9. Leah
LEAH
The storefront on Main Street had been empty long enough that dust had settled into every corner of the front window in a thin gray film, thick enough that somebody could have written their name in it, and a FOR LEASE sign hung crooked behind the glass, its lettering sun bleached down to a whisper of the bold black it must have started out as.
Doris Hutchins met me at the door with a ring of keys that looked older than the building itself, jangling them like she'd been waiting all week for an excuse to use them.
"Careful on the threshold." She wrestled the lock twice before it gave. "It sticks. Everything in this building sticks. Character, my nephew calls it. I call it a building that needs work I can't currently afford."
The door swung open onto a long rectangle of empty space, afternoon light slanting through the front windows in wide gold bars thick with drifting dust. My footsteps echoed off bare hardwood that had probably seen four different businesses come and go.
It smelled like old paper and cold plaster, the particular emptiness of a room that had been waiting for somebody to fill it back up.
"It's bigger than it looks from outside.
" I turned in a slow circle, already doing the math I couldn't stop myself from doing, where a consultation table would go, where I'd hang fabric swatches, where a client could sit and imagine their whole future without tripping over anything. "How long has it been sitting vacant?"
"Going on two years now. Ever since the fabric shop folded.
" Doris ran a hand along the exposed brick wall at the back, fond in a way that told me this building meant more to her than a line item on somebody's ledger.
"My grandfather built this place. Ran a hardware store out of it for thirty years before the big chain opened out on the highway and ate his lunch.
It's been in the family ever since, mostly empty, mostly a headache. "
"It's beautiful."
"It's a headache with good bones." She said it like a correction, but her eyes were soft when she looked around the room. "You've got good bones for this town too, honey. Don't waste them being scared."
I laughed, mostly because I didn't know what else to do with a compliment that specific. "I'm not scared."
"You're something. I've watched you organize half this town's holiday season out of a car trunk and a folder system that would make an accountant weep with joy.
That's not scared. But there's a version of you standing in this room right now doing math on rent numbers you haven't even asked me for yet, and that version looks a little scared to me. "
She was not wrong, which was the most annoying part.
"How much are we talking?"
Doris named a figure that was more than fair for the space, genuinely fair, the kind of fair that made me immediately suspicious of what came attached to it. I said as much.
"Nothing comes attached to it except common sense.
" She crossed her arms, studying me the way she studied a coffee order she suspected was about to get complicated.
"You do this festival right, get the town talking about you the way I think they're about to, and I'll drop the rate another twenty percent for the first year.
Consider it an investment. I've been renting to nobody for two years.
Renting to somebody who might actually stick is worth a discount. "
"And if the festival doesn't go well?"
"Then we'll talk about a smaller number, and you'll still have a lease, because I don't believe in punishing people for weather they didn't cause.
" Doris shrugged, like this was the most obvious arithmetic in the world.
"But it's going to go well. I've got a good feeling about you, Leah Bennett, and I've had a good feeling about exactly four people in this town in the last thirty years. Ask anyone. I'm never wrong."
I wanted to believe her, the same way I'd wanted to believe every optimistic thing anyone had told me since I'd rolled into this town with a dented trailer and a stubborn refusal to admit how close to broke I actually was.
I did the math anyway, silently, the way I always did, rent against the retainer I'd have coming from the festival contract, rent against the trickle of private clients I'd managed to book since arriving, rent against the number sitting in my savings account that had been shrinking steadily since the day I signed the lease on my cabin.
The number was not good. It hadn't been good in Denver either, back in the final months, when I told myself the wedding would fix everything, or the partnership would, anything but admitting the math itself was the problem.
I knew that particular kind of panic on sight now.
It had a taste, metallic and thin, at the back of my throat, and I felt it creeping up while I stood in that beautiful empty room doing math I had no business doing out loud.
"Can I think about it?"
"Take the week. It's not going anywhere.
" Doris studied my face for a second longer than felt entirely comfortable, the same assessing look I imagined she gave every questionable delivery truck that pulled up outside her shop.
"You want to sit with it a while? I've got errands.
Lock up when you're done, drop the key through the mail slot. "
"You're just going to leave me alone in your family's building?"
"You strike me as a woman who returns keys." She was already halfway out the door, keys jangling. "Besides, I like watching people fall in love with a room. Happens better when nobody's standing there making them self-conscious about it."
The door stuck again on her way out, and she wrestled it shut with the same practiced shove she'd used to open it, and then I was alone in the long gold light with dust motes turning slow circles above my head and a decision I could not actually afford to make sitting on my chest like a stone.
My phone rang before I'd worked up the nerve to leave.
I almost didn't answer it, mostly because the Denver area code lit up the screen before the name did, and every part of me that had learned to flinch at that exact sequence of numbers wanted to let it go to voicemail.
