28. Sophie #2
“There.” I smiled and folded my arms. Case closed. “Douglas has spoken.” The jury had reached its verdict, and I was delighted to announce unanimous approval from the defendant himself.
Eric chuckled. “I’m not arguing with Douglas.” Wise decision. Douglas struck me as someone who held grudges and remembered faces.
“Smart man.” Nobody wanted to start a neighborhood dispute with a donkey on the first day.
Douglas wandered off looking deeply satisfied with himself. His ears bounced gently with every step. Bandit tried chewing on his tail. Naturally. Because respecting personal space remained an optional concept in goat society.
Douglas ignored him. Didn’t even turn around. He simply continued walking with patient dignity, like he’d already accepted that this tiny horned nuisance wasn’t going away anytime soon.
I grabbed my wine glass and leaned farther back in the Adirondack chair while the evening settled gently around us. As the chair creaked softly, I realized my shoulders had finally relaxed. My neck wasn’t stiff, and I could finally let myself just… breathe.
Crickets had started singing. Their steady chorus drifted across the property, blending with the occasional rustle of leaves and the soft sounds of happy animals settling into their new home.
A breeze stirred the trees, carrying the scent of pine, fresh hay, warm earth, and sawdust from Eric’s latest project. It was clean, simple, and peaceful—the kind of evening people wrote country songs about.
Somewhere farther down the property, a bird called once before everything became wonderfully quiet again—not empty quiet, just comfortable quiet. The kind that didn’t demand filling with conversation because somehow everything important had already been said.
Forty-eight hours ago, I’d been convinced I’d ruined my life. Spectacularly. With commitment. If there had been a medal for impulsive decision-making followed by catastrophic overthinking, I’d have been standing proudly on the podium wearing the gold.
I’d kissed the sheriff. Been arrested by the sheriff. Stolen a truck. Gone to jail.
Yet somehow, everything important had fallen into place. Not because I’d planned it. Heaven forbid I receive credit for organization outside of festivals. It had simply… happened. Like the universe had finally decided to stop laughing at me for five consecutive minutes.
The festival had worked, against all reasonable expectations, including several of my own. It hadn’t been perfect, but I’d figured it out. Somehow I’d kept everything moving forward with equal parts determination, caffeine, panic, and what I now suspected was blind optimism disguised as leadership.
I actually did know what I was doing.
Which came as something of a surprise considering I’d spent a solid portion of my adult life convinced I was professionally unemployable outside of accidentally creating minor disasters. Competence had been hiding underneath the panic all along.
Not because I’d read a book. Heaven knew I’d bought enough self-help books over the years.
They mostly ended up on shelves making me feel guilty every time I walked past them.
Or because somebody trained me. No wise mentor had appeared with a clipboard and inspirational speeches.
No magical event-planning fairy had tapped me on the shoulder and whispered, “You’ve got this, kid. ”
Because chaos made sense to me. While everyone else seemed to freeze the minute three things went wrong at once, my brain somehow shifted into higher gear.
It was like the more plates started wobbling, the faster I ran around catching them before they hit the floor.
Admittedly, I occasionally dropped one on my own foot first, but eventually everything ended up spinning again.
I’d spent years apologizing for being the woman who bounced from one disaster to another.
Every new job had come with another promise that this one would be different followed shortly afterward by another spectacular misunderstanding, another boss who didn’t quite know what to do with me, and another uncomfortable exit involving cardboard boxes and forced optimism.
Turned out, I’d simply been practicing. Life had been one very long unpaid internship in crisis management. Who knew?
Event planning was basically organized panic with better decorations.
You smiled while internally calculating seventeen backup plans, answered questions you absolutely didn’t know the answer to with suspicious confidence, and prayed nobody noticed you were making half of it up as you went along.
I’d been preparing for that my entire life without realizing it.
I was oddly qualified. Which felt strange after all the years I’d spent assuming my greatest skill was accidentally making situations more complicated before eventually fixing them. Turned out that was practically listed under the job description.
