The air in the market was electric, supercharged by the sun burning through two days’ worth of fog and by the collective, unspoken knowledge that the events of the previous week had turned the local power structure on its head.
Not that you’d know it from the produce. The heirloom tomatoes looked smug, the apples polished to a military shine. Baskets of peas and green beans tumbled over each other in a riot of hyper-competence. At the next stall, a stack of honeycombs gleamed like amber, each cell heavy with promise.
And me? I was floating through it, so high on my own sense of belonging that I literally walked into Knox’s back at least three times before we’d made it halfway down the line.
Each time, he’d glance over his shoulder with a look that said, “You all right?” but also, “If you do that again, I’m throwing you over my shoulder and carrying you out like a sack of flour.”
I didn’t know how to explain that my feet were barely touching the ground. That the sensation of his hand on my lower back was a low-level electrical current, equal parts anchor and adrenaline shot.
The first collision happened outside Rosie’s Bakery. The market line snaked past her stand, where she’d already sold out of the good donuts and was in the process of hawking “breakfast bread,” which was just yesterday’s rolls with a new marketing angle.
I was craning my neck, half watching Rosie and half tracking the slow drift of the McKenzie clan through the crowd. Knox stopped abruptly.
My nose made intimate contact with the back of his shoulder, which was much more forgiving than I expected, given the topographical map of muscle underneath his shirt.
“Careful,” he murmured, without turning around.
“Sorry,” I said, but I couldn’t stop grinning. The apology caught somewhere between my teeth and came out as a laugh.
People were staring. Not in the way they used to—no pity or skepticism, just genuine curiosity, like maybe I was the day’s most interesting piece of produce.
Mrs. Kimura, who ran the flowers-and-ferns table, gave me a look that was more invitation than evaluation. She said, “You look good, Newt,” and she said it with the confidence of someone who’d seen me at my worst, which was the Tuesday after my first market, when I’d fainted in front of her peonies and had to be revived with a shot of lemon water and several minutes of her muttered prayers.
Even the local kids seemed to sense the shift. The Schrader twins, notorious for their dead-eyed stare and propensity for following strangers, shadowed us for half a lap before breaking off to steal samples at the cheese booth.
I let Knox navigate. It was easier that way. He cut through crowds with military efficiency, only stopping to pick up the occasional bag of kettle corn for Harlow, six pints of blackberries for Aunt Georgia, or a brick of smoked gouda for Ransom, who swore he was lactose intolerant but could down half a wheel in one sitting.
There was a kind of pattern to the way we moved. I’d get distracted by something—usually food, but occasionally the shiny, glossy world of other people living their best lives—and Knox would sense it, reach back, and catch my sleeve or my elbow before I could drift too far. Sometimes it was possessive, sometimes protective, but always with the assurance that if I wanted to, I could tug back and he’d let me go.
I didn’t want to.
Not ever.
I didn’t realize how much I wanted to be seen, not as a charity case or a cautionary tale, but as a member of this impossible, beautiful, stubborn tribe, until it started happening. Until people started treating me like I belonged to the place—not just the geography, but the history, the mythos, the full-bore, three-alarm tradition of McKenzie River.
At one point, I caught sight of a trio of old men playing chess under the pavilion. They looked like they’d stepped out of a Norman Rockwell painting, each one weathered by decades of sun and pettiness, but I recognized them. Pa’s Thursday drinking buddies.
They paused their game to nod at Knox, then at me, with a solemnity usually reserved for funerals or 4th of July parades.
One of them—Burt, I think, or maybe Mert—winked at me. “Heard you’re the one keeping the farm solvent these days,” he said. “Didn’t think a Bridger could do math.”
“Shows what you know about us,” I said, the words out before I could regret them. The men all cackled like I’d just told theworld’s dirtiest joke. Knox squeezed my hand, a warning and a reward at the same time.
We moved on.
The crowd thickened at the far end of the market, where a band was tuning up, all guitars and bongo drums and the distant, ever-present threat of interpretive dance. Knox steered us away, but not before I caught a snatch of conversation that made my ears ring.
“Isn’t that the boy from the Bridger place?” someone whispered, just loud enough for me to hear. “Didn’t expect him to come back, not after the lawsuit.”
“Heard he’s living with the McKenzies now,” said another. “Maybe they finally tamed him.”
“Doesn’t look tamed to me,” the first replied, and I had to agree. I felt feral—wild and alive, like my skin had finally decided to fit.
As we passed the cider stall, I asked Knox, “You think people actually believe it? That I’m one of you?”
He looked at me like I’d just asked if the sun was going to rise tomorrow. “You are one of us,” he said, simple as gravity.
I flushed, but inside my head it was a fireworks show. “I mean—I live with you all, sure, but—”
