Chapter 11
Jack
Here’s what I know about people who don’t laugh easily: When they do laugh, it’s real.
No faking, no social lubricant, no the-situation-calls-for-it reflex.
People who laugh easily laugh at everything and mean none of it.
People who don’t laugh easily—people like Lola—when they laugh, it comes from somewhere real.
I have made it my mission this week to find out what really makes her laugh.
This is not entirely selfless. I want to hear it again.
I heard it twice yesterday. Once at the axe throw and once on the Ferris wheel when I said something about the carnival operator’s ongoing feud with a seagull named Harry.
Both times it arrived like something unexpected even to her, like she’d been ambushed by her own enjoyment.
Both times she shut it down within a second.
I want the version that she doesn’t shut down.
I want to see what Lola looks like when she’s not controlling herself.
Ryan would say this is attachment getting ahead of wisdom. Archer would say it’s irresponsible given what we don’t know. Tristan would make something delicious and let me work it out.
They’re all partially right and I’m doing it anyway.
I find her at the stall at eight in the morning, which is earlier than her scheduled start.
Which means she came early because she wanted to be doing something.
I’ve noticed this about her, stillness is not her resting state.
She needs to be in motion, needs a task, needs her hands occupied and her brain forward-facing.
Tristan’s not in yet. The stall is unlocked because Tristan trusts the town.
Archer has opinions about that but it has never once been a problem because this is Sweetwater Valley.
Also because anyone who tries to rob Tristan’s stall would have to answer to roughly sixty percent of the town population and the prospect is not appealing.
She’s doing prep work. Unauthorized prep, given she’s not technically on until tomorrow, but it’s organized and correct and she clearly knows where everything goes now.
“You’re here early,” I say.
She doesn’t startle. She doesn’t even turn around, just adjusts the container she’s moving to account for my presence in the space. “You’re also early.”
“I’m always early. I’m a morning person.”
“That’s a character flaw.”
“Agreed, but here we are.” I lean on the counter. “You don’t have to be here until tomorrow.”
“I know. I had nothing else to do.”
“That’s the saddest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
She turns around. She’s wearing the apron—Tristan’s spare, the one that’s slightly too big for her—and her hair is up in the way it goes when she’s going to work. “What are you doing here?”
“There’s a problem,” I say, “with the ring toss.”
Her eyes sharpen. She cannot help herself when there’s an issue. “What kind of problem?”
“Structural. Come look.”
“I’m in the middle of—”
“It’ll take ten minutes.”
She unties the apron. I love that she unties the apron.
The ring toss problem is, in the technical sense, a real problem.
The far anchor for the banner has worked loose overnight and the whole sign is listing left so it will look wrong when the carnival opens at noon.
I need someone to hold the tension on one side while I reattach the anchor, and I could get any of the setup crew to do it, but I went and found Lola instead.
This is the difference between a real problem and a useful problem.
She holds the tension with both hands, standing on the platform step, and she’s doing it right.
She found the right point immediately, the spot where the hold actually redistributes the load rather than creating a new stress point.
This tells me she’s got some structural instinct in her past that I’m adding to my ongoing catalogue of things-about-Lola-I-don’t-know-yet.
“Pull left a fraction,” I say, from the anchor point.
She pulls left a fraction.
“There.” I get the anchor reset in about ninety seconds. “Perfect.”
She releases the tension, steps down, looks up at the now-level banner with an assessing eye. “It’ll hold?”
“Until tomorrow at least. I’ll do a proper reattach tonight.”
She gives me a look. “Is this a real problem or a you-wanted-company problem?”
“Can’t it be both?”
“Jack.”
“Both,” I confirm. “It’s definitely both.”
She makes the sound that isn’t quite a laugh and falls into step beside me anyway, which is the part that matters. We walk the ring toss perimeter in the early morning quiet.
“Jack,” she starts.
“Mm.”
“The bond,” she says. “You said you’d find the solution to get rid of it.”
And there it is.
I’ve been waiting for this since Wednesday, running quiet calculations about the right moment and the right words, and the right moment is apparently Friday morning at the ring toss with the carnival ground near-empty and the river audible through the tree line.
“I know,” I say.
“You said you’d have something.”
