Chapter 33 Stephanie
STEPHANIE
She'd planned on a courthouse. That had been the rational position.
Quick, efficient, no fuss. Sign the papers, exchange rings, go back to work.
She'd mentioned it to Criss the morning after he proposed, sitting cross-legged on the bed with coffee and her field journal open on her knee, and he'd said "whatever you want" with the easy sincerity of a man who genuinely didn't care about the venue as long as she showed up.
That was three days ago. Since then, the rational position had been quietly dismantled by the discovery that Stephanie Ward, who had spent her adult life keeping one foot out of every door she walked through, wanted a wedding.
Not a big one. Not a spectacle with centerpieces and a seating chart and a DJ who'd ask if she was ready to party. But something real. Something that said I chose to be here, in this town, with this man, and I'm not leaving.
She'd never had that before. A place that felt like staying.
She was sitting at the Griddle & Grind trying to figure out how to say this out loud when Twyla appeared with a second coffee Steph hadn't ordered and a look on her face that suggested the fae grapevine had been running ahead of the conversation.
"So." Twyla set the mug down and slid into the opposite chair with fluid grace. "When's the wedding?"
"How do you already know about this?"
"Honey, I could feel the bond shift three days ago. When a claiming pair decides to formalize, the magic changes texture. Sweeter. Like bread rising." Twyla's light brown eyes sparkled. "Also, Leora told me."
"Of course she did."
"She's thrilled, by the way. Cried on my counter for ten minutes, then ordered a scone and pretended it never happened.
" Twyla folded her hands on the table. "Now.
What are we thinking? Spring ceremony? Summer?
The meadow past the northern ridge is gorgeous in June.
Or we could do the lake. Moonmirror at sunset is basically unfair. "
"I haven't gotten that far."
"That's why I'm here." Twyla's voice shifted from gossip mode to something more focused, the organizational energy of a woman who'd been running a café and half the town's social calendar for longer than anyone alive could confirm.
"You tell me what you want and I make it happen.
No stress, no pressure, no decisions you don't want to make. "
"You want to plan my wedding?"
"Yes. Desperately." Twyla leaned forward. "Let me do this, Steph. It's what I'm good at, and you have a nine-month excavation to run. You don't have time to compare napkin swatches."
"There will be no napkin swatches."
"See? We're already aligned."
Steph wrapped her hands around both mugs, one for warmth, one for caffeine.
She could feel Criss somewhere in the western woods, checking ward markers, steady and content.
The awareness of him was still new enough to catch her off guard at odd moments, a second heartbeat surfacing during quiet pauses, reminding her she wasn't operating solo anymore.
She'd spent her whole career in motion. Turkey, Peru, the Yucatán, Southeast Asia.
Six countries, dozens of sites, a life designed around impermanence.
She'd told herself it was the work that kept her moving.
The next dig, the next discovery, the next grant cycle that would take her somewhere new.
But the truth, the one she'd been avoiding for years, was simpler than that.
She'd kept moving because standing still meant commitment, and commitment meant trusting someone or something enough to build around it, and every time she'd tried, the foundation had cracked.
Grant had been the last attempt. A year and a half of trying to be the version of herself that someone else wanted, and when it failed, she'd added it to the evidence file: permanence equals loss. Proved by data. Case closed.
Except Hollow Oak hadn't read the file. The town had let her in through the Veil, given her a site that responded to her touch, refused to let her leave when she'd tried, and handed her a man whose entire arc over the past two months had been learning to stay.
And now she was sitting in a café planning a wedding and the lightness in her chest was so unfamiliar it had taken her three days to identify it.
She'd stopped fighting herself. That was the thing.
The constant low-grade resistance she'd carried for years, the tension between what she wanted and what she'd allow herself to have, had gone quiet.
Not silenced. Released, the way the magic in the chamber had been released.
Something held down for too long, finally given air.
"Moonmirror Lake," she said. "Sunset."
Twyla's face lit up. "Perfect. How many people?"
"Small. Just the town. Whoever wants to come."
"In Hollow Oak, that's everyone. I'll handle the invitations. Food?"
"You're asking me about food? You own a café."
"I'm asking because some brides have opinions about menus and I've learned the hard way not to assume."
"Feed people whatever you want. I trust you."
