28. Leah
LEAH
Snow fell in slow, fat flakes over the town square, catching gold under the streetlamps before it settled soft and silent on every scarf and shoulder in the crowd.
Judy stood at the center of it with both arms raised, like she was conducting a full orchestra instead of forty off-key volunteers clutching photocopied lyric sheets.
"Sopranos, I need you brighter on the second verse." Judy swept one arm through the air with the total conviction of a woman who had never once studied music but had absolutely decided that didn't matter. "Altos, hold the line. We are not racing to the finish, people, we are savoring it."
"She's been watching orchestra documentaries again," Maddie murmured beside me, bundled into a coat two sizes too big, cheeks pink from the cold. "Last week she made the church choir redo the same hymn four times because the tenors, in her words, lacked conviction."
"Did they gain conviction?"
"They gained resentment, mostly. Close enough for Judy."
The volunteer fire crew had clustered near the back of the group, badly organized into something resembling rows, and when Judy dropped her arms to launch into Silent Night, the sound that came out of them landed somewhere between a hymn and a structure collapse.
Sarge sang half a step flat with tremendous confidence.
Tomás appeared to be making up his own lyrics entirely, something about a silent engine bay that had nothing to do with the original song.
Priya, to her credit, seemed to actually know the words, though the effort of standing next to Tomás was visibly costing her.
The song ended in a ragged tangle of harmonies that never quite agreed on a key, and Sarge threw both arms up like he'd just finished a marathon.
"Nailed it," Sarge announced, entirely unrepentant. "Somebody get Judy a record deal."
"You were flat for the entire second verse," Priya said.
"I was interpretive."
"You were flat."
"Same thing, different vocabulary." Sarge clapped Tomás on the shoulder, still grinning. "What were you even singing, man? That wasn't Silent Night."
"It was Silent Night. About the engine bay. It's a reimagining."
"Nobody asked for a reimagining."
"Art doesn't wait for permission, Sarge."
Derek stood at the very edge of the group, arms crossed, not singing a single note.
I drifted over once the song mercifully ended, snow catching in my eyelashes. "You didn't sing."
"I don't sing."
"Everyone's singing. It's caroling. That's the entire event."
"I appreciate the event from a respectful distance." He watched Sarge attempt a note that did not exist in the original composition and wince slightly. "Somebody has to preserve what's left of the town's dignity."
"That's rich, coming from the man who once lost a fight with a paint roller."
"That was an accident. This is a choice." Something almost like a smile pulled at the corner of his mouth, and he reached over, brushing snow from my shoulder with a gentleness that had nothing to do with the joke he'd just made. "You're freezing."
"I'm festive."
"You're freezing and calling it festive."
"Those aren't mutually exclusive." I leaned into him without quite meaning to, and he let me, warm even through two coats and the falling snow, and for a moment neither of us said anything else, just stood there at the edge of forty people badly singing about peace on earth.
Maddie found me again once the second song wrapped, practically vibrating, both hands pressed to her stomach in a way I hadn't seen her do before, and something about the particular brightness in her face made my whole chest go warm before she'd said a single word.
"Okay. I have to tell somebody or I'm going to combust." She grabbed both my hands, breathless, snow catching in her dark hair. "Surprise. Also, I need you to plan a baby shower eventually, no pressure."
I stared at her for a full second before the words actually landed. "You're pregnant."
"Twelve weeks. We just got the all clear to tell people." She was laughing and crying at the same time, the specific kind of joy that didn't know which expression to settle on. "I've been sitting on this for a month, Leah. A whole month. Do you understand how hard that was for me specifically?"
"You're the worst secret keeper I've ever met in my life."
"I know. I deserve a medal for making it this long. There should be a ceremony. Doris would insist on it, probably with a banner."
"She's probably already got the fabric picked out."
"Right? She's got a whole set now. Grand Opening, Congratulations, probably a Newborn one hiding in a closet somewhere.
" She pulled me into a hug hard enough to knock the breath out of both of us, and I held on, laughing into her shoulder.
Underneath the joy sat a small, quiet ache. Not envy. Just wanting.
I hadn't let myself picture it before, not clearly, not in any real detail.
A future with a house that had a nursery in it.
A version of my own life with somebody's hand pressed to my stomach the way Maddie's was pressed to hers, somebody who'd stay, who'd build a whole life next to mine instead of drifting off toward one that suited him better.
Watching Maddie glow under the streetlamps, snow catching in her hair, I let myself want it for the first time without immediately talking myself out of it.
"You're going to be an incredible mother," I told her, meaning every word of it.
"You're going to be an incredible aunt, unofficially, whether you like it or not." She wiped one eye, still grinning. "Now come help me figure out how to tell my mother without her fainting on the spot."
The rest of the evening passed in a warm blur of hot cider and off-key hymns, snow piling soft along the edges of the square, Derek's hand finding mine somewhere in the crowd and staying there.
I walked home that night with my whole chest still full from Maddie's news, humming some tuneless fragment of a carol I couldn't remember the words to.
