CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
By late morning, Fallfest was in full swing.
Georgie closed her booth and disappeared into the baking tent beside the hot air balloon to judge the pie competition, leaving me to wander.
I drifted past the cider stand, the antique stall, the booths of high school kids selling hand-painted pumpkins.
Everywhere I turned, someone waved or smiled or asked how Serena’s wedding went. I smiled back until my cheeks ached.
A gust of wind shifted the tree branches, scattering orange leaves across the cobblestones. I tilted my face toward the sky and exhaled.
The truth was, I loved this place. Always had.
For all its gossip and smallness, it was home.
It had shaped every piece of me I’d spent years trying to edit out.
When I thought about it, the flaws weren’t really flaws at all—they were integral, functioning parts of the intangible magic that couldn’t be replicated if anyone tried.
What other beautiful things had I missed in pursuit of the orderly?
I passed the photo booth near the end of Harbor Street and froze. Teddy’s logo was still printed on the side: Bowman Photography. Weddings. Events. Memories. Leave it to him to somehow procure a professional-grade photo booth in the span of a couple days.
A pang hit me square in the chest. It really did look like he was putting down roots here.
I stepped closer, fingers brushing the edge of the velvet booth curtain, and found a single photo strip tacked beneath the plastic cover. Four squares—Teddy and Ivy both mid-laugh, his arm around her shoulders, blue eyes sparkling in vibrant color.
Perhaps she never became his ex-girlfriend.
I shook my head with a small sigh. Teddy wouldn’t do that—and it didn’t matter, either. In a little over twenty-four hours, I’d be in New York. I didn’t have any sort of claim over him, and I never really did.
I tore my gaze away, forcing my feet to move.
The green of town square was crowded with onlookers admiring the garish hot-air balloon and a line of people trying to squeeze in for the pie competition.
Kids squealed every time the flame roared.
Applause and the sound of Georgie’s voice on a speaker boomed from inside the tent.
I smiled despite the jumble of feelings I still had yet to untangle.
I stopped on the sidewalk by the beach, just watching. I didn’t realize someone had joined me until a small voice said, “It’s louder than I expected.”
I turned. Camille stood there, clutching a caramel apple, curls pulled back with a pumpkin clip.
“Hey,” I said, eyes darting through our surroundings for our father.
Had he seriously left his five-year-old alone in a new town to find me? I heard his laugh, booming and rehearsed, drifting across the road. He stood beside the hot air balloon with his arm draped across the basket, head tilted in conspiratorially as he whispered to a woman I’d never seen before.
Then I was six again, sick to my stomach and wandering through Fallfest searching for my father. I couldn’t remember where I found him. Only that he wasn’t where he was supposed to be.
“Hi,” Camille said, shaking me from my memories. Literally. She tugged at the bottom of my shirt, leaving a sticky residue on the hem in the pattern of her fingers. “Dad said to find you,” she said matter-of-factly, as if us being sisters was the most natural thing in the world.
I peered at the newfound stain on my shirt, the pièce de résistance to the ring of coffee soaked into the black fabric. It occurred to me—perhaps too late—that I had no idea how to interact with a child. I didn’t have siblings, and I never really felt like a kid even when I was one.
Only, I did have a sibling now. Something strange and warm bloomed at the thought.
“Are you okay?” she asked, eyebrows furrowed. “Can you talk?”
I laughed and squatted until we were eye-level. “I don’t believe we’ve properly met. I’m Margot.”
“Cami,” she replied with a caramel-crusted grin. “Do you have a nickname?”
“Not anything fun.”
Cami pursed her lips and seemed to think hard. Then: “How about Go-Go?”
I choked and covered it up with another laugh. Glancing up at the sky, I smiled at the absurdity of the situation and said, “Sure. Go-Go it is.”
As if summoned, Andrew appeared a few feet away, hands stuffed into his jacket pockets. He looked uncomfortable watching us interact—his two worlds finally colliding, and only thanks to the dying wish of a woman I’d never meet.