Twyla pressed her hand to her chest. "That might be the most romantic thing anyone's ever said to me."
The door opened with a chime and Diana Merrick walked in, honey-blonde curls loose around her shoulders, carrying a basket of fresh linens from the inn's laundry. She spotted them, read the table, and changed course.
"Wedding planning?" Diana asked, setting the basket on an empty chair, freckles scrunching as she smiled.
"She's psychic," Twyla said.
"I'm observant. Two coffees, Twyla in project mode, and Stephanie looking like she swallowed something that tastes good but she's not sure she's allowed to enjoy it." Diana smoothed the front of her knit cardigan and sat down. "What do you need?"
Steph looked at the woman who'd welcomed her into the inn on her first rainy night in Hollow Oak, who'd left sandwiches outside her door when she forgot to eat, who'd bandaged her head after the square attack without asking a single question she wasn't ready to answer.
Diana, who ran the inn with a quiet warmth that made everyone who walked through the door feel like they'd come home.
"I need a maid of honor," Steph said. "If you're interested."
Diana's hands stilled on the linen basket. Her eyes found Steph's, and for a moment the warm, determined innkeeper who managed a dozen guests and a historic property without breaking stride looked like a woman who'd just been handed something precious.
"I'd be honored," Diana said. "Truly."
"Good. Your primary job is to keep Twyla from adding a fireworks finale."
"I make no promises," Twyla said.
"No fireworks."
"Small fireworks? Tasteful ones?"
"Twyla."
"Fine. Sparklers. Final offer."
They spent the next hour at the table sketching out details on a napkin, which Twyla pointed out was technically a napkin swatch and therefore Steph had already broken her own rule.
Diana contributed a list of practical considerations: chairs, lighting, weather contingency.
Twyla contributed a vision that involved fairy lights strung between the oaks along the lakeside, music from the local fiddler who played at Maeve's on weekends, and a dessert table instead of a cake because, as she put it, "nobody actually likes wedding cake, they just eat it because it's there. "
When they reached the processional, Twyla pulled out a small notebook she'd apparently had ready in her apron pocket for exactly this purpose. "Who's walking you down the aisle?"
"Nobody."
Twyla's pen paused. Diana looked up from the chair logistics.
"I'm walking myself," Steph said. The words came out easy, lighter than she'd expected. "I'm not being given away. I'm showing up because I want to. My own feet, my own choice."
Diana smiled. "That's perfect."
"It's very you," Twyla agreed, writing it down. "Processional: bride walks solo. I love it."
"Also, no 'Here Comes the Bride.' Play something with a fiddle."
"Done."
Steph leaned back in her chair and looked through the café window at Hollow Oak's main square.
The repaired cobblestones were lighter than the originals, new stone filling old gaps.
The fountain was still slightly crooked, but someone had planted flowers at its base, bright clusters of color that softened the damage.
People moved through the square on their morning errands, nodding at neighbors, stopping to talk, carrying on the daily business of a town that had survived a buried truth and was learning to carry it in the open.
She'd come here to dig. To uncover something old and significant and prove that her work mattered beyond academic journals that nobody read.
She'd found all of that. But she'd also found a man who'd learned to stay, a town that had let her belong, and the startling discovery that permanence didn't have to mean loss.
It could mean roots. The kind that held you steady while you kept reaching.
"Steph?" Twyla's voice pulled her back. "You okay?"
"Yeah." She picked up her coffee and took a sip. Still warm. "I'm really good, actually."
Twyla and Diana exchanged a shared look.
"Moonmirror Lake," Twyla said, tapping her notebook. "Sunset. Fiddle music. Sparklers. Dessert table. Bride walks herself down the aisle." Twyla closed the notebook and looked up. "Leave everything to me."
Steph finished her coffee, gathered her field pack, and headed for the door. She had inscriptions to translate and a chamber full of history waiting for her steady hands.
She made it as far as the trailhead before she stopped walking.
The dig could wait. For once in her life, the dig could wait.
She thought about Criss back at the cabin, probably just getting his day started. Possibly in the shower. Heat pooled low in her gut at the image of her future husband, naked, with no one to help him get clean.
Steph turned left instead of right. Her pace quickened, and somewhere between the square and the western trail, her walk picked up something close to a skip.