feel bossy. It feels like oxygen.
“Miss Hart?” A mother I recognize from the school drop-off line appears, preschooler on her hip. “My Maisie says she left her teddy at the petting zoo and she won’t stop crying.”
“Operation Teddy Retrieval,” I say immediately. “On it.” I look up at Jack. “Duty calls.”
“Stay where there are people,” he says, like the square itself is a shield. “And if you see anything that makes your gut go tight?—”
“Run toward it,” I joke.
“Text your brother,” he corrects, mouth almost smiling. “And me. Give me your phone.”
“Oh,” I say, too quickly.
He takes my phone without touching my fingers—how does he do that?—and types with ruthless efficiency. My screen flashes with a new contact: Jack Sinclair. He hands it back. “For cupcakes,” he says blandly, as if either of us believes that.
“For science,” I counter, and then I’m moving again, because Maisie’s lower lip is trembling and I’m a sucker for a mission with a stuffed-animal objective.
The petting zoo is a chaos meadow—kids, straw, goats with philosophical eyes. We find Teddy hunkered under the fence, a fur ball of tragedy. Maisie clutches him like a shipwreck survivor.
By the time we weave back to the square, the fiddler’s found a jaunty tune and the kettle corn line is three grandmas deep. The hay bales are restacked and re-twined. Jack is across the way now, speaking into a radio, one palm cupped to his ear, attention narrowed. The patch on his arm gleams.
My phone buzzes.
Jack Sinclair:You forgot to breathe after you laugh like that.
I blink. Then another bubble pops up.
Jack Sinclair:Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle. Just…breathe.
I stare at the screen, warmth spreading through me in a ridiculous, fizzy bloom. I look up. He’s not looking at me. He’s scanning the street again. Working. But the message sits in my hand like a steadying palm between my shoulder blades.
I inhale. Exhale. Breathe.
“Stella!” Wyatt again, this time with a coffee and a look that says he found a thing to worry about and plans to adopt it. “Everything good?”
“Fine,” I say, bright and harmless, because if I tell him about the cut twine he’ll build a bunker out of hay and suspicion. “Are you…friends with Jack Sinclair?”
Wyatt’s jaw ticks. “We’ve worked together. He’s solid. Why?”
“No reason,” I say, which is female for fourteen reasons, none of which I’m admitting to my brother in public.
“Stay put when the parade starts,” he orders. “And text me if you see the blue F-150 with the dented quarter panel. Might be our County Six joyrider.”
“Copy that, Deputy.” I salute, then wince when he grins, because now I’ll never live that down.
The loudspeaker screeches. The parade marshal booms something about line-up in ten. Kids shriek with the kind of joy that bounces off buildings and into your bones. The sun finds the shiny new paint on the water tower and turns it halo-bright. Valor Springs breathes in, collective and hopeful.
I tuck my phone into my pocket, and watch as Jack and his team take their posts. Calm. Ready. Edges like the country line between safe and sorry.
Maybe the hay twine was nothing. Maybe the fireworks delay is just a truck with bad timing. Maybe I really am a woman whose life is held together with bobby pins and prayer, and that’s enough.