“Margot,” he said, nodding. “Thanks for agreeing to meet.”
“Sure.”
I rose to my feet, feeling stuck between the sudden attachment to my newfound sister and the unfortunate fact of our father’s existence. We stood there, the three of us, awkwardly framed by autumn cheer and the distant sound of folk music.
Camille tugged on her father’s sleeve. “Can we go up in the balloon?”
Andrew hesitated. “Maybe later—”
“You don’t like heights,” she told him. “Go-Go should take me,” Camille said brightly, pointing at me with her half-eaten caramel apple.
I raised an eyebrow.
He blinked. “That’s not—”
But Camille was already looking at me with wide, hopeful eyes. “Please?”
I sighed, rubbing the back of my neck. “Fine. But only if… he says it’s okay.”
Andrew nodded, relief flickering in his expression. “Just be careful.”
Ten minutes later, I stood in a wicker basket surrounded by rope and propane tanks, wondering how I’d been tricked into this.
My stomach tied itself into knots somewhere between the sidewalk and the death march to this torture chamber.
I’d watched it bob over the roofs of Main Street shops all week, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that if it was going to burst and plummet to the ground, it would happen while I was in it.
Or, worse, the tether would snap and we’d be sent drifting across the Atlantic. I pressed a hand to my mouth and gripped the edge harder.
Camille bounced beside me, face flushed with excitement as the balloon crew prepared for launch. “This is so cool,” she half-whispered, half-yelled. “I’ve never been this close to one before.”
Neither had I.
What seemed like a second later, the ground began to tilt away. My stomach dropped. We rose higher, the town shrinking beneath us into a patchwork of color and trickling dots of people navigating Fallfest.
For a few moments, neither of us spoke. The silence was unreal—no music, no chatter, just the whoosh of the burner and the rush of wind. It would’ve been beautiful if I wasn’t silently bemoaning the lack of a will and testament for my shoe collection.
“Can you help me see?” she asked finally, straining over the wall of the basket as if to demonstrate her height.
“Yeah,” I replied, quickly pulling her away from the edge and swallowing the acidic lump in my throat. Sucking in a breath, I scooped her into one arm and used the other to hold on for dear life.
I watched with fascination as her face lit up.
The caramel apple hung limp at her side, a forgotten interest. Most of it had ended up on her face, hands, and clothes—but she didn’t care.
Her eyes, the same brown as mine, sparkled with an amount of wonder I hadn’t seen in my own for years.
It almost made me forget that we were jostling in a death basket mid-air.
Almost.
She chewed her lip. “Dad said you don’t like talking to him.”
I exhaled. No preamble, no beating around the bush. We were definitely related. “That’s… complicated,” I murmured carefully.
“He said he messed up. A lot.”
“He’s not wrong,” I replied evenly, although my tongue soured. Apparently, he could be more honest with a five-year-old than me.
Cami squinted with something akin to anger. “Do you hate him?”
The question hit harder than I expected.
“No,” I said after a pause. Her expression relaxed. “I don’t hate him. I just don’t know what to do with him—do you understand?” I asked.
Camille nodded solemnly, as if that made perfect sense. “I don’t know what to do with people either sometimes.”
A laugh escaped me before I could stop it. “I think we’re going to get along well, Cami.”
She smiled, then peered down at the town plaza. “He said this place reminds him of when you were little, like me. You used to go to all the festivals.”
“That was before.”
“Before what?”
Before everything, I thought. Before Mom spent all her time out of bed behind the counter at Captain’s Table. Before Dad’s excuses and empty promises became absences. Before the building at the end of Main Street stopped feeling like a home.
“Before we got older,” I said instead.
She leaned her head on my shoulder, as if satisfied by my responses. “We’re moving here soon. Dad said it’s a good place to grow up.”
“How would he know?” I wanted to say. Cami didn’t need to hear it, though. She was still in that blissful, naive bubble where her father’s mistakes were merely abstract concepts. I wouldn’t let her grow up too fast like I did. Even if it was the last thing I did.
