“So you’ll come out tonight, right?” Stacey asked as we walked up the hill toward the tavern.

“Yeah,” I said. “Why not? It’ll be fun.”

Thirteen

It was not fun.

Okay, the actual night out was great. Mostly. As promised, the pizza at Jackson’s was good, and the drinks were better. For a place I had been actively avoiding due to its outside appearance, inside it was warm and friendly. Gleaming wood; a karaoke machine that worked a little too well once the pitchers of beer started flowing; dartboards and pool tables in the back. It had been a long time since I’d had a night out like that.

Which was why it had been a long time since I’d felt this shitty the morning after a night out like that.

Coffee was essential. Also a large glass of water. And a very dark, very quiet room where I could not talk to anyone all day. Thankfully, April was ambulatory, and ready to tackle the forty-minute commute to her office job for the first time since her accident. She hummed with energy while I sat at the kitchen table and stared into the cup of coffee in front of me. Would it be enough, or would I need another three or four?

“You didn’t need to get up this early, you know.” April stuck her earrings in and brushed her hair back over her shoulders. She’d blown it out; it looked sleek and smooth. Very professional. Mine was a frizzy nightmare that couldn’t be contained.

My shrug was more of a slump from where I sat. “I didn’t know if you would be up for driving yet. Thought I’d get up just in case.” Physically she was in great shape; her limp was barely noticeable now. But she still tensed up when we went places in the car, and she hadn’t yet been behind the wheel since her accident. So for her to think she could swan out the door like it was nothing was a little presumptuous on her part.

“Nah.” She poured coffee into a travel mug and added a dollop of half-and-half from the fridge. “I’ll be fine.”

See? Presumptuous. But I sipped my coffee and didn’t contradict her.

“Seriously, Em, go back to bed. There’s no reason for you to be up at this hour. Especially since you were out so late last night.”

“Ugh.” My head thudded to the table. Ow. “Don’t remind me. Mistakes were made.” Mistakes of the multiple-tequila-shots variety. I wasn’t a tequila girl, but Mitch could be very persuasive. That boy was something like ninety-eight percent muscle; he could drink. I shouldn’t have even tried to keep up, but I’d been so discombobulated by the roller coaster of emotions that weekend at Faire. Simon was a dick. No, Simon was kissing me. No, he said he’d made a mistake in doing so. No, we were kissing again, and he was damn good at it. No, once other people were around he was back to acting like I was the living embodiment of gum stuck to his shoe. I’d hardly seen him all day Sunday, and while he’d shown up at Jackson’s with everyone else, he looked like he hated being there and was gone after about fifteen minutes.

Which had left me with Stacey, Mitch, and his endless tequila shots. Mitch was genial. He was fun. He kept the booze flowing along with the jokes, and I didn’t remember the last time I’d laughed so hard. When Stacey and I decided to split a cab home, he’d practically strangled me in a one-armed hug and smacked a kiss on the top of my head. “You’re pretty cool, Park,” he’d said, and that simple compliment had glowed inside of me all the way home. At least someone liked me.

That glow had long since died out by the time my alarm went off for April’s first day back to work, and now I took another long sip of coffee.

“Did you have fun, at least?”

I contemplated that. “Yeah,” I finally said. “I did. Some pretty good people live in this town.”

“Yeah.” April leaned against the counter and sipped from her travel mug. “I hate small towns, but I guess this place is okay.”

I squinted up at her. “I don’t get that. You’ve lived here for ages, haven’t you?”

“Since Caitlin started the first grade.”

“Why?” It was too early to do the math, but even I could tell that was a long time. “If small towns aren’t your thing?”

“It’s not for me. It’s for Cait.” She flicked her gaze to the hallway leading to her daughter’s room. “If it were up to me, I’d be in one of those studio apartments in the city. I love the crowds, the noise. I like to blend in. You stand out too much in a small town.” She studied her coffee mug as she spoke, biting her lip.

“You could have stayed in Indiana, though,” I said.

“One town over from Mom and Dad for the rest of my life? No, thank you.” She looked at me squarely and I had to concede her point.

