Page 5

"So do it," I say. "Assess. Inspect. Laser things. But you should know that everything in this barn is here because I put it there for a reason, and I'm not gutting my business because you frowned at my bunting."

"I don't need you to gut it. I need you to pass." Something happens behind his face when he says that — a flicker, gone too fast to read. He tucks the folder under his arm. "I'll do the full walkthrough tomorrow and give you the preliminary list. It'll be long. I'll be back at nine."

"Can't wait. I'll alert the bunting."

He heads for the door. Wick, a traitor, lifts his head and watches him go with open admiration, and Brady — the man who did not react to my Thanksgiving story, a story that killed — pauses. Looks down at my enormous white lump of a cat.

"You're sitting on the egress," he tells him.

And then he's gone, gravel popping under his truck, and I'm standing in the middle of my own barn feeling like a candle someone snuffed with two wet fingers.

I look at Wick. Wick looks at me.

"Okay, first of all, you're a traitor," I tell him. "Second of all," and I say it out loud because saying things out loud makes them true, "no grumpy flannel mountain of a man is going to walk into MY barn and decide MY launch doesn't happen."

Wick yawns, showing me exactly what he thinks of my declarations of war.

I flip the sign to CLOSED, run the two batches I promised the bookshop, kill the melters, and do my nightly circuit — extinguisher pins, oil lids, the wobbly outlet I've been meaning to deal with, and don't think I didn't notice him noticing it, because I did, and it's on the list, MY list, which existed before his list. This barn was a hay-strewn ruin with a family of raccoons in the loft three years ago. I gutted it with a crowbar and a YouTube playlist. Every shelf, every beam light, every inch of that candle bar — mine. He can frown at my dream all he wants.

He can't have it.

Tomorrow he wants to bring me a list. Fine. Great, even.

I've spent three years being told no by banks, by suppliers, by every relative with an opinion at every holiday with a tablecloth. I didn't fold for any of them, and they didn't even have nice forearms.

He wants to hand me a list of everything wrong with my dream at nine a.m.?

Fine.

By seven that evening, my grandmother's kitchen table — hers once, mine now, like the whole house around it — has disappeared under printouts, and I am four tabs deep into the National Fire Protection Association's website, which is exactly as thrilling as it sounds.

The bachelorettes came back for their candles. I fed Wick, fed myself something that technically qualifies as dinner if you're generous about what cheese and crackers can be, and then I sat down to know my enemy.

My enemy is NFPA 1, the Fire Code, and it is nine hundred pages long.

"Okay," I tell the laptop. "You don't scare me. I've read terms and conditions."

Here's what nobody tells you about running your own business: the skill you actually develop isn't candle-making. It's research under spite conditions. I taught myself soap-grade chemistry from library books. I taught myself QuickBooks in a weekend because an accountant quoted me two hundred a month. Spite is a renewable resource, and Brady Callahan just topped off my tank.

Text to Wes, 7:42 p.m.: You sent BRADY??

Wes, 7:43: he's the best we have. be nice.

Me: He called my bunting FUEL.

Wes: is bunting the flag thing? he's not wrong. listen he does this for a living, whatever he says just do it

Me: Whose side are you on?

Wes: the side where my sister's barn doesn't end up on the news. love you. bye.

Unhelpful. Noted. I go back to the code.

And here's the thing I would rather chew a wick than admit out loud: some of what Grumplestiltskin said this afternoon is... not insane. I look up extension cord ratings and my face goes hot, because "temporary use only" is printed right there on the packaging I definitely read three years ago. I look up combustible liquid classifications and go stand in my barn doorway at eight p.m. in my pajama pants, staring at the shelf where my fragrance oils live, doing distance math to the melters and losing.

But — BUT — for every citation, there's a fix that doesn't involve bulldozing my aesthetic. Cord's a problem? There's an electrician in Hunter who owes me a wedding-favor discount. Oil storage? A flammables cabinet costs less than a booth fee at the Kingston craft fair. The bunting can move eighteen inches. The bunting can be flame-treated, which is a thing that exists, which Mr. It's Fuel didn't bother to mention, possibly because solutions are less fun for him than frowning.

I find my old college binder — pink, obviously — and a pack of tab dividers left over from my zoning appeal, and I start building.