Chapter 30
Josie
The Harper wedding walkthrough fell on the first properly cool morning of September, the kind of morning that made you notice, all at once, that summer had quietly started packing its bags while you were too busy running a business to watch it go.
"Six down, one to go," Del said, walking the reception site with me, clipboard tucked under one arm now more out of habit than necessity — we'd both gotten good enough at this season's particular rhythm that half the checklist lived in our heads instead of on paper anymore.
"How are you feeling about the numbers?"
"Cautiously optimistic. Which, for me, this year, counts as a personality transplant."
"It's earned optimism, not the delusional kind.
There's a difference." She flipped to the financial summary page anyway, because Del had never once in eight years trusted a feeling she could instead confirm with a spreadsheet.
"Six weddings in, we're actually ahead of where we projected in April.
The Ashworth referral traffic alone brought in two of this fall's bookings we wouldn't have had otherwise.
If Harper and Bennett go anywhere near as well as the last five, we're looking at closing out the season maybe four thousand over the number we needed just to break even on the insurance increase. "
"Four thousand over."
"Four thousand over. Not enough to make you rich, but enough to walk into winter without the specific flavor of dread you had in April." Del glanced at me, something careful in her expression. "Which, I'm guessing, is not currently registering as good news on your face the way it should be."
I hadn't realized it was showing. "It's good news.
It is. I just—" I looked out at the reception lawn, string lights half-strung for testing, the last real logistical piece of a season that had, against every fear I'd carried into it, mostly gone right.
"I keep waiting for the thing that goes wrong.
Every single wedding this year, right up until it was over, some part of me was braced for the storm, the goat, and the disaster.
Two are left, and I don't know how to just let myself believe we might actually make it through clean. "
"You're allowed to believe it. I promise the universe doesn't owe you a catastrophe just because you're due for one, statistically.
" Del bumped my shoulder, gentle. "Also — for what it's worth — even if Harper or Bennett does throw us a curveball, look at what you've built around yourself to handle it this year that you didn't have in April.
A partner who catches falling cake tiers.
A grandmother who's apparently decided to feed him weekly until he's basically staff.
A coordinator who's gotten disturbingly good at handling goats.
" She smiled. "You're not facing whatever's left the way you were facing this season back in the spring.
That's worth something too, separate from the ledger. "
I thought about that — about Sawyer, three tables over at the guest house most nights now, the two of us falling into the kind of easy, unremarkable domesticity I hadn't let myself imagine possible in April.
About Eleanor's Sunday dinners, a fixture now, Sawyer showing up with wine he'd clearly researched to match whatever she was cooking, the two of them arguing pleasantly about lemonade ratios like old friends instead of new acquaintances.
About the season's whole shape, viewed honestly instead of through the lens of fear — six weddings that had each, in their own way, gone right, not because nothing difficult had happened, but because we'd adapted every single time something had.
"He's been quiet this week," I said, mostly to myself, the observation surfacing before I'd fully decided to say it out loud.
"Sawyer?"
"Since Tuesday. Nothing dramatic — he's still here, still present, still Sunday dinner and good morning texts.
But there's something sitting behind his eyes I haven't quite gotten him to explain.
" I turned it over, the same careful cataloging instinct I'd spent all season trying to unlearn, resurfacing now despite myself.
"I asked him about it last night. He said it was just a busy week.
Studio work backing up before the last two weddings. "
Del's expression shifted, something careful crossing it. "Did you believe him?"
"I wanted to." I said it honestly, the admission costing me something even as I made it.
"I've gotten good this season at trusting what he tells me.
I don't want to go back to the version of myself that assumes the worst the second something feels slightly off.
But I also promised myself, back at the guest house, that I wasn't going to let something sit unspoken between us just because pushing felt uncomfortable. "
"So push."
"I will. Tonight, probably." I looked back out at the lawn, the string lights half up, the season's second-to-last wedding still three days out. "I just want to get through Harper first. One thing at a time."
Del didn't push further, which I appreciated, and we spent the next hour finishing the walkthrough with the specific efficient rhythm we'd built over six weddings' worth of practice — florals, seating, the generator's fuel level, and the particular angle of afternoon light that would need managing by four o'clock.
Everything, on the surface, exactly as it should be.
But I carried the small, unnamed unease with me for the rest of the day anyway, underneath the good numbers and the earned optimism and the genuine, hard-won lightness that had become the season's dominant feeling since the far point — a quiet awareness that something was sitting behind Sawyer's careful, steady presence this week that he hadn't handed me yet, and a promise to myself, walking back toward the barn as the afternoon light started going gold, that I wasn't going to let it sit there unspoken much longer than I had to.
Two weddings left. Whatever the season's final number turned out to be, I wanted to walk into it with nothing unsaid standing between us.
I didn't yet know how close that particular hope was about to come to falling apart entirely.