40. Leah
LEAH
The town square looked like something out of a dream I hadn't let myself have until tonight, a hundred strings of lights crisscrossing overhead, the bonfire crackling gold at the center.
Bennett Events and Weddings hung in gold script from a banner strung between two market stalls, like it had always belonged there.
Snow dusted the edges of everything without quite committing to falling, and half of Pinewood Ridge stood packed into coats and party clothes, faces bright with firelight and cider and the particular joy of a town that had pulled off something bigger than itself.
"You did this," Maddie said beside me, one hand resting on the enormous curve of her belly, the other holding a mug of cocoa she'd been nursing for an hour. "Look at all these people. Look at this."
"I had help."
"You had a town behind you, which is not the same thing as help. Help is what Josh gives me carrying grocery bags. This is different." She gestured broadly at the crowd, at the string lights, at the whole glowing scene. "This is a legacy, Leah."
"Don't make me cry before my toast."
"Cry after the toast. Cry during, honestly, nobody would blame you." She squeezed my arm and let me go, already being pulled toward Josh by the cider stand, and I stood there a moment just breathing it in, cold and bright and full.
Sarge found me next, a paper plate of cookies balanced in one hand, looking more relaxed than I'd seen him in weeks.
"Heard you caught yourself a propane leak this morning," he said, mouth full. "Derek won't stop talking about it."
"I just smelled something wrong. Tomás and Priya did the actual work."
"You smelled the thing nobody else caught. That counts for something in this line of work." He tipped his cookie toward me like a toast of his own. "This town got lucky the day you rolled into it, dented trailer and all."
"You threatened to give me a ticket the first week I was here."
"I stand by that ticket. Doesn't mean I wasn't right about the rest of it." He wandered off toward the bonfire, still chewing, and I watched him go with something warm settling deep in my chest.
Anton intercepted me a few steps later, gesturing grandly toward his finished stag, now fully formed and gleaming under the string lights, both antlers intact and not a crack in sight.
"It is magnificent," he announced, to nobody and everybody at once. "The fry bread tent did not ruin it. I did not quit. This is a triumph."
"It's beautiful, Anton. Truly."
"I know." He beamed at his own creation like a proud parent, and I left him there admiring it, laughing to myself the whole way back across the square.
Judy found me near the stage a few minutes later, clipboard finally abandoned somewhere, cheeks flushed from cold and champagne in equal measure.
"Record turnout," she said, without preamble, the way she said everything important. "I had the count run twice because I didn't believe it the first time."
"How many?"
"More than we planned for by a wide margin, and not one complaint filed yet, which for this town is basically a miracle." She surveyed the crowd like a queen counting her subjects. "You're up in five minutes. Try not to cry through the whole thing. It ruins the acoustics."
"That's not how acoustics work."
"It's how mine work when I'm crying, and I refuse to be the only one."
The stage crew waved me up before I'd fully finished laughing, and I climbed the two short steps with my notebook in hand, three crossed out drafts behind me and nothing but the truest version left to say.
Somewhere near the front of the crowd I spotted Priya and Tomás still in their uniforms, having clearly come straight from the tent bank rotation without bothering to change, and the sight of them steadied something in my chest before I'd even opened my mouth.
The crowd quieted as I reached the microphone, faces turned up gold and expectant in the firelight, and for one long second my throat went tight enough that I thought the words might not come at all.
They came anyway.
"This town took a stranger with a U-Haul and a bad business plan and just... let her stay." My voice snagged on the pause, but I let it, let the crowd hear exactly how much that cost me to say out loud. "Thank you for that."
The square went warm with laughter and applause, and I caught Doris wiping her eyes near the fry bread tent, caught Sarge nodding once like I'd passed some private test of his, caught Derek near the back with his arms crossed and an expression on his face I felt clear across the square even in the dark.
"You gave me a business. You gave me a family I didn't know I was allowed to want.
You gave me a home." I looked out at all of them, at Judy and Maddie and Priya and Anton still fussing over his stag near the edge of the crowd, and let myself feel every bit of it.
"I'm not going anywhere. Happy New Year, Pinewood Ridge. "
The applause hit like a wave, warm and loud and entirely too much, and I stepped down off that stage feeling lighter than I had in months.
Derek climbed up right after me, which nobody had planned, least of all him from the look on his face. He stood at the microphone a moment too long before speaking, jaw working the way it did when he was deciding whether to say something out loud or swallow it back down.
"I'm not good at this," he said finally, and the crowd laughed, warm and encouraging. "Public speaking isn't really my strong suit. Fires, I can handle. This is worse."
