Chapter 10 Eva #2
Lia rolls her eyes in a way that says, “This is what I deal with.” I like her even more.
“Can I hold him?” I ask, gesturing to Porter.
“Please,” Lia says. “He’s sick of us.”
I take the baby carefully, and he immediately stops fussing. Just looks up at me with huge dark eyes, curious and calm.
“Oh, you little faker,” Lia says. “You were screaming two seconds ago.”
Porter makes a small cooing sound, and my crabby mood softens.
“You’re a natural,” Gran says. “Maybe you should babysit sometime.”
“I’d love that.” The words come out before I can think about them.
“You can come down anytime,” Lia says, gesturing toward her house down the lane from Gran’s. “Seriously. We’re always here, always covered in baby drool, always desperate for adult conversation.”
“You might have to dodge Baabara to get to the house,” Ethan adds, “but I hear she likes you, too.”
The casual invitation makes me want to cry for reasons I can’t fully explain. The Bedd family seems to have the same sort of open-door acceptance Esther curated for us Storm girls. It’s jarring for me to realize it can exist elsewhere.
I hide a sniffle behind Porter’s hair. Soon, he starts to fuss again, and Lia takes him, kissing Ethan on the cheek. “We should get home before he really loses it.”
After they leave, Gran says, “Want to see the rest of the basement setup? I’ve got some hydroponic experiments going that might interest you.”
I should get back to my inbox, or my dusting, or looking up realtors, but Ethel Bedd and her basement garden sound way more fun. We head downstairs, and she shows me her system—the water reservoirs, the nutrient solutions, the careful pH monitoring.
“This is amazing,” I say, taking photos with my phone. “I have an almost-brother-in-law who is a hydroponic scientist. He grows tiny Christmas trees.”
As I’m talking, explaining my family and their businesses and how they’d react to all of this, I realize something. I want to show them Fork Lick.
Not just tell them about it but bring them here. Show them the maple grove and the Bedds’ farm and Gran’s basement garden. Introduce them to Latonya and Diego and Baabara the sheep.
I want them to see what I see here.
I want them to understand why I’m… what? Considering staying? Actually staying?
I don’t even know anymore.
“You look conflicted, dear,” Gran says gently.
“I am.” I sink onto a stool near her potting bench. “My sisters need me. I begged them to let me take on their marketing and branding, and now I’ve built a whole business around helping them succeed. And, well, I work for them.”
“And that’s wonderful. But is it what you want?”
“I don’t know. I thought it was. But then I came here and found this property and this community and—” I gesture helplessly. “I don’t know where I belong anymore.”
“Maybe you belong in both places.”
“That’s not possible.”
“Why not? Your sisters could visit. You could visit them. The world’s not as big as it used to be, Eva.”
She makes it sound so simple. I’m very obviously in some sort of honeymoon phase with Fork Lick. It all looks shiny and exciting right now, but in reality, I don’t even have internet access or any sort of plan to keep up with my property taxes.
Gran hands me a mint leaf, which I munch before blurting, “And then there’s Walter and June—the family I never knew about. I never knew I had this missing piece and… now that I do, it feels really important to at least explore it a bit.”
“You don’t have to decide today,” Gran says. “Or even this week. Just… don’t close doors before you’ve walked through them, okay?”
Back at Pierce Acres, I sit at my kitchen table, staring at my laptop. I’ve answered the urgent emails. Sent the files Eden needed. Fixed Eila’s website. Apologized to Esther for missing another Storm dinner.
Gran must have one heck of a router over at Bedd Fellows because I still have Wi-Fi access at the house, enough that my phone will at least receive text messages. And it starts to do so at a rapid pace.
Esther
Thanks for the files. You okay up there?
Eden
Yeah, you’ve been quiet. Everything all right?
Eila
If the yeti is being weird, I can come up there and kick his ass
Eliza
We miss you
The sentiment from Eliza hits the hardest. She’s a hard-ass who doesn’t readily communicate her feelings. I stare at the messages, at these women who raised me and love me and need me.
And then I look around Pierce Acres. At the boxes of photos.
At the list of renovations that will take months to complete.
I’ve been avoiding the photos since Lionel handed over the keys.
