Lucy stands beside the open door, one hand on the frame.
“You look nice,” I hear myself say.
Her eyes lift to mine.The smallest flush touches her cheeks.“Thank you.”
I hold her gaze a beat too long.Then force myself to step back and shut Quinn’s door.
Lucy circles to the passenger side where I open the door, and when she settles into the seat beside me, the SUV suddenly feels smaller.
More intimate.More like a thing I could get used to if I was stupid enough.
We pull onto the road with Quinn singing to herself in the backseat and Lucy fiddling with the hem of her dress.
“You nervous?”I ask.
She glances at me.“Should I be?”
“About the festival?No.”
“That wasn’t really my question.”I almost smile.“No,” I state.“You shouldn’t be.”
She looks out the window, and I know exactly what she means anyway.The club.The town.The fact that being seen with me publicly changes the shape of gossip around us in a place like Freedom Falls.
Too late now.
The festival is packed by the time we get there.Booths line the square.Handmade signs.Food trucks.Live music drifting from the gazebo.Kids already sticky with snow cones and running wild between folding tables full of crafts, candles, honey jars, and every homemade thing this town can produce.
The second I kill the engine, Quinn is vibrating with excitement.
I glance in the rearview mirror.“Rule one, you stay with us.”She nods solemnly.“Rule two, if you want to go see something, you ask first.As long as your Mama okays it, I got you, kid.”Another nod.“Rule three?”She grins.“No goats without permission.”
Lucy laughs beside me, bright and surprised.I look at her and feel that laugh in my chest like an impact.Yeah.This is a problem.We make it ten feet into the festival before people start stopping us.That’s the downside to small towns.
The upside, apparently, is watching Lucy navigate them.
Miss Helen from the florist booth wants to compliment Quinn’s braids.Tommy Garver from the tackle shop gives me a look that says he’s got questions and judgments galore.Marlaina spots us from near the church bake sale table and practically beams.“You came!”
Lucy gives her a look.“You say that like I wasn’t capable.”
Marlaina glances at me.“I had hope.”
I don’t miss the way Lucy’s mouth twitches at that.
Quinn drags us toward the face-painting booth first.Ten minutes later she has a glittery butterfly on one cheek and blue flowers painted across the other.Then we do lemonade, then kettle corn, then some kids’ obstacle course made of hay bales and old tires where Quinn declares herself “basically an athlete now.”
Lucy is laughing more than I’ve ever heard her laugh.
That’s what does me in.Not the dress.Not the way sunlight catches in her hair.Not even the moments when she forgets to guard her expression around me.
It’s watching her with Quinn.Watching her kneel to wipe sugar off the kid’s mouth with her thumb.
Watching her tuck loose braids back behind little ears.
Watching her smile when Quinn wins a cheap stuffed frog from the ring toss like it’s a million-dollar prize.
Family.
Simple.Ordinary.Loud in small, messy ways.
