Chapter 33
Ethan
For the first time in his adult life, Ethan Hale was early to a town hall meeting.
He’d already unfolded two dozen metal chairs and lined them up. He’d tightened the loose knob on the projector until it finally stopped jiggling. He’d even rearranged the cookie trays twice, like anyone would care if the brownies came before the apple pie cookies.
And now he was pacing back and forth across the front of the room, heart thumping like he was about to walk into a fistfight instead of a civic meeting.
The doors creaked open.
Juniper Marrow strode in with a clipboard pressed against her chest. She wore a charcoal-gray pencil skirt with heels that clicked with every step, and a blouse patterned with stars so subtle they only caught the light when she turned.
Her glasses slid down her nose as she took in the sight of him before her.
She stopped short. “Early to a town hall meeting, Ethan? Are you ill?”
A dry laugh scraped from his throat. “Not yet.”
One eyebrow arched.
“I, uh…have a request.” He cleared his throat, trying for nonchalance and failing.
Juniper gave a small hum. “Ah. Don’t tell me. I’m not usually one for surprises, but I’ll make an exception in this case. I have a feeling.” She swept past him to drop her clipboard at the front table and busied herself flipping through the pages.
Ethan rubbed the back of his neck then retreated to the first row. He clasped his hands together and stared at the grooves in the floorboards, flexing his fingers as though he could wring the tension out through his knuckles.
One by one, the folding chairs around him filled.
Neighbors streamed in with their chatter and casseroles and complaints about potholes.
Voices overlapped, and the air was thick with the usual chaos, but Ethan heard none of it clearly.
His mind kept dragging him back to the last time he’d stood in this very room and asked for something.
Back then, he’d wanted the bureau kept away. He’d wanted Honey kept away.
He remembered how bitter it had tasted when they couldn’t help. He’d walked out convinced it had been proof of what he’d always known, that asking for help was pointless. That it only led to disappointment, and he was better off handling things himself.
But tonight was different. Damn it, it had to be.
He rubbed his palms against his thighs and looked toward the front where Juniper and Poppy were fussing with the gavel and clipboards.
He thought of Honey again, the sting of losing her still sharp enough to knock the breath from his chest if he wasn’t careful.
And yet…as much as he missed her, as much as it hurt to picture her walking away, he couldn’t deny that some part of him was glad the town hadn’t been able to help back then.
Gavel in hand, Poppy strutted up to the podium, and Ethan straightened in his seat.
“Order!” Poppy smacked the gavel down, the sound cracking through the gym. “Brim’s Hollow Town Meeting is now in session! And unless you’ve got better cookies than the Hales, you’d best hush and listen.”
A wave of chuckles rippled across the folding chairs. Poppy gave a pleased nod, then stepped aside with a flourish, gesturing for Juniper to take her place.
But Juniper didn’t rise. She adjusted her glasses, leveled her gaze directly at Ethan, and said, “Mr. Hale?” In lieu of an opening statement, she was handing him the floor.
He pushed himself to his feet. Murmurs flickered through the crowd as he straightened, and the scrape of chairs echoed as people craned to see him. Ethan’s heart pounded in time with the second hand of the clock above the bleachers.
Dozens of faces turned toward him. Familiar ones.
The neighbors who had dropped casseroles at his door after Leticia left.
The BooBees who made sure his girls had mittens when the winter set in.
Theo’s mom, who always slipped a pack of fruit snacks into Melly’s hand at school pickup.
People who had turned a blind eye to mismatched socks and late arrivals, and who pretended not to notice when he was too stubborn to ask for help.
They had given him more grace than he thought he deserved.
He cleared his throat, wiping his hands against his jeans, and forced himself to speak.
“First off,” he began, “I need to thank you. For looking after me and the girls this past year. I wasn’t good at saying it before. Hell, I wasn’t good at even accepting it. But you were there anyway.”
A few people nodded. Someone clapped softly.
For a second, Ethan almost left it there. He could sit back down, pretend this was nothing more than a belated thank-you. His chest ached with the temptation to retreat, to swallow the words pressing against his ribs and let life carry on as it always had. Alone. On his shoulders.
