Chapter Nineteen
Snow White Come to Life
Bright yellow caution tape and Street Closed signs covered all the roads leading into the center of Harvest Moon.
In two hours most of the town would be utter chaos thanks to Veggie Fest. Parking lots would be at capacity.
Tourists and townspeople alike would jockey for position inside the dozens of white tents set up on the streets, looking for the sweetest homemade treats and examining the flowers, herbs and vegetables the locals grew with loving hands.
Even though she grumbled about it, Lia was taking her job in the children’s area seriously this morning. When I delivered her coffee fresh from Drip! Drip! Hooray!, she grunted a ‘thank you’, took a few sips, and went back to focusing on the vegetables in front of her.
Before the crush of children appeared, we needed to cut apart mounds of carrots, peppers and celery, as well as set up water-soluble paint stations so kids could make their own vegetable-print paintings.
‘So do you want to talk about what happened at Clo’s dinner?’ I said, leaning against one of the folding tables and blowing the steam off my own coffee.
‘Nope.’
‘Lee, come on. You’ve been avoiding it and me. It’s not good for you to hold on to things so tightly.’
‘I’m fine, and you need to stop doing that.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Managing me.’
This dialogue had been happening between us for years.
Since she was ten, she’d been pushing back on the attempts I made to discuss anything that came close to serious.
She was a vat of boiling, unspoken rage that I was terrified was going to explode at the wrong place and wrong time, hurting no one but herself.
‘Do you blame me? Since last March, you’ve become more secretive. Every time I try and talk to you, I get the sense there’s a fury you’re barely containing. Does it have something to do with Belladonna? Has she contacted you too?’
‘She knows better than to reach out to me after what she did to Aster the last time she was here.’ Her focus went back to chopping vegetables with a little too much force. ‘Why the hell is she calling you?’
‘It was an email.’
‘Did you respond?’
‘No.’
‘Well, that’s one good thing I’ve heard today.’
‘Lee,’ I pleaded. ‘Talk to me.’
‘Where’s the chocolate? Shouldn’t it be here by now?’ She focused on slicing up more red and green peppers and putting them in paper bowls around the six-foot folding table.
I’d learned not to push her when she wasn’t ready to talk, but I wasn’t giving up. She was holding on to some kind of pain too tightly, and I wouldn’t let her crash and burn.
‘Mo is supposed to be delivering it any minute,’ I said.
She tipped her chin to two large wood crates in the corner of the tent. ‘Randall Pelgrew picked those from his farm this morning. Brought them by a half hour ago. He said to text him if we need more.’
I walked to the crates and cracked open one of the slatted lids. The sweet scent of Honeycrisp apples wafted through the air.
‘Should I start slicing them up?’ I said.
Just as she was about to answer, Julius shot into the tent, barreling right for me. The Great Dane’s massive body slammed into the folding table, and Lia jumped up to catch it before it toppled.
‘What the hell?’ she huffed as Julius trotted toward me and bowed his head for a pat.
I smoothed the fur on top of his head. Bent down to get a look at his healing muzzle.
As I touched his lips, ran my hands down his neck, I waited for that familiar cramping in my bones.
The dizziness and tinge of metal on my tongue.
When nothing shocked me, I looked into Julius’s big brown eyes.
‘You staying away from those porcupines?’
He let out a small whimper like I’d reminded him of his pain.
‘Dani,’ Lia huffed. ‘You have to get him out of here.’
I grabbed the dog’s collar and moved outside, waving down the judge and Eric, who were scurrying around the tent across the street readying it for the pie-eating contest.
‘Missing something?’ I called to them.
Both their heads snapped up. Eric gave the judge a withering look before coming to collect Julius.
‘Sorry, Dani.’ Eric was dressed in jeans and a white Denver Broncos polo that he often wore when he worked the sidelines during home games.
He’d taken the job as a commentator when his days as a player ended with a bad break to his right tibia.
‘We brought his bed into the tent, and he was content a minute ago when I checked on him.’
‘It’s all right. Gave me a chance to look him over after the recent quill incident.’
Eric’s lips went firm. ‘I keep telling Gerald to not let him stray too far in the woods, but I swear Julius knows where those porcupines are hiding every time.’
‘Leash him up for his walks,’ I said, feeling like that was a refrain I kept mentioning to all my clients.
‘Will do. I promise.’ He gave me a wide smile, bunching up his warm brown cheeks, before he tugged Julius away.
