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Chapter One

Hazel

“You’re going up to Shepherd Tate’s place?”

Harper, the owner of the cute bakery in Ridgewood Falls, stopped with the cinnamon roll halfway into the bag. She had flour on one cheek and a pink apron tied twice around her waist, and she was staring at me.

“I’m his intern,” I said. “Through the Harvest Festival.”

“His intern.”

“Is that bad?”

“No.” She slid the bag across the counter. “No, it’s great. He’s the most talented person in three counties. He comes in every Tuesday at seven for a black coffee, and I think he’s said maybe twenty words to me in four years.”

“Grumpiest man on this mountain,” an older man said from the table by the window. He kept his eyes on his newspaper. “Good luck to you, miss.”

“Thank you.” I smiled at him anyway. “I’m very hard to discourage.”

He turned a page. Harper laughed.

“How did you even end up here?” she asked.

“I’m a senior at UNC Asheville. Illustration and mixed media.” I counted out my cash. “Last spring I was supposed to be writing a paper on Appalachian folk art. I found his pumpkins on the town’s festival page and wrote the whole thing about him instead. My professor knew him years ago, and she asked him to take me on.”

“And he said yes?”

“He did.”

Harper shook her head slowly. “Then she must have something on him.”

I laughed, but my stomach gave a nervous little flip. I’d been so excited when Dr. Mills told me he’d agreed that I’d never stopped to wonder whether he actually wanted me here.

I took the roll and my coffee and stepped back out onto Main Street. It was still warm for late August, and the maples hadn’t started to turn yet. I made it two doors down before the bookstore pulled me in.

A woman only slightly older than me looked up from a stack of paperbacks. “Welcome in. I’m Lily. Holler if you need anything.”

I didn’t need help. I really shouldn’t have been buying anything either, since my car was packed to the roof. I grabbed a couple of paperbacks anyway.

There was a postcard rack by the register, and the card in front stopped me. It was a pumpkin as tall as a house, sitting on a courthouse lawn in full afternoon sun, with every inch of it painted by hand. I could see the brushstrokes even on a four-by-six card.

I knew that pumpkin. It was the photo that had started everything. I’d stared at it on my laptop at two in the morning last spring, and something in my chest had said, That. I want to make things that make people feel like this.

“Is this by Shepherd Tate?” I asked.

“That’s one of his,” Lily said. “You know Shepherd?”

“I’m about to.”

“Well.” She took the postcard and rang it up along with my books. “He hasn’t come to a town meeting in six years. Most folks think he’s a hermit.” She slid everything into a paper bag and handed it to me. “He’s better than he lets on, though.”

I tucked that away with my purchases.

My phone buzzed when I got back to my car. It was my mom.

Did you make it okay? Dad found a teaching certification program you could start in the spring. Just in case. Love you!

I read it twice. I loved my parents, and I knew they loved me. But I’d been hearing “just in case” since I was twelve and told them I wanted to be an artist.