“I know that too.” I stop walking. She stops with me, and we’re at the far end of the game alley, the river path visible through the gap in the stall row. “I’ve been making calls. People who know more about partial bonds than I do.”
“And?”
“And it’s complicated. More complicated than I thought it would be.”
She looks at me with a frown on her beautiful lips. “How complicated?”
I take a deep breathe. “The standard advice for an unwanted partial bond is distance and time. Sustained separation. The bond-pull fades if the parties aren’t in range of each other for long enough. Unfortunately, everyone seems to think that time frame is about fifty years.”
“Fifty years?”
I nod. “Which would mean you leaving. Which is—” I stop. “Which is an option. It’s a real option and I want you to know that. If that’s what you want, I will help you find somewhere to go and I will not—”
“Jack,” she interrupts.
“I’m not finished.”
“Jack.” Her voice is angry now. “I can’t put my life on hold for fifty years. Surely there is something else we can do?”
“I’ll keep looking,” I promise. And I will. Honestly, the thought of having this partial bond and not being able to see her for five decades doesn’t fill me with joy either.
She sighs but doesn’t say anything. I hate seeing her so dissuaded by my lack of good news. I want to turn her frown upside down.
“Come with me,” I say, grabbing her hand.
“Come with you where?”
I’m already moving. She follows, which she does more readily than she did three days ago, though I think she’d argue the point.
I lead her to the food row while the setup crew is still at the far end of the ground.
I stop at the test station that one of the vendors—Danny, who runs the fried potato operation with the seriousness of someone performing important cultural preservation—left unlocked when he ran to get more oil from the supply tent.
“We’re not,” Lola says.
“We absolutely are.” I’m already behind the counter. “He’s got a batch of batter ready.”
“That’s stealing.”
“It’s quality testing. There’s a distinction.” I locate the testing portions—Danny always does testing portions before opening, small batches for flavor check—and hold one up. “These are literally made to be eaten before service. I’m just streamlining the process.”
She looks at the batch. She looks at me.
She comes behind the counter.
I hand her the first piece and she eats it without ceremony. I watch the pure delight brighten her expression.
“That’s very good,” she says.
“Danny’s been doing this stall for twelve years.
He’s had time to get it right.” I eat my own piece.
“Every stall on this row has a signature thing. Danny’s is the potato, specifically the herb crust. Tristan’s is obviously everything, but the honey-salt dough is the headline.
Jenny, two stalls down, does a cold sesame noodle situation that sounds wrong for a carnival and is in fact transcendent. ”
“You’ve eaten everything on the row?”
“Every year, first morning before opening. It’s a tradition.”
She looks at me. “You do that alone?”
“Usually. Pack’s not big on morning carnival shenanigans.” I pop the container closed and return everything to where it was. “Jack’s unofficial quality audit. I leave notes.”
“You leave notes?”
“Constructive feedback. Danny’s been doing the perfect potato for twelve years because I told him on year two that the herb balance was off.” I hold the counter panel up for her to exit. “You’re welcome, Danny.”
She slips under the panel, and she’s close when she does it. Closer than necessary, the setup is tight but not that tight, and she knows it and I know it and neither of us names it.
We do the whole row.
We stop at each stall and I talk her through the signature item and the vendor and the history.
She eats without reluctance, which I’ve noticed is how she eats when she’s stopped monitoring herself, and she asks good questions.
I answer them and she answers the questions I ask in return.
Somewhere around Jenny’s cold sesame noodles—which I am correct about, they’re transcendent, she makes that delighted face for a full two seconds—she stops censoring herself and just says what she wants to.
We talk about food first, which is easy. She has opinions. They’re good opinions, highly specific and based on experience rather than rumor. She’s had food from enough places that when she says something is good I believe her because she’s got the comparison base.
Then we talk about carnivals. She’s been to more than she made it sound earlier. A night market in a city she doesn’t name. A river festival somewhere that clearly meant something to her. A pier carnival when she was a kid that had a fortuneteller she visited three times.
“What did she tell you?” I ask.
“First time, something generic. Second time, something that seemed generic and turned out to be accurate enough to be uncomfortable.” She pauses. “Third time, she told me I was going to spend a long time looking for the right place to land.”
I look at her.