My phone rang just after I'd gotten the fire going, Diane's name lighting up the screen with the same brisk efficiency she brought to everything else in her life.
I almost let it go to voicemail. I answered instead, mostly out of habit, the old reflex of a woman who used to jump every time that name appeared.
Diane Petrov. The woman who used to walk me through seating charts at midnight, who I trusted with my whole career right up until I found out what else she'd been doing with that trust. I hadn't spoken to her since the rehearsal dinner, not once, not even through the apologetic voicemail I'd deleted halfway through.
Some stubborn part of me still wanted to know why she was calling now, and I wasn't exactly proud of myself for wanting it.
"Diane."
"Leah. I'll keep this short, since I know you're busy with your small-town life these days." She said it without any real bite, more like an old joke worn smooth from overuse. "I have a real offer for you. Not a feeler. Not a maybe. An actual position."
"Go on."
"Senior Event Director at the new Denver firm.
My firm, technically, since I'm a partner now, which you'd know if you still answered my emails.
" She paused just long enough to let that land.
"Real title, real salary, real market. This is the offer you left Denver hoping someone would eventually make. I'm making it."
I sat down slowly on the arm of my couch, fire crackling in front of me, snow still falling soft against the window behind it. "That's a big offer, Diane. You don't usually call just to chat."
"It's the offer, Leah. The one you used to talk about at every industry dinner before Trevor happened and you decided disappearing into the mountains was healthier than fighting for what you'd already built.
" Her voice softened, just slightly, the closest Diane ever got to gentle.
"I'm not trying to rush you. I know this is out of nowhere.
But the position's real, the money's real, and I need an answer before the new year, because if you say no, I'm hiring somebody else, and I'd rather it be you. "
Before Trevor happened, like it was weather instead of something she'd done. I let it go. Relitigating it over the phone, this far removed from any of it, would have meant handing her a fight I didn't need to win anymore.
"I need to think about it. Actually think, not just say that and call you back in an hour."
"Take the time. Just don't take too much of it." A pause, something almost careful in it. "For what it's worth, I always thought you were better than that little planning outfit you were stuck at here. You deserve a real seat at a real table, Leah. This is that seat."
"What would I even be doing? Specifically."
"Running the luxury division. Corporate events, destination weddings, the clients with the budgets that make grown vendors cry.
" Diane's voice picked up speed, the way it always did when she talked about work she actually loved.
"You'd have a team under you inside six months.
This isn't an assistant role, Leah. This is the job you used to say you'd take a bullet for. "
"I remember saying that."
"So did I. That's why I called you first, before anyone else got a shot at this." She let that sit a moment, her voice quieter now. "Just don't disappear on me again."
We talked another few minutes, logistics mostly, start dates and relocation timelines she rattled off like she'd already built the whole plan in her head before she ever picked up the phone, and when I finally hung up I sat there on the arm of my own couch a long time, staring into a fire that had burned down to embers while I wasn't paying attention to it.
I noticed, distantly, that I'd made it through the whole call without my voice shaking, without the flinch I used to brace for every time her name showed up on my phone. That felt like its own small win, one Diane would never even know she'd been part of.
"Why does this feel like a test I don't want to pass?" I said it out loud, to no one, to the empty cabin and the dying fire and the snow still falling soft outside the window.
I turned the offer over in my head, waiting for the old excitement to show up the way it always used to whenever a bigger opportunity crossed my path back in Denver, the thrill of a title with weight behind it, a salary that meant something, a market that actually noticed when you succeeded.
I waited for it, sitting there in the quiet, and it never came.
What came instead was Bennett Events and Weddings, painted fresh on glass I'd sealed myself.
Doris cutting a ribbon like it mattered more than anything the county could offer.
Sarge presenting a T-shirt that was half gift and half mockery and completely sincere anyway.
A porch somewhere on the edge of town, strung crooked and uneven with lights a man had fought for an hour just so it would mean something when I drove past it.
The realization scared me more than the offer itself did, sitting there alone with a dying fire and a phone gone quiet in my hand.
I hadn't built a life here by accident. I'd built it on purpose, board by board, the same way I'd told myself under that Grand Opening banner.
Some part of me had apparently already decided Denver wasn't the answer anymore, and it hadn't bothered to ask me first.
I thought about calling Derek. I actually picked up my phone and stared at his name in my contacts for a long moment, thumb hovering, the porch light glow of his living room window probably still on somewhere across town.
I set the phone down instead.
Not because I'd made up my mind. I hadn't, not really, not in any way I could put into words yet without the whole thing feeling too large and too fragile to survive being spoken out loud. I told myself it could wait until I actually knew what I wanted to say. That was true, as far as it went.
But underneath that reasoning was a smaller, more honest part of me that knew exactly why I hadn't called.
Saying it out loud, in front of him, watching his face while I said it, would make the decision real in a way that sitting alone with it never could.
And some small, frightened corner of myself wasn't ready yet to find out what his face might do.