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He told me to come by tonight, so why is my gut telling me something has shifted?

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

FINN

The gates at the bottom of the access road to the festival open at four.

For the first twenty minutes, I stand at the edge of the main path and watch as the first families come through the entrance arch.

I almost forget to breathe because I’m waiting for something to go wrong. A vendor calling me to say they don’t have power or Chief Morrison materializing with a compliance issue.

But nothing happens.

The families keep coming. A little girl in a red coat points at the lights strung along the vendor booths and asks her dad when they’re going to turn on.

Meredith’s voice crackles over the radio, “Front gates have a line building. The volunteers are on it. We’re good.”

I feel like I’ve been holding my breath since Thanksgiving, and I can now let it out.

For the next hour, I walk the site with my tablet in hand. Everything is working. Everything.

The tree lot is doing brisk business, the food tent line is already spilling out the door, and everyone is smiling.

I pass Joe’s stand, and he leans out of the pass-through window and points at me with a tong.

“Griffin Hall! I’m giving you free wings for life.”

“Joe, I’m going to hold you to that so hard you’ll regret saying it.”

He shakes his head. “I sold out of the special maple-glazed wings and had to send someone back to the diner to get some more. This is surpassing all our expectations. My suppliers are delighted.”

“I’m glad it’s working out, Joe.”

I step out of the food tent in the direction of the next row of vendor stalls.

I’ve been looking forward to seeing Marco Navarro’s stand since the day his application landed in my inbox back in September, along with a photo of a hand-carved wooden bear in a knitted scarf.

He drove almost two thousand miles from Pine Ridge, Colorado, to be here, and his stall is exactly what I hoped it would be.

The whole booth is lined with wooden bears of every size. Some are tiny, no bigger than my palm, sitting on their haunches, and some are larger, standing upright, wearing carved scarves and hats and, in one case, an entire miniature parka.

There’s one in the middle of the display that’s holding a tiny wooden fishing rod and wearing a fisherman’s hat. I’m obsessed with them, and from the number of people around the stall, so is everyone else.

Marco is behind the table, wrapping a bear in tissue paper for a customer. His long dark hair fans around his shoulders. He smiles at the customer as he hands over the bag, and it’s the kind of smile that would sell out this stall on charm alone, even if the bears weren’t spectacular.

He looks up and catches me.

“Hey, Finn, how’s it going?”

A customer asks him about the bears, so he answers politely and makes another sale before he turns back to me. His smile never falters.

“Oh my goodness, I cannot thank you enough for getting me in. This has been wonderful, and it’s only the first day.”

“Well, thank you for making the drive from Colorado.”

“My sister’s been telling me for months that I need to expand my markets. Winterberry showed up during my research, and I thought, why not.”

“Please thank your sister on my behalf.”