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She hung up on me. Ivy always hangs up first.

I stood there with the phone in my hand, then started my usual lap of the tables to square the chairs. I got a few steps before I noticed they were already straight. Someone had done it on the way out.

So I went upstairs and stood outside for a minute. Down on Main Street, Frank’s cousin’s empty flatbed headed toward the lumber yard. Hal Sackett came out of the bakery with a bag under his arm. He stopped beneath the garland for his yearly inspection of the dark span in the middle, as though this might be the year somebody had gotten to it.

Griffin found me back in the emptied committee room, stacking chairs I could have left for Frank’s crew and was stacking anyway, because I am not a saint and I have twelve days. “I hear it went well.”

“It went terrifying.” I set the chair down. “I told nine people I’ve been failing at this since 2017 and then I asked them for help out loud, in a room, with the lights on.”

“And?”

“And Frank told me to sit down.” My throat tightened. “So I sat down. That’s the whole story. All those years of practice, and it took one command.”

He didn’t turn my surrender into a lesson. He stood there in his coat with his hands in his pockets and let the moment be mine. “The owners’ meeting is Friday,” he said. “Ivy, me, and the town. Owen’s bringing the deed for the north lot, and he’s already annoyed about it.”

“Friday.” I did the arithmetic that I do now instead of sleeping. “Which is also the day we lose the Salem barbecue if the committee can’t reconfirm his booth.”

“I know.”

“I’m not asking you to make that promise by yourself.”

“I know that too. It has to come from the committee.” He said it easily, which I hadn’t expected, and it was the most reassuring thing that had happened all week. “I have a truck, a stamp, and twelve days.”

“Then say the cost out loud on Friday,” I said. “The whole cost. Engineer, materials, the match, all of it, on a board where people can see it. Don’t round it down to be kind. This town has been protected from hard figures by well-meaning people since before I got here and it has cost us every single time.”

“That’s going to be an unpleasant morning.”

“It’s going to be a Friday.” I picked up another chair. “Bring a marker. There’s no board in the bakery.”

I kissed him in the open doorway of a municipal room that smelled of coffee and pine. His arms came around me, and I caught the front of his coat and pulled him closer. This time, I was the one who held on.

He didn’t ask if I would still want him in the morning. He didn’t need to.

Somebody had been at the whiteboard before me. In green marker, in Colette’s handwriting, in the top corner where the agenda usually goes:

TWELVE DAYS.

And around it, badly, in red, somebody else had drawn a wreath.

CHAPTER 20

NORA

The owners of the Main Street commercial block met in Sweet Provisions on Friday morning at seven because the bakery was the only room on the street with heat, chairs, and a coffee urn that worked.

There were three owners: Ivy Callahan, Griffin Cole, and the Town of Holly Creek, represented by Owen Harper with the deed to the north lot in a plastic sleeve and an expression that suggested he had spent Thursday night finding out he owned something.

Twenty-two people came. Owen brought the reinstated festival permit and insurance binder clipped to the deed. Before anyone touched the covenant, he read the policy number aloud: the Morrison sleigh and horses, vendors, volunteers, and rebuilt stage were all named. Mrs. Morrison checked the page herself and signed the ride schedule.

“That’s not how a meeting of owners works,” Owen said, from the door.

“It says in meeting assembled,” Ivy said. “It doesn’t say who’s allowed to watch.” She had her reading glasses down her nose and the certified copy flat on the table in front of her, and she read it out loud, because Ivy reads everything out loud when it matters. “Each owner shall bear a proportionate share of the maintenance of all party walls, footings and common structural elements, the same to be determined by the assent of the owners in meeting assembled.” She looked up over the glasses. “In meeting assembled. Well. We’re assembled.”

“It’s a seventy-eight-year-old provision,” I said. The owners voted one at a time. Griffin voted yes for his six parcels. Ivy voted yes for the bookstore. Owen hesitated over the town’s north lot, read the repair estimate again, and voted yes. They assessed one share per parcel and agreed to credit the community’s cash, equipment, fuel, and labor against Griffin’s six-parcel bill. Owen dictated the motion twice so Colette’s notes and the town minutes matched.

“It’s a bill,” Frank said. “That’s what that is. My grandfather sent us a bill, and we’ve been seventy-eight years late paying it.”

Griffin put the total on the back of a bakery box.