They’re in boxes stacked in the corner of the living room, cardboard edges soft with age.
Someone’s whole life, boxed up and waiting.
I should sort through them. Add it to the list right under “figure out my entire future” and “stop thinking about the grumpy neighbor who rejected me.”
But Gran’s words keep rattling around in my head. Don’t close doors before you’ve walked through them.
Before I can talk myself out of it, I’m on the floor, pulling the first box toward me. The photos on top are what I expected—landscapes of the property in different seasons, the maple grove heavy with snow, the sugar shack before it started sagging.
But deeper in the box, the photos get more interesting.
Birthday parties with cake smeared on little faces.
A young couple slow dancing in this very kitchen.
Walter and June, I realize, decades younger than the portrait in the hallway.
They’re laughing at something off-camera, and June’s head is thrown back, her whole body radiating joy.
I trace my finger along the edge of the photo. She was beautiful. Dark hair like mine, the same round cheeks I see in my mirror—the same wide smile Esther says I use to get out of trouble.
I dig deeper.
Near the bottom of the box, I find a manila envelope, thick with papers. The label reads STICK A FORK IN IT - 1987 in careful handwriting.
The photo inside makes me catch my breath. It’s the Fork Lick Sap Festival. Hand-painted banners hang between the streetlights. Folding tables overflow with mason jars. And at the center of it all, wearing a Pierce Acres apron and holding a clipboard, is June.
She’s running this thing. I can see it in her posture, the way the surrounding vendors are looking to her for direction, the way she’s gesturing toward something with her pen… A woman in charge. God, the resemblance.
It’s not just the dark hair or the cheekbones. It’s the energy. Even in a forty-year-old photograph, I feel it radiating off her—that same buzzy, let’s-make-this-happen spark my sisters tease me about. The one Asher probably thinks is shallow.
But June wasn’t shallow. She was organizing a community festival. My hands shake slightly as I flip to the next item in the envelope. It’s a handwritten list on yellow legal paper, the edges gone brown with age.
Stick a Fork in It — Marketing Ideas
Follow-up postcards to all vendors (personalized, handwritten)
“Sappy Stories” newsletter — monthly? quarterly?
Photo feature: behind the scenes at Pierce Acres
Recipe cards with each syrup purchase (tied with ribbon?)
Punny slogans: “We’re STUCK on you” / I’d TAP that / “You make us SAPPY”
I laugh at that last one, the sound startling in the quiet house. She was leaning into the pun. That’s what I do. Or I try to do, anyway… find the angle that makes people smile and click and share.
There’s a rough sketch of what looks like a magazine layout. “The Sappy Times,” she’d titled it, with hand-drawn maple leaves bordering the masthead. Notes about printing costs, distribution ideas, and a list of potential advertisers from other Fork Lick businesses.
June Pierce was planning a content strategy in 1987. She just didn’t have the same tools I have to execute it.
I sit back on my heels, the papers spread around me like evidence.
My throat feels parched in a way that has nothing to do with Asher or my sisters or the mountain of work this property needs.
All this time, I’ve been thinking of my influencer skills as something frivolous. Something my sisters tolerate.
But June had the same instincts. The same understanding that connection matters, that story matters, that making people feel something is its own kind of value. She built community through sappiness—both kinds.
I look around the house, at the faded wallpaper, the solid bones beneath the neglect, the view of the maple grove through the kitchen window. This isn’t just an inheritance. It’s not even just a business opportunity.
It’s a legacy. My legacy. From a woman I never got to meet, but who apparently passed down more than just property.
Gran asked me why I couldn’t belong to both places. Pittsburgh and Fork Lick. My sisters and this new life.
Maybe the real question is whether I’m brave enough to claim something that’s just mine.
Not because my sisters need me. Not because Asher might eventually stop being an idiot.
But because a woman named June Pierce had a vision for this place, and somehow I’m the one who inherited both the land and the skill set to make it real.
I gather the papers, sliding them back into the envelope. Then I pull out my phone and snap a photo of June at the festival—her clipboard, her apron, her incandescent smile.
I don’t post it anywhere. Not yet. This one’s just for me.
I know just what to text my sisters.
Eva
I’m okay. More than okay, actually. I think I’m staying.