Page 116 of The Worst Possible Plan

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.