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Chapter 1
Pepper Vines
The first person to ask whether love can be repaired is seven years old and wearing a paper crown covered in glitter. She stands beside the new Heritage Hall display with both hands wrapped around the brass railing, studying the carved artifact beneath reinforced glass. Her crown has slipped over one eyebrow, and a pink heart sticker clings to her cheek.
“Ms. Vines,” she asks, “does it work again?”
The question carries farther than she intends.
A few visitors glance toward us. Beyond the museum doors, fiddle music skips across the square while the reopened Month of Heart festival blooms beneath pink ribbons, flower garlands, and cloudless Florida sunlight. Inside, people circle the artifact with careful curiosity, as though a century of wishes might have made it fragile.
I crouch beside the girl. “What do you mean by work?”
“The Love Stone.” She points through the glass. “My grandma said people came here because it kept packs together, but Mom said the museum changed the story.”
Her mother stands several feet away, holding two cups of Sweet Tooth lemonade and pretending not to listen.
The artifact is pale, curved, and marked with a worn sigil. It’s also a carved gator tooth, despite generations of Sweetheart Haven residents insisting on the word stone with impressive commitment.
“Would you like a better look?”
The girl nods.
I set my brochures on the floor and hold out my arms. “Up you come.”
She climbs against me with the complete trust of a child who has been with me through three summer nature camps and the removal of a frog from the school library. I lift her onto my hip, grateful my cutoff overalls can survive both fieldwork and glitter transfer.
“There.” I angle her toward the case. “See the curved marks near the bottom?”
She leans closer. “The little waves?”
“Exactly. Those may have represented water.”
“What about the circle?”
“That’s one of the questions we’re still trying to answer.”
Her fingers curl against my shoulder. “Did it make people love each other?”
“The people did that part themselves.”
She considers the tooth again, her cheek nearly brushing one of the dark curls escaping my rust-colored headscarf. “Then what did it do?”
I point toward the map covering the wall behind us. Red ink traces the swampland route once used for a ritual of protection. Brown lines peel away through forgotten water channels, following a release path the town stopped talking about long before either of us was born.
“The old story kept the part where love held on,” I tell her. “The new exhibit includes the part where love had to let go.”
Her small face grows solemn. “Did love come back?”
“That’s a very good question. It’s the one everyone should have been asking.”
She pushes her glitter crown higher. “I think it did.”
Warmth spreads through my chest. “I hope you’re right.”
Her mother comes over, smiling. I lower the girl into her arms and discover a bright pink handprint sparkling across the bib of my overalls.
“Sorry,” the woman says.
