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“Margaret Finley,” the woman said, from across the table, during a pause in Rick’s vendor location discourse. “You’re the art teacher.”
“Allison Hayes.” She smiled back. “You’re not the first person to know that before I introduce myself.”
“Small town.” Margaret’s eyes were warm and very direct. “My husband Harold and I ran the Juneberry Inn for thirty years. We know everyone. And everyone knows us.” A pause. “Which is either a blessing or a condition, depending on the day.”
Rick Brennan said something about the food vendor situation.
Margaret ignored him with the practiced ease of someone who had been ignoring Rick Brennan at festival meetings for years. “How are you finding Merrybrook?”
“I’ve been here almost three weeks,” Allison said. “I’m still finding it.”
“That’s the right answer,” Margaret said, with the tone of someone filing information away in a place where it would be accessible for later use.
* * *
The festival was six weeks out. The planning meeting established, among other things, that Allison was going to be responsible for the art display, a decision that appeared on no agenda and was nonetheless arrived at by consensus in approximately four minutes, during which time Allison had agreed to three things before she’d fully processed what she was agreeing to.
She didn’t mind.
She minded slightly that she’d agreed to also coordinate the decorations for the gazebo and the entrance, which was more than she’d planned on, but then she thought about the gazebo and the maple tree and Founders Square and decided she didn’t mind that either.
She walked out of the meeting with a list, a timeline, and the energized feeling she got when she had a project.
Margaret Finley appeared at her elbow on the sidewalk outside.
“Do you have plans Saturday morning?” Margaret asked.
“Not yet.”
“Come to the farm stand at Juniper Park. Eight o’clock. I’ll introduce you to people.” She said it the way someone said the sun will rise, not as an invitation exactly, more as a statement of what would happen next. “Harold will be there. Bring comfortable shoes.”
“I’ll be there,” Allison said, and meant it.
* * *
She needed supplies.
This became clear on Friday afternoon when she spread her festival lists across the kitchen table and started accounting for what she had and what she didn’t. Ribbon and twine and a kind of wire for hanging things and picture hooks in three sizes and sandpaper, fine grit, for the wood panel project she was planning with the older kids. She had some of it. She didn’t have most of it.
Lauren, consulted by text, sent back a single response: Colter Hardware. They have everything.
And then, a minute later: Also Shane Colter is in there. Just so you know.
And then: Not saying anything. Just informing you.
Allison stared at her phone for a moment.
She typed: Thank you for the information.
Lauren sent back a very small and very smug looking emoji.
* * *
Colter Hardware was on the corner of Main and Birch, which she had walked past approximately twenty times in three weeks without going in, which she now realized had probably been a decision she’d been making without admitting she was making it.
She went in.
The bell over the door was lower than The Brook’s, a different tone, deeper, more functional. The smell hit her immediately: metal and wood and motor oil and something else underneath, something older, the smell of a place that had been used for the same purpose for long enough that the purpose had become part of the air. It was a good smell. She hadn’t expected to find it as reassuring as she did.