A few more laughs rippled through the crowd. He gripped the sides of the podium like it might steady him.
"None of tonight happens without Leah Bennett.
I mean that." He found me in the crowd, and I felt the words land somewhere just under my ribs.
"She spotted a propane leak this morning that could have been serious if she hadn't trusted her own instincts.
She's spent two months making this town believe it deserved something this good.
Whatever the county decides about this department going forward, I want it on record that this festival, this whole night, happened because of her. "
The crowd went quiet for one beat and then loud all at once, applause and a few whoops from somewhere near the fire crew, and I stood there stunned, hand pressed flat against my own chest like I could keep my heart from doing something reckless in front of four hundred people.
He stepped down a moment later, ears red, clearly relieved to have it over with, and made his way straight through the crowd toward me without stopping for a single handshake along the way.
Somebody clapped him on the back and he barely seemed to notice, eyes fixed on me the whole time like the rest of the square had simply stopped existing.
"You didn't have to do that," I said, when he reached me.
"I wanted to."
"You hate public speaking."
"I hate it less when it's true."
I laughed, something bright and disbelieving bubbling up in my chest, and he caught my hand and pulled me gently away from the thickest part of the crowd, toward the dessert table tucked near the edge of the square where the noise thinned out into something almost private.
"Are you allowed to just steal me away from my own party?"
"I'm the fire chief. I make the safety calls tonight." He stole a small pastry off the nearest tray and handed it to me instead of taking one himself, which felt like the most Derek gesture imaginable. "Also I wanted five minutes where I wasn't sharing you with four hundred people."
"Five whole minutes. I'm flattered."
"Don't get used to it. Tomorrow you're back to sharing me with a clipboard and a county inspection form.
" He leaned against the edge of the dessert table, close enough that his shoulder brushed mine, watching the crowd swirl past without any real urgency to rejoin it. "That speech you gave up there."
"What about it?"
"It was good. Better than good. You made four hundred people believe in this town a little harder than they already did, and that's not a small thing to do with just words." He glanced down at the pastry still sitting untouched in my hand. "You gonna eat that or just hold it hostage all night?"
"I'm savoring the moment."
"You're stalling."
"Maybe a little." I finally took a bite, and he watched me with an expression soft enough that I nearly forgot we were standing in the middle of a crowded festival at all.
"You had me for exactly one of those four hundred just now, in front of everybody, ears bright red the entire time."
"That was different. That was work." Something shifted in his face, softer now, the easy banter falling away into something more careful, the crowd noise fading around us like it belonged to somebody else's night entirely. "There's something I've been trying to say since the firehouse..."
My whole chest went still, every other sound in the square dropping away until it was just the two of us and the crackle of the bonfire somewhere behind him.
I knew exactly what shape that sentence was about to take, had known since the second Sarge's fist hit that door frame two nights ago and swallowed the words whole before either of us could catch them.
"Derek."
"Let me just say it this time. No interruptions, no fires, no Sarge banging on doors." He huffed out something almost like a laugh, nervous in a way I'd rarely seen on him. "I love..."
Somewhere behind us, Judy's voice rang out over the loudspeaker, bright and booming. "Ten minutes to midnight! Everybody find your spot for the fireworks!"
The crowd surged as one body toward the open field beyond the bonfire pit, four hundred people turning their faces skyward all at once, and Derek's words got swallowed whole in the roar of it, the moment slipping sideways the exact same way it had two nights ago.
"Later," he said, laughing despite himself, pulling me toward the field with everyone else. "I promise you, this time, actually later."
I laughed too, giddy and a little breathless, letting him tug me forward through the crowd toward the field, his hand warm around mine, his shoulder bumping mine every few steps.
For one second, walking through string lights and firelight and four hundred people who loved this town as much as I'd come to, I let myself believe the whole night really was as good as it felt.
That was when I smelled it.
This wasn't propane. It was smoke, sharp and sudden, and I turned my head just in time to see it happen.
A hard gust of wind caught one of the newer heaters near the dessert tent, nowhere close to the line Priya had patched that afternoon, and knocked it sideways into the hanging garland of dried pine and paper lanterns strung along the tent's support pole.
The whole thing ignited instantly, flame licking up the fabric faster than anyone but the crew seemed to register.
"FIRE!"
My voice tore out of me raw and immediate, but the crowd had already begun the countdown, ten voices becoming a hundred becoming four hundred, all of them turned toward the sky waiting for fireworks that hadn't started yet.
My scream disappeared into the roar of nine, eight, seven, swallowed whole by four hundred happy, unsuspecting people who had no idea the night had already gone wrong, right up until, one by one, they did.