Page 25 of Piece By Piece

SuAnn walked up the sidewalk with her daughter Janine, both of them carrying folders.

Liza had met SuAnn briefly at the bookstore earlier that week. She was Julie’s mother, a force of nature in her floral prints, who talked with her hands and had opinions about everything.

Janine was quieter, steadier, and had a calmness about her. Of course, she was a yoga teacher, so that made sense.

SuAnn was a whirlwind of energy, probably hopped up from all the things she made at the bakery.

“Liza, sweetheart,” SuAnn said, grabbing her hands. “This is just darling. I mean, look at all these lights. Look at all these children. This is just the kind of thing this island needs.”

“Thank you, SuAnn.”

“Now, we have a proposition for you.”

SuAnn opened a folder.

“Janine and I are starting a scholarship fund, Seagrove Scholars. We want to use some of the proceeds from summer bookstore sales and bakery sales and do some events at The Puzzle Post to help fund it.”

Janine stepped forward.

“It would just be a small scholarship, you know, enough to cover textbooks or some school supplies for a local student every year. We’re still working out the details, but we’ve already talked to a few business owners about participating.”

“I suggested a pie-eating contest as a fundraiser,” SuAnn added. “Nothing brings the community together like some competitive eating.”

Janine gave her mother a look and then rolled her eyes.

Liza’s marketing brain latched on immediately.

“Well, that’s a wonderful idea. I mean, we could tie it into the festival, make the scavenger hunt entry fee a suggested donation, run a fundraiser alongside it. I could even design the materials.”

SuAnn smiled.

Grant, who had been listening from behind his table, said nothing, but Liza saw him write something on his notepad.

She craned her neck to read it.

Scholarship logistics. Talk to Liza tomorrow.

She didn’t say anything to him, but she definitely noticed.

The crowd finally thinned out around 8:30. Parents took their kids to their cars, and the middle schoolers left, seeming a little less indifferent than how they had arrived. Two of them took tangram sets they’d bought from Grant.

Dixie went home victorious, of course. SuAnn and Janine had left with a plan and a timeline for the scholarship program.

Liza began folding the quilts. The fairy lights were still on, and crickets had taken over the evening soundtrack around the town square.

She stacked the cushions and carried them inside and then came back out for the easel.

Grant was wiping down his tables. He looked to be working the same way he always did, methodically, thoroughly. He had already packed up the puzzle stations into their bins and was breaking down the folding tables.

Julie had stopped by earlier in the evening, but just long enough to take a quick look around. She gave Liza a thumbs-up before rushing back to the inn. She had that look again, the one Liza was starting to recognize as that of a woman who needed to be in ten places at once.

She carried the last quilt inside and came back out to find Grant standing on the sidewalk, looking up at the fairy lights.

“I guess we should probably take those down,” she said.

“Well, we could leave them.”

She turned to look at him. He was staring up at the lights with his hands in his pockets, and his face had lost some of the careful neutrality he usually wore. He looked almost relaxed, like he was present in the moment.