Chapter Two
The bell above the door had barely stopped chiming before Nadine knew these men weren't here to buy baskets.
They moved wrong. Browsed wrong. Picked up Mabel Hensley's hand-woven sweetgrass basket—three weeks of work from arthritic fingers that still remembered patterns passed down four generations—and turned it over like it was something they'd found at a dollar store.
"Nice little shop you got here." The bigger one set the basket down too hard, and Nadine's jaw tightened. "Real cozy."
"Can I help you find something specific?"
She kept her voice pleasant. Professional. The same tone she used with tourists who wanted to haggle craftspeople down to poverty wages because they'd seen similar items "much cheaper online."
"Maybe." The smaller one—wiry, with a smile that showed too many teeth—drifted toward the pottery display. Ran his finger along the rim of a vase that Clara Osborne had thrown on a wheel her grandfather built in 1952. "We're in the retail business ourselves. Looking to expand into the area."
"Harlan County has several empty storefronts available. I can point you toward a realtor."
"That's real helpful." Too-Many-Teeth picked up the vase. Nadine's hands curled into fists behind the counter. "But we're more interested in... partnerships. Existing businesses with good foot traffic. Local trust already established."
The bigger one had moved to block the door. She noticed that. Filed it away.
"I'm not looking for partners."
"Hear us out." Too-Many-Teeth set the vase down—carefully this time, like he'd noticed her reaction and wanted her to know he'd noticed.
"We've got product that moves. Designer goods, name brands, the kind of stuff tourists actually want to buy.
You stock our merchandise, we handle supply, you keep a cut of every sale. "
"What kind of merchandise?"
He reached into a duffel bag she hadn't seen him carry in, pulled out a leather handbag with a designer logo stamped on the clasp. Even from six feet away, she could tell the stitching was wrong. The leather too shiny. The hardware too light.
Knockoffs. Counterfeit garbage pretending to be luxury goods.
"I sell authentic Appalachian crafts." Nadine met his eyes and held them. "Handmade by local artisans using traditional techniques. I'm not interested in selling fake purses to tourists."
"It's good money."
"I'm sure it is. The answer's still no."
Something shifted in Too-Many-Teeth's expression. The smile stayed, but the warmth behind it—what little there'd been—disappeared entirely.
"Lady, I don't think you understand the opportunity here."
"I understand fine." She reached under the counter, found the baseball bat she kept there for closing time walks to her car. Didn't pull it out. Just wrapped her fingers around the grip. "You want to use my shop to move counterfeit goods. I said no. This conversation is over."
The bigger one took a step away from the door. Toward her.
"Darrell." Too-Many-Teeth held up a hand, and the big man stopped. "Let's not get ahead of ourselves. The lady needs time to think." He pulled a card from his pocket, set it on the counter between them. Just a phone number, nothing else. "You change your mind, you call. We'll be around."
They left without buying anything. The bell chimed cheerfully behind them, completely wrong for the moment.
Nadine stood behind her counter for a long time after, hand still wrapped around the bat, watching the street through her front window. The bigger one—Darrell—paused at a pickup truck across the street, looked back at her shop, said something to his partner that made them both laugh.
She memorized the license plate. Wrote it down on the back of a receipt with hands that wanted to shake but didn't.
The rest of the day passed in a blur of normal that felt like lies.
Tourists came through, bought small items, asked the same questions she'd answered a thousand times. Yes, these are all handmade. No, we can't ship internationally. The woman who made that basket is eighty-three years old and she's been weaving since she was six.
Mabel Hensley called around two to ask if her baskets were selling. Nadine told her yes, didn't mention the men who'd handled her work like trash. Didn't mention the business card still sitting on the counter, that phone number burning a hole in her peripheral vision.
By closing time, she'd almost convinced herself it was nothing. Pushy salesmen. Scammers who'd move on to easier targets when they realized she wasn't biting.
She locked the front door at six, started her closing routine. Register counted, displays straightened, tomorrow's shipment list reviewed. Clara's vase went back to its proper spot, positioned to catch morning light through the east window. Normal. Fine. Everything was fine.
The brick came through her front window at 9:41 PM.
Nadine was in the back room, updating inventory on her laptop, when the crash exploded through the shop like a bomb. Glass everywhere—across the floor, over the display tables, glittering in the emergency lights that kicked on when the main fixture shattered.
She grabbed the bat and ran to the front, heart slamming against her ribs, expecting to find someone climbing through the hole.
Nothing. Just broken glass and cold mountain air pouring through the gap, and a brick lying in the middle of her floor surrounded by Mabel Hensley's baskets.
Three of them were destroyed. Crushed under falling debris, the careful weaving torn and scattered. Three weeks of work. Eighty-three-year-old hands. Patterns passed down four generations.
Nadine stood in the wreckage and felt something cold settle into her chest.
The brick had a note rubber-banded around it. She didn't need to read it, but she did anyway.
RECONSIDER.
One word. No signature. No threat beyond what they'd already delivered.
She thought about calling the sheriff. Thought about the questions he'd ask, the report he'd file, the nothing that would happen after.
Harlan County law enforcement had bigger problems than broken windows, and even if they didn't, she knew how this worked.
Knew that men like the ones who'd visited today didn't stop because someone filed a complaint.
They stopped when someone made them stop.
Or they didn't stop at all.
Nadine set the note aside, found her broom, and started sweeping.
The glass seemed endless.
Every time she thought she'd gotten it all, her broom would catch another shard, send it skittering across the hardwood her grandfather had installed forty years ago.
Her palms were bleeding by the time she'd cleared the main floor—tiny cuts from pieces too small to see, embedded in skin that would sting for days.
She didn't stop.
The baskets that could be saved, she saved.
The ones that couldn't—Mabel's beautiful work, destroyed by men who'd never created anything in their worthless lives—she gathered into a box and set aside.
She'd have to tell Mabel something. A lie, probably.
Shipping accident. Clumsy tourist. Anything but the truth.
The plywood for the window came from her back storage, left over from a renovation project two years ago. She wasn't strong enough to lift the full sheet alone, so she cut it down with a handsaw, working by flashlight and fury until she had something that would cover the hole.
By midnight, the shop looked almost normal. If you didn't count the plywood where glass should be. If you didn't look too close at the gaps in the display where Mabel's baskets used to sit.
Nadine sat on the floor behind her counter, back against the wall, bat across her knees. Her hands throbbed. Her eyes burned. And somewhere in Harlan County, men who destroyed things for a living were probably sleeping just fine.
She thought about her artisans. Mabel with her baskets.
Clara with her pottery. Old Douglas Fenton, who carved walking sticks with hands that shook but never slipped.
A dozen others, most of them over seventy, all of them depending on her to get their work to market at prices that respected the skill involved.
She'd built this cooperative from nothing.
Convinced suspicious craftspeople to trust someone young with their life's work.
Fought for fair prices when dealers wanted to pay pennies on the dollar.
Refused to compromise on quality, on authenticity, on the principle that handmade meant something worth protecting.
She wasn't going to let counterfeit-pushing thugs take that away.
The sheriff's number sat in her phone, one tap away. She didn't tap it.
Nadine knew exactly who'd thrown that brick. Knew exactly why. And she knew that paperwork and procedures weren't going to solve this problem.
She just didn't know yet what would.
The night pressed against her plywood window, cold and patient, and she sat with her bat and her bleeding hands and waited for morning to show her what came next.