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“I didn’t say a word.”

“You said a whole paragraph.”

Her pleased expression ought to have been illegal before eight in the morning. Then it vanished.

“You’ve been different since he got here,” she said. “You’ve fought him harder than you’ve fought for anything in years, and you’ve been more alive than I’ve seen you since you bought this shop.”

“That’s because he’s threatening everything I’ve built.”

“Sure,” Pearl said, and picked up her tray, stopping at the door. “Meeting’s at noon. Wear the green coat. You’re meaner in the green coat.”

She let herself out. The bell over the door gave its small, tired shiver. I straightened one cardinal on the shelf before I remembered my rule against panic-cleaning and put my hands down.

The community center’s front window still had the cardboard Santa in it, the same one since I moved here, faded on the side that faces the sun until his suit had gone the color of weak tea.

Jenna took over the register at eleven thirty. I reached the festival office at eleven forty and arranged my binders in their usual order, food service left, crafts center, entertainment right. Then I sat and looked at the arrangement. I’d built a wall out of three-ring binders against a man who owned the building over my head.

Griffin came in at noon.

He was in work boots and a thermal with sawdust ground into the cuff. He had retaped the blister himself, badly, using the roll I had given him. He carried one folder and had left his laptop behind. “Ms. Winters.”

The formal address went through me like a draft under a door.

“All thirty-seven vendors are confirmed,” he said, sitting in the chair that faced the wall. It was the worse of the two, and he had taken it without complaint since our first meeting. “The entertainment schedule is locked. The stage is framed. Decking goes down Wednesday if the weather holds, and Frank signed off on the lumber himself, which took more than an hour.”

“Thank you.”

“I’ve withdrawn the light maze proposal.”

“Wait—”

“The sleigh rides continue as scheduled, traditional format, no changes. Mrs. Morrison’s confirmed. The Whitmores are supplying supplementary horses if the weather goes bad, and their cider booth is on the roster, which was her idea and not mine.” He set the folder on the table between us and squared it to the edge. “If you want the Whitmores off the roster, I’ll take them off.”

“No. It’s a good addition.”

“Thank you.”

He turned a page and kept going, and every item on it was something I’d asked for in the last ten days. Vendor parking moved off Cedar so the Hendersons wouldn’t have to cross traffic with a hot cart. Two additional generators, rented, not borrowed, because Frank’s had been coughing since 2019. A revised load-in window that put the choir risers in before the food trucks instead of after, which is the thing I have argued about with every site coordinator since 2018 and lost every time.

He had gone through my complaints and granted all of them, alphabetically.

“Thank you.”

The fluorescents hummed. I waited for him to argue. I had prepared three rebuttals on the walk over, but silence was not an argument I knew how to win.

Nothing came.

“You’re not going to fight me on any of this.”

“What would be the point?” His jaw tightened, and he looked at the wall. “You’ve made your position clear. The association’s made theirs. My job now is to get the festival open and stop costing people things.”

“And your renovation plans?”

“Phase one’s on hold. The block can wait.”

He gathered the folder and stood. Then he stopped. When he spoke again, his voice had changed. “Your building can’t. I filed the permit application Friday. The work starts January second whether or not you’re speaking to me. If I wait until spring, the west footing beneath your shop could pull the party wall—the wall Winters Wonderland shares with Sweet Provisions—out of alignment. Then Pearl’s bakery is at risk too.”

I stared at the scarred table, the eight-year-old phone listing in ballpoint, and my own hands flat on the binder.