“We moved out here when I got a job offer in Baltimore, and I never looked back. But then I had to think of the best place to raise Caitlin. The place with the best schools, the best environment for her to grow up. And that sure wasn’t in the city. We were lucky to end up here.” She looked at me appraisingly. “It’s not a bad place to put down roots. You know, if you’re feeling rooty.”

“Rooty?” I snorted. “Is that even a word?”

She grinned back. “I have no idea. Maybe? You know what I mean.”

I did. And while April wanted the anonymity of a big city, I wanted those roots. A home. A place where I belonged, with people who knew me, loved me, and wanted me around. It was the kind of life I thought I had been building with Jake, until he’d yanked those roots out of the ground and took them with him when he left.

For the first time, I considered staying in Willow Creek after the summer was over. Putting those roots down here. The bookstore café was coming together, and Chris seemed happy with our progress so far. The people from Faire had started to see me as less of a stranger in town and more of a friend, so now people said hi to me at the bank and the grocery store. Weirdness with Simon notwithstanding, I hadn’t felt this comfortable somewhere in a long time. Which only made me realize how uncomfortable I’d been the last year or so that Jake and I were together.

It had taken me some time to realize it, but maybe getting dumped by a successful, upwardly mobile attorney was the best thing that could have happened to me.

April waved goodbye on her way out, and a few seconds later the front door closed behind her. I sipped some more coffee and listened to her SUV start up. Then I listened to it idle in the driveway for about a minute and a half. Then it shut off, and while I took another sip of coffee the front door opened again.

“Goddammit.” That was all April said, and all she needed to say. I pushed my mug away and went out to the living room, where she leaned against the front door, her head bowed and her hair obscuring her face. I stepped into my flip-flops by the door and took the keys from her hand.

“It’s okay.” I threw an arm around her shoulders, and she leaned her head against mine for a long moment. I squeezed her shoulder and pressed a kiss into her hair. “Come on, let’s get you to work.”

“Goddammit.” This time the tone was a flat sigh, but she didn’t argue.

I didn’t mind being chauffeur for a little while longer. I liked being needed. It made me feel like I was necessary. Part of something. Rooty.

* * *

• • •

Twenty-seven.

The number kept echoing in my head for no good reason, ever since Mitch had mentioned it on Sunday morning.

Twenty-seven.

Simon’s age. And Mitch’s too. But something else. I let it roll around in the back of my mind while I went through my regular week of non-Faire-related activities. Now that we were into week three a routine had set in, and my life was split neatly down the middle between the weekend and the week. Faire and mundane. Bodice and jeans. Tavern wench and bookstore. And while Chris and I took a little time on Tuesday morning to catch each other up on our weekend spent as our alter egos, for the most part those two distinct parts of my life didn’t intersect. Once Faire ended on Sunday night, I went back to being April’s chauffeur and Chris’s barista/social media guru/bookstore minion until the next Saturday morning. So as I got busy with my weekday bookstore life, it was easy to let everything having to do with Faire fade into the background, and forget about one life while living the other.

But the number twenty-seven stayed in my head, and it wouldn’t go away.

The number made me sad, I realized on Thursday afternoon. Something associated with grief, which made no sense, since Mitch was the most cheerful person in the world. And how could numbers be sad? At that point, I was tired of thinking about it, and hoped I’d either figure it out soon or forget about it altogether.

It all came together the next Saturday, in a place I’d almost forgotten about.

It had turned into a hot summer, so when Saturday dawned unseasonably clear and cool, we all rejoiced. My skirts didn’t feel as heavy that day, and even my bodice felt less oppressive. That morning I took the long way out of the Hollow, wandering down some side lanes I didn’t get to see much of during Faire, enjoying the early-morning sunshine. A few weeks back, these lanes had wound through empty woods, and now they were full of activity. Vendors were setting up their booths for the day. I window-shopped as I walked by, contemplating a pendant for my costume. Or a hand-tooled leather belt pouch, like the one I’d gotten Cait—okay, nicer than the one I’d gotten Cait. Maybe it was for the best I didn’t come this way very often. April didn’t ask me to contribute, but Chris didn’t pay me all that much. I wasn’t exactly swimming in cash.