Henry was wrong.
I wasn’t too much.
I was just enough.
My phone buzzed beside my chair. The sound made me jump just enough to slosh my wine dangerously close to the rim of the glass.
I picked it up, wiping one hand on my jeans.
Helen.
I smiled before I even opened the message. Helen never texted unless it was important, hectic, or involved assigning unsuspecting volunteers to things they hadn’t technically agreed to yet. I was becoming alarmingly familiar with her management style.
Helen: Tomorrow. 9:00 a.m. Town Hall. We need to go over Harvest Festival, Founder’s Day, the Christmas Parade, and Winter Carnival. Bring coffee. You’re officially too valuable to lose.
I stared at the screen. My thumb hovered over the message as though reading it one more time might somehow make the words disappear or reveal a tiny footnote explaining she’d texted the wrong Sophie.
Then I read it again. Slower this time, making sure my emotionally overloaded brain hadn’t replaced you’re fired with you’re too valuable to lose through wishful thinking.
And a third time. Just for quality control. Scientific verification required multiple observations, and I was nothing if not committed to proper research when my future employment depended on it.
A slow smile spread across my face. It started somewhere deep inside me before I even realized it was happening, warming everything in its path until my cheeks hurt from smiling.
I’d done it. Against all available evidence and despite myself.
I had a real job that wasn’t temporary, wasn’t something I was pretending to understand, and wasn’t waiting for me to inevitably mess it up before someone politely escorted me toward the exit.
I loved it, even with the disasters, especially with the disasters. Maybe because of the disasters.
You’re officially too valuable to lose.
Those words felt wonderfully strange inside my head. Nobody had offered it out of pity. Nobody had looked at me with that heartbreaking expression people reserved for women who were trying their best but somehow kept ending up in spectacularly awkward situations.
I’d earned it. Every stressful minute. Every last-second solution. Every runaway goat. Every sleepless night. Every moment I’d doubted myself and kept going anyway.
I took another sip of wine. It tasted even better now. Victory paired nicely with a fruity red and the distant sounds of livestock attempting to reorganize someone else’s backyard.
No more screwups. I nodded firmly to myself, realizing I probably shouldn’t make promises to the universe while holding alcohol.
Well, probably fewer screwups. Let’s aim for realistic personal growth instead of complete personality replacement. Baby steps seemed wiser.
I was still Sophie Hartwell, which meant there would almost certainly be future mishaps. Hopefully fewer of them would involve law enforcement. Ideally none involving handcuffs. That felt like a reasonable long-term goal.
There was every chance I’d accidentally organize another minor felony before Christmas. Not intentionally, of course. It would almost certainly begin with me trying to help someone and end with Deputy Jenna pinching the bridge of her nose while asking me to please stop improving the situation.
Across the pasture, Eric looked up from closing the gate. He paused for just a second, resting one forearm across the top rail as though making sure everything was exactly the way he wanted it before finally calling it a day.
Our eyes met across the fresh-cut grass, the fence, the animals, and everything that had happened over the last two days.
He smiled. And it wasn’t the polite sheriff smile.
It was Eric’s smile, the one that crinkled the corners of his eyes enough to make him look younger and softer.
Like the man behind the badge instead of the sheriff wearing it.
That kind of smile didn’t ask anything from me.
It didn’t expect me to be anybody except exactly who I already was.
Somehow that made everything inside me settle. The overthinking, the second-guessing, the wondering whether I was too much or not enough seemed to loosen their grip just a little.
I smiled back without thinking about it or worrying what came next.
With my phone still in my hand, I tapped the diary app and typed:
Day 4:
Got the job.
Got the guy.
Didn’t die.
I dropped my phone back on the chair next to me.
I wasn’t lying awake wondering what I was supposed to do with my life or who I was supposed to become to make somebody else happy.
I already knew. Amazingly, beautifully knew.
I wasn’t wondering where I was headed anymore.
I was already on my way.