Once I returned to the children’s tent, Lia gave me a pointed look.
‘What?’
‘I swear you’re freaking Snow White come to life. We can’t go anywhere without some critter wanting to get close.’
‘It’s the kind and sweet vibe I give off,’ I said with a tease.
‘Good thing that reporter wasn’t here. God knows how he’d twist it.’
‘You know his name. And one dog coming to greet me is proof of nothing.’
‘Okay, Snow,’ she muttered before going back to her vegetables.
I slid the lid back onto the crate, but not before grabbing one tempting apple, rubbing it against my T-shirt, and giving it a good bite. ‘Where’s Aster?’ I said as juice dribbled down my chin.
‘She texted me five minutes ago. Said she had one errand to run, and then she’d be here.’
‘Please tell me she did not book any events for today. We’re going to need her once the kids show up,’ I said.
‘All she said was that it was something important we needed for today.’
I walked back to the table in the center of the tent and grabbed a few paper bowls. ‘Might as well start cutting up the apples while we wait for her.’
Lia’s mouth puckered.
‘What now?’
‘They get brown when you cut them up.’
‘That won’t matter if the kids are covering them in chocolate.’
She shrugged. Went back to her own work.
‘We are not doing this all day. Say what’s on your mind before I go all big sister on you.’
‘People are talking. Ever since that dinner at Clo’s, Bryce has been turning over every stone in Harvest Moon.
Asking probing questions about the town’s history, and about our family lines.
Elena even told me that he had coffee the other day with the chief.
What the hell does the chief know? He’s only lived here a few years.
’ She stopped, the lines hardening around her mouth. ‘And Aster—’
‘What about her?’
‘He’s been talking to her matched couples. Asking them about their original interactions with her. How she brought them together.’
A chill raced through my veins. I was supposed to be protecting my sisters, not letting Bryce dig through their lives with a machete.
‘I’ve spoken to Bryce a couple of times in the last few days, and he’s given no indication that he’s discovered anything earth-shattering. If he had, he’d definitely show up at my door to interrogate me.’
‘So you are talking to him regularly. What else are you two doing?’ she said with too much bitterness.
‘I’m staying on top of this, Lee. That’s all you need to know.’
She muttered something about who was on top of who and I ignored her. Went back to inspecting the apples. The tension rose until she finally murmured, ‘Do you really think he’d say a word to you if he found something?’
That knowing look he gave me as he asked about the journal and Ambrosia flashed through my head. Yeah, I was not sharing that piece of information.
‘Have you ever known anyone in this town to stay quiet when it comes to gossip?’
She shook her head.
‘As long as nothing weird happens, all he’ll have is the basics found in the archives. What people have told him. A lot of that is myth and can’t be proven. And if I know anything about Bryce, it’s that he’s serious about his sources and his facts.’
‘Yeah, right, nothing weird.’ Her gaze lingered on the table Julius almost knocked over before she went back to her vegetable art.
After plucking a handful of apples from the crate, I grabbed a cutting board and went to work.
The sounds and smells of late summer filtered toward us.
A few tents away, a vendor from Leadville made kettle corn, the scent of sugar and cinnamon coating the air.
The judge and Eric had set up a wireless speaker, and songs from old country favorites like Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard had me humming along.
I continued to slice up the apples, putting them in sealed plastic containers, and setting them inside a nearby cooler to keep them cold. As I was getting into a good rhythm, Lia’s shoulders tensed. Her head whipped left and right, and she said a very guarded ‘Fuck.’
Before I could ask what she’d sensed outside, the tent ruffled and Bryce appeared looking like a too-hot lumberjack. A deep blue Henley clung to his broad shoulders. Jeans that fit his ass so well it should have been illegal. And he was still wearing those boots, which had to be broken in by now.
‘What are you doing here?’ Lia grumbled.
‘I heard this is the best and busiest tent in the festival. Thought I’d offer my services.’
Lia arched a brow. ‘Services? What are you planning to do? Interrogate the children until they cry?’
‘Lee,’ I chided her.
‘No, it’s a fair question. I was hoping you’d give me a job, Lia. The one nobody in this tent wants to do,’ Bryce said.
You had to hand it to him, even though Lia looked like she wanted to dropkick him to the county line, he was still trying to win her over.
She paused for a few seconds before a devious look spread across her face. ‘The apple-dipping station is all yours.’