But there was too much on the line. The orchard. The well. The only home his daughters had ever known.
“I’m not just here to thank you.” Ethan curled his fists to keep from shaking and in a breath. “I need help.”
From somewhere near the back, Theo shouted, “We’ll help you get your girl back, Hale!”
Laughter rolled through the crowd, but Ethan shook his head.
“It’s not that.” He swallowed. “This isn’t about Honey. This is about the bureau and the orchard.”
The gym hushed.
“They’re not just threatening a fine anymore,” Ethan went on, forcing the words past the lump in his throat. “The bureau’s moving to seize the land outright.”
Gasps. Mutters. A rustle of shock.
“Why would they do that?” Juniper asked, her voice sharp but calm, as if directing the outrage before it could boil over.
Ethan shifted his weight, forcing himself to keep his gaze forward. “Something to do with the magic beneath the land. They say it isn’t safe.”
That broke the murmuring wide open as people began calling out toward the three Marrows whose magic flows beneath the town.
“Juniper, tell them!” someone called from the second row.
“Clover, can’t you help?”
“Runa, you know it better than anyone—”
At that, Runa Marrow started to rise. “I don’t think it’s our magic that’s the problem—”
But Ethan caught the quick shake of Juniper’s head, her eyes slicing to her aunt with a warning. Runa pressed her lips together and sat back down, the half-formed words hanging heavy in the air.
Ethan’s chest tightened, but this time it wasn’t from nerves. He could feel the outrage. If there was one thing he had always known about this town, it was that it carried a peculiar power when they were riled. Suddenly, his hands weren’t shaking anymore.
“So…what can we do?” a voice called from the back.
Ethan reached down and pulled free a thick book of regulations with sticky notes bristling from the edges, and every margin scrawled with his looping handwriting.
“I’ve been doing some reading,” he admitted. “There’s a way we can keep the bureau from touching the well or the farmhouse. We certify it as a historical site. They can’t shut down a landmark.”
He laid the book open on the front table, pages covered in regulations highlighted and underlined in three different colors. “I’ve got a list of steps. But it’s more than I can do alone. I need help from all of you.”
For a long moment, silence gripped the room.
The only sound was the slow tick of the clock above the bleachers.
A prickle of doubt ran through him. Maybe he had asked too much.
Brim’s Hollow had never been a town that trusted forms and paperwork, never the sort to follow rules when they could bend them or slip around them altogether.
Asking them to work within the lines of the law felt, for a moment, like trying to hold water in his hands.
Then a single pair of hands clapped. Slow, steady. Someone else joined in. And then a voice rang out clear: “Damn right, we’ll help!”
The sound swelled into cheers, filling the gymnasium with a noise that rattled the folding chairs.
Juniper nodded once, brisk and sharp, and grabbed the book from Ethan, scanning it over. Poppy pounded the gavel with a grin.
And Ethan—standing in the front row instead of hiding in the back—finally let himself believe it.
Juniper lifted her chin as she stepped forward.
“All right,” she said briskly, loud enough to command the room.
“If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it properly.
Clover, gather up some papers. Runa, start drafting the formal petition.
Poppy, you’re in charge of correspondence.
We’ll get a letter written to the bureau by tonight, signed by as many households as we can collect. ”
Poppy thumped his gavel like a man conducting an orchestra. “You heard the lady! Pens up, people!”
“BooBees,” Juniper snapped without looking up, “you’re on canvassing for anyone who isn’t here now. I expect every corner of this town covered.”
The BooBees straightened in their seats like soldiers, heads bobbing as one. “You got it, Principal Marrow!”
The gym burst into motion, chairs scraping, papers rustling, voices overlapping in a symphony of chaotic order.
“Tammy Gribble—minutes.” Juniper shouted over the noise, “Theo, you’ll coordinate with Ethan on compliance language. And for heaven’s sake, somebody make copies.”
Her gaze cut back to him once more, and though her mouth didn’t move, he could have sworn the message was clear enough: See? You asked. And look what happened.
Ethan stood there, binder still open in front of him, watching as the town moved not just around him, but for him. For his girls. For the orchard.
And for the first time in a long while, he didn’t feel like he was carrying the weight of everything alone.