Chapter Seventeen
I woke up to the sound of gulls squabbling over a meal they’d no doubt found in someone’s trash. Their screeches filtered through my cracked bedroom window, sharp enough to startle me awake even after I’d spent most of the night tossing and turning.
Easton was sprawled diagonally across the bed, legs twitching as he growled at an imaginary sand crab. My pillow lodged itself halfway down the floor, my quilt wrapped around my ankles, and my neck was cricked from a few hours of sleep bent at weird angles.
I dragged myself upright and blinked into the gray morning light. It smelled faintly of brine and damp earth, that post-rain aroma that clung to the air. Somewhere down the lane, a wind chime clinked lazily, far too cheerful for my present mood.
Coffee. Coffee would fix at least half my problems.
Too bad I had no coffee.
I shuffled to the kitchen, ripped a hot chocolate packet into a mug, and waited for my pot of water to heat up. By the time I carried my comfort drink to the living room, my shoulders sagged further and further to the floor.
I curled up in the corner of the couch, mug cupped tight between my palms. It was chocolatey and faintly dusty, but even that couldn’t distract from the replay in my head: Claire, standing at the podium in Town Hall, manicured slides behind her, velvet ropes and ticket prices and profit margins spilling from her perfect lipsticked mouth.
People clapped. They nodded and even cheered.
No one stood up to say, “This isn’t what Bluebell Cove is about.”
Except me—briefly. And then I folded like she had offered me a box of cookies.
What had Claire said? Dire circumstances call for uncomfortable choices.
I pressed my warmed palm to my forehead.
She might’ve been right. Maybe the Summer’s End Festival as we knew it really was finished.
Maybe all those memories—the carnival rides and pie contests and sparklers lighting up Main Street—were just that.
Echoes of the past that no longer had a place in reality.
Apparently Margot, Wes, Serena and Teddy were ahead of the curve when they left.
Easton clambered onto the couch beside me, his head flopping into my lap with a heavy sigh. No matter how many times I bathed him, he always seemed to smell faintly of seaweed—but I scratched behind his ears anyway. At least one of us could relax.
I set my mug down on the end table and traded it for my pottery sketchbook. Time to try and follow his lead.
The knock at the door startled me so badly I nearly dropped the pad on Easton’s head. He thumped his tail without opening his eyes, excited for a visitor but not quite sure if he would commit by moving from his spot on my lap.
“Georgie!” Margot’s voice rang through the door. “Open up before I kick it down.”
I groaned and shuffled to the door, Easton immediately awake and weaving through my legs. “Don’t you have anything better to do?” I asked as soon as I cracked it open.
She stood there in loose slacks and a cardigan—probably the most casual I’d seen her since the pink fuzzy pants fiasco—hair twisted into a low bun, clutching a paper bag that smelled unmistakably like blueberry muffins.
“Well, let me see: it’s raining—again—and Ruth’s on a we-need-to-spend-more-time-together kick. So… no?”
I stepped aside, too sleep deprived to argue. Easton perked up instantly at the smell, circling her legs with his snout stuck in the air as he sniffed.
Margot dropped the bag on the coffee table, surveyed me, and whistled low. “Yikes. You’re beginning to look like the bride of Frankenstein.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“Sit,” she commanded, pulling a muffin free and thrusting it into my hand. “Now. Explain why Georgette Wheeler is currently doing her best impression of a hermit.”
I sank back onto the couch and counted the reasons on my fingers: “No Marigold’s. No festival. No Georgie.”
Multiple syllables were overrated anyway.
Margot sunk onto a floor cushion, tearing her muffin into neat quarters on the table. “Let me guess—the meeting yesterday with Claire still has you down?”
“Pretty much.” I ripped off a huge chunk of my muffin. “But it’s not that she’s perfect. It’s that she’s perfect, and she has everyone convinced she’s saving the festival. Like we would’ve been helpless without her.”
Margot chewed thoughtfully, one eyebrow raised. “And this upsets you because…?”
“Because it’s not right! This town doesn’t need a fancy gala with an absurd entrance fee. It needs—” I broke off, scowling at the rest of my muffin. “It needs to feel like—” I motioned wildly, crumbs flying everywhere. “Bluebell Cove.”
She tilted her head. “So why are you sulking instead of saying that to everyone else?”
“I did. Kind of.”
“You tried once and then retreated to your cave.”
I glared. “Thanks for the recap, Margot.”
She popped another piece of muffin into her mouth, entirely unbothered.
“Look—you’ve got two choices. One: keep wallowing on the couch with your carbs and—” She swept a concerned gaze over my lumpy cushions and wrinkled her nose.
“A thin blanket of dog hair. Two: fight for the Summer’s End Festival.
And maybe,” she added slyly, “for your carpenter, too.”
I nearly choked. “He’s not my carpenter.”