Curiosity won, the way it usually did, and I regretted it approximately four seconds into the call.
"Leah! It's Diane." Diane Petrov's voice arrived exactly the way I remembered it, bright and breezy and entirely too pleased with itself, like good news was something that happened to other people specifically so she could deliver it.
"I hope this isn't a terrible time. I've been meaning to call for ages. "
"Diane." I kept my own voice flat, professional, the tone I used on vendors who tried to upcharge me after a contract was already signed. "What can I do for you?"
"So, funny story, we've had an opening come up at the firm.
Junior coordinator, mostly assisting on the bigger accounts, but it's a real position, benefits and everything.
" She paused, the kind of pause clearly meant to let the offer land with its full weight.
"I thought of you immediately. I know things have been hard since everything happened, and I wanted you to know there are no hard feelings on my end.
We could really use someone with your instincts. "
"That's a step backward, Diane."
"It's junior, obviously, but it's a foot back in a real market, Leah. You know how this industry works. Everyone starts somewhere, and honestly, given the circumstances, I think it's generous that anyone's even considering you at all."
I stood very still in the middle of that empty storefront, sunlight sliding slowly across the floorboards, and felt something in my chest go cold and precise, the exact opposite of panic, a kind of clarity I hadn't expected to find standing in a room I couldn't yet afford.
"That's a generous offer, Diane." I let the word generous sit there a second, doing exactly the work I wanted it to do. "I'll pass. But thank you for thinking of me at my lowest possible moment."
"Leah, don't be like that. I'm trying to help."
"I know you are." I meant it more sincerely than she probably wanted me to.
"I'm running my own events company out here now.
I've got a signed contract with an entire town for their holiday festival, and I'm currently standing in a storefront I'm seriously considering leasing for my own business.
So I appreciate the concern, truly, but I don't think junior coordinator is quite the direction I'm headed. "
There was a pause on the other end that felt, for the first time in this entire conversation, genuinely uncertain. "Well. Good for you, I guess. Small towns can be sweet for a while."
"They can." I did not give her anything else to work with. "I have to go, Diane. Take care."
I hung up before she could find another sentence to wrap around the knife, and stood there in the quiet afterward with my heart going faster than the conversation should have earned, replaying every word and searching for the exact place the cut had landed even though I already knew.
It landed where it always landed. It just usually took longer to bleed.
I told myself I felt fine. I told myself the storefront still smelled like old paper and possibility, that the light hadn't changed, that nothing about the actual room had gotten smaller in the last five minutes.
None of it was strictly true, but I told myself anyway, because that was mostly how I'd gotten through the last two years, telling myself things until they became at least partially load bearing.
By the time the light outside had gone thin and blue, I was still there, sitting on the dusty floor with my back against the exposed brick, watching the last of the sun slide off the far wall.
I should have left an hour ago. I stayed anyway, because something about the empty room made it easier to sit with the doubt Diane had planted than it would have been anywhere else, some private, unwitnessed corner where I didn't have to perform being fine for anyone.
I stood up eventually, brushed the dust off the back of my coat, and walked over to the front window where the last of the light was still catching the grime in a way that made the glass look almost soft.
Without deciding to, I lifted one finger and wrote it out in the dust, careful, unhurried, watching each letter appear against the gray film like a photograph developing.
Bennett Events and Weddings.
I stood there looking at it longer than I meant to, my own name laid out in the dust like it already belonged there. Something in my chest ached at the sight of it, want so plain it embarrassed me, even alone with nobody to see.
I wiped it away fast, dragging my sleeve across the glass until the letters blurred and disappeared, before I could stand there wanting it any harder than I already did.
Wanting things out loud had never gone well for me.
Better to want them quietly, where nobody, not even myself most days, could watch me hope.
I locked up the way Doris had told me to, testing the door twice to be sure it had actually caught, and dropped the key through the mail slot with a small metallic clatter that felt more final than it should have for a decision I hadn't actually made yet.
The walk home took me past the town square, past the gazebo where the vendor booths would go, past the stone bench I still hadn't asked Derek about, the whole town quiet and holding its breath the way small towns did after dark.
The cold had teeth in it tonight, sharp enough to sting through my coat, and I walked fast with my hands jammed in my pockets and Diane's voice looping quietly in the back of my mind despite every effort to evict it.
It's junior, obviously, but given the circumstances, I think it's generous that anyone's even considering you at all.
I let myself hear it exactly once more, all the way through, and then I made myself a promise instead, the same kind I'd been making myself since the day I packed a U-Haul and pointed it at the mountains.
The doubt could sit there if it wanted to.
But I wasn't going to feed it, not tonight, not with a lease to think about, a festival to run, and a whole town that seemed to believe in me more than I currently believed in myself.
That would have to be enough for now. I let it be enough, and kept walking.