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Now we just need the footings at the Lookout, timber for the deck and boardwalk, and the county crew to assemble it.

We’re going to make it. For the first time, I let myself believe it.

The comments start in week nine.

I don’t go looking for them. I don’t have the app on my phone. But Wren does, checking them every night on my porch, the way you’d press on a bruise to see if it still hurts.

Tonight, she’s quieter than usual.

“What is it?” I ask.

“Nothing.” She turns her phone face down on her knee.

I set down my knife. “Little bird.”

She sighs and hands it over. The tourism office posted a new photo this afternoon, a festival countdown with Wren standing at the trailhead, grinning, thumbs up. Most of the comments are nice. Some of them are not.

Why does a park ranger have a lip ring?

Super unprofessional. Would not trust her with my kids.

Pretty girl. Shame about the hair.

Somebody tell her to cover up the tattoos for the festival. It’s a family event.

A rumble starts low in my chest, and this time, it isn’t a joyful sound.

“Holt.” She puts her hand on my arm. “It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine.”

“It’s the internet. It’s never fine.” She takes the phone back and turns it face down. “I’ve been hearing this stuff since I was sixteen. Then my old band’s label started saying it to my face. ‘Take the ring out, Wren. Wear long sleeves, Wren. Maybe go back to brown.’”

“And you did.”

“For about six months. Then the band broke up anyway.” She shrugs. “So I’m never doing it again. Not for a label, not for a festival, and definitely not for Brenda from the internet.”

I want to find every one of those people and stand on their porch until they apologize. I don’t say that. Instead, I pull her out of the rocking chair and into my lap, and I kiss the steel ring in her lip, very gently, on purpose.

“I love this ring,” I tell her.

She laughs against my mouth. “You love the way it clicks on your tusks.”

“That too.”

She settles against my chest with a sigh, and I hold her until her breathing goes slow and soft.

The next morning, James turns up at the trailhead with his camera and a tourism office lanyard.

“Big poster shoot for the festival,” he says, all teeth. “We’re thinking the two of you, right here at the sign. Wren, maybe we could lose the lip ring, just for this one? And a beanie over the hair? The feedback has been a little mixed.”

“No, thanks,” Wren says, politely, without budging an inch.

James opens his mouth again.

“James,” I say. “She said no.”

He looks up at me. A long way up. Then he takes the photo exactly the way she’s standing, and the poster goes up in every shop window in town by the end of the week, purple hair and lip ring and all.