Why did everyone keep saying that?
“But you want him to be.” She pointed her muffin piece at me like a judge’s gavel. “Be honest—I’ll bet you practically levitated when he showed up at your door last night with a bag of donuts, of all things. That’s like your version of a bouquet.”
I forgot that Margot fielded several panic-induced texts last night about Rhett’s appearance at my door. My ears burned.
“You don’t know that.”
“Don’t need to. You’re about as transparent as glass.”
I shoved the rest of the muffin into my mouth just to keep from answering.
Margot sat back with a satisfied sigh. “Now. Are you going to keep pouting, or are you going to do something about it? Because this—” She waved at me. “Is not the Georgie I know.”
After Margot left—with the smug warning that she’d “check in later to make sure I wasn’t sulking again”—I tugged on my rain boots and jacket. The air outside was damp and cool, the streets still shining and puddled from last night’s storm.
I told myself I was walking Easton, but the truth was, I needed to move. I needed to feel the town’s pulse, even if I dreaded what I found.
Main Street buzzed more than usual for a Friday morning in September. Shopkeepers swept their stoops and wiped their windows until they gleamed, and the post office door beside Callahan’s Garage creaked with a steady stream of neighbors clutching packages.
As I passed, voices drifted toward me.
“Claire’s plan is ambitious,” Mrs. Patel said outside the Cove Market, her arms laden with a heavy brown bag of groceries. “But imagine what that kind of fundraising could do for us.”
“Tourists don’t need pomp and circumstance to see that Bluebell Cove is special,” muttered Mrs. Henderson, wrapped in a Market apron. “They need a reason to feel welcome. Claire doesn’t know the first thing about welcome.”
I walked faster, cheeks heating. Mrs. Henderson was an unlikely ally.
Farther down, near the Morning Bell, two teenagers leaned against the window, sipping iced coffees.
“Did you see the part about the VIP tent?” one asked. “It looked like Coachella!”
The other laughed. “Yeah, but who in town’s gonna afford a hundred bucks just to sit in a tent?”
“Not my parents.”
Their laughter followed me.
It was like this everywhere I turned: half the town seemed preoccupied by Claire’s shiny promises, and the other half shaking their heads but too resigned to argue. And there was me, stuck in the middle, trying to figure out how I could possibly go up against someone like her.
Easton nosed at a puddle, splashing water onto my boots. I tugged him along, trying to swallow the lump forming in my throat.
We ended up at the end of Main, where the road met Harbor Street and stretched out to the white sands of the beach. The sky had cleared to a pale, tentative blue, and gulls bobbed lazily on the calm tide.
I sat on the worn bench near the diner, leash looped around my wrist, and allowed myself to slip away.
I was eight the year my grandmother first let me bake a pie for the contest. It was blackberry, the crust lopsided, and my hands had been sore from rolling dough and attempting a lattice top.
The whole festival gathered around the wooden tables decorated with autumnal bunting, laughter echoing through the town plaza down the road.
When my pie earned a third-place ribbon, Frank hoisted me onto his shoulders like I’d just won Olympic gold. The sun had been warm on my face, the smell of sugar and cinnamon thick in the air, and for one shining moment I’d believed Bluebell Cove was the best place on earth.
The prize wasn’t what stuck with me. It was the feeling—when everyone there, resident or tourist, felt part of something special. When, for a weekend, Bluebell Cove belonged to anyone who wanted it.
That was the festival’s magic. The reason they always came home to it.
Not galas. Not hors d'oeuvres or profits or VIP tents.
I blinked hard, my throat tightening. Easton rested his chin on my knee and stared with those huge, curious eyes.
Margot had been right. Claire might’ve had the credentials, but she didn’t get it.
She couldn’t. She hadn’t grown up sticky-fingered from competitive pie making or exhausted from manning carnival ticket booths or dizzy from twirling under the web of string lights above Main Street with every other kid in her town.
I had.
And maybe—just maybe—that made me the right one to save it after all.
By the time I trudged home, the afternoon light had splashed a wave of gold across the rooftops. My hair was frizzed from the sea breeze, the bottom half of my jeans were soaked from puddles, and my heart beat felt steadier than it had in days.
I set a pot of water on the stove and wrenched open the drawer to my entryway table.
Sometime in the last couple days, during one of my sulking episodes, I had shoved my notebook in there so that I’d never have to see it again.
The edges were bent, some of the pages were wrinkled, and several remnants of paper had been left hanging on the metal spiral.
A smile stretched across my lips as I traced my fingers over the notes I was looking for.
I had been so focused on what we didn’t have—the carnival rides, out-of-town vendors that were dropping like flies—that I forgot what really made Bluebell Cove so special.
Deep down, I was sure that there would be others who’d feel the same.
Easton thumped his tail against the floor beside me as I began to draw.