At that, Runa Marrow started to rise. “I don’t think it’s our magic that’s the problem?—”
But Ethan caught the quick shake of Juniper’s head, her eyes slicing to her aunt with a warning. Runa pressed her lips together and sat back down, the half-formed words hanging heavy in the air.
Ethan’s chest tightened, but this time it wasn’t from nerves. He could feel the outrage. If there was one thing he had always known about this town, it was that it carried a peculiar power when they were riled. Suddenly, his hands weren’t shaking anymore.
“So…what can we do?” a voice called from the back.
Ethan reached down and pulled free a thick book of regulations with sticky notes bristling from the edges, and every margin scrawled with his looping handwriting.
“I’ve been doing some reading,” he admitted. “There’s a way we can keep the bureau from touching the well or the farmhouse. We certify it as a historical site. They can’t shut down a landmark.”
He laid the book open on the front table, pages covered in regulations highlighted and underlined in three different colors. “I’ve got a list of steps. But it’s more than I can do alone. I need help from all of you.”
For a long moment, silence gripped the room. The only sound was the slow tick of the clock above the bleachers. A prickle of doubt ran through him. Maybe he had asked too much. Brim’s Hollow had never been a town that trusted forms and paperwork, never the sort to follow rules when they could bend them or slip around themaltogether. Asking them to work within the lines of the law felt, for a moment, like trying to hold water in his hands.
Then a single pair of hands clapped. Slow, steady. Someone else joined in. And then a voice rang out clear: “Damn right, we’ll help!”
The sound swelled into cheers, filling the gymnasium with a noise that rattled the folding chairs.
Juniper nodded once, brisk and sharp, and grabbed the book from Ethan, scanning it over. Poppy pounded the gavel with a grin.
And Ethan—standing in the front row instead of hiding in the back—finally let himself believe it.
Juniper lifted her chin as she stepped forward. “All right,” she said briskly, loud enough to command the room. “If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it properly. Clover, gather up some papers. Runa, start drafting the formal petition. Poppy, you’re in charge of correspondence. We’ll get a letter written to the bureau by tonight, signed by as many households as we can collect.”
Poppy thumped his gavel like a man conducting an orchestra. “You heard the lady! Pens up, people!”
“BooBees,” Juniper snapped without looking up, “you’re on canvassing for anyone who isn’t here now. I expect every corner of this town covered.”
The BooBees straightened in their seats like soldiers, heads bobbing as one. “You got it, Principal Marrow!”
The gym burst into motion, chairs scraping, papers rustling, voices overlapping in a symphony of chaotic order.
“Tammy Gribble—minutes.” Juniper shouted over the noise, “Theo, you’ll coordinate with Ethan on compliance language. And for heaven’s sake, somebody make copies.”
Her gaze cut back to him once more, and though hermouth didn’t move, he could have sworn the message was clear enough: See? You asked. And look what happened.
Ethan stood there, binder still open in front of him, watching as the town moved not just around him, but for him. For his girls. For the orchard.
And for the first time in a long while, he didn’t feel like he was carrying the weight of everything alone.
Chapter 34
Honey
Honey didn’t take a single day off work. Monday morning, she marched into her new job at the Midtown Civic Building. Her heels clicked confidently on the tile floor. The receptionist gave her a smile and handed her a laminated badge. “Welcome back, Ms. Baxter.”
“Thank you, Julia.”
She held her head high as she rode the elevator up to her new floor.
Honey paused in the doorway of her new office. Floor to ceiling windows looked out over the courtyard, but her desk faced the doorway. She set to work unpacking her box of supplies. She laid out her pens neatly, booted up her new computer, and filled her cup with paperclips. All the while, she kept stealing glances over her shoulder at the window.
Everything was tidy.
She hung up her coat, smoothed her skirt, and then sat down at the desk. She adjusted the angle of her stapler. Then, she did it again. It all looked right, exactly as she’d imagined it.
So why did it feeloff?