“It is a good place to grow up,” I murmured, “Do you like it here?”
“Yeah.”
“Good,” I said, smiling.
We hovered in silence for a long time, watching the ocean shimmer beneath the sun and crash onto a shore dotted with visitors bundled in jackets and scarves.
Then, quietly: “Are you staying?”
My throat tightened. “What do you mean?”
“Dad said you’re just visiting from… from…”
“New York,” I finished miserably.
Camille kicked the side of the basket gently. “You shouldn’t go.”
“I think I should.”
She blinked up at me, steadily drooping eyes full of hope and fondness. “But then you’ll miss the Christmas festival. Dad said it’s the best one.”
I looked down. Bluebell Cove hummed with life below us—tiny, perfectly imperfect, unbearably familiar.
“Maybe I’ll visit,” I said softly.
She frowned. “That’s not the same.”
“No,” I admitted. “It’s not.”
When we landed, Andrew was waiting. Camille jumped out first, breathless and pink-cheeked, and ran straight to him.
He lifted her up easily, spinning her once before setting her down.
She wrapped her arms around his leg and slumped into him, blissfully unaware of how strange it was to lean on someone like Andrew Wade.
I cleared my throat and said, “She did great.”
“She usually does.”
We stood in uneasy silence for a beat.
“Thank you for spending time with her,” he said. “She’s been… curious about you.”
“Aren’t kids curious about everything?” I quipped.
He studied me. “That’s not what I meant.”
I sighed. “Look, Andrew—”
“I know,” he interrupted. “You don’t want a relationship. I get it.”
“Good. Because I’m not sure I’d know how to have one with you anyway.”
He nodded slowly. “I probably deserve that.”
“You do.”
The breeze lifted through the gap between us, carrying laughter and the distinct smell of apples.
“I just wanted to say,” he added, “Your mother is an incredible woman. I didn’t tell her that enough. And I’m sorry if I made it harder for both of you.”
For a moment, I couldn’t breathe. He deserved every ounce of vitriol I could dredge, but I came up empty.
It wasn’t reconciliation or forgiveness—I knew that waited far, far in the horizon.
But maybe, I was inching toward acceptance.
Whatever the strange, settled feeling, I hoped it was there to stay.
I nodded. “You did.”
Andrew smiled faintly. “She must be proud of you. You’re tougher than both of us combined.”
“I had to be.”
We stood there until Camille tugged his hand and asked to be held. She sunk into him, eyes sliding shut and caramel apple forgotten in the grass at their feet. He scooped it up and turned to go, but I stopped him with one last thing.
“Maybe,” I said tentatively, “We can try at being civil. For Cami.”
He met my eyes, surprise softening his features. “I’d like that.”
Then they walked away, her head nestled into his neck, swallowed by the crowd.
No, it wasn’t forgiveness, but it was something that felt a lot like release.
By the time the sun began to set, Fallfest seemed to be at maximum capacity.
I never saw it so crowded—a crush on the sidewalks of Main Street as visitors funneled in and out of the stores that remained open, the band had a crowd, and some of the booths had sold out and closed.
The sky was streaked in champagne and rose, the lanterns zigzagging from shop to shop just starting to flicker to life.
I stood in the sand, a fresh cup of hot cider cradled between my hands, and watched the water turn to churning, molten glass. The noise of the festival faded behind me.
Somewhere out there, flights were boarding, and one of those planes would soon carry me away. My suitcase sat at the bottom of my closet, half-zipped, ticket printed and waiting. One foot in, one foot out.
But for the first time in a long while, I didn’t feel like running. The discomfort and the uncertainty no longer loomed like a dark cloud that shadowed everything I saw. I was still aware of its lingering presence. Maybe I’d just… accepted it.
My mother’s words from earlier rang truer than they did before: People choose what they think will hurt least. That’s what Serena did when she chose to marry Jesse. My father thought he was doing that when he abandoned us eleven years ago—and it only ended in unimaginable heartbreak.
Maybe constantly avoiding the pain was no way to live at all.