She looked away.“I don’t know what comes next.”
“That’s okay.”Winnie’s voice was gentle.“You don’t have to know yet.You just have to take the next step.”
“And you think the next step is running a small-town festival?”
“I think the next step is whatever keeps you from disappearing into that cottage and mulling over your problems.”
She opened her mouth to argue, then closed it.
Winnie touched her arm briefly.“You don’t have to decide now.Just think about it.”
She walked away, leaving Cassidy standing on the sidewalk with the uncomfortable sensation that Winnie saw straight through her.
Cassidy spent the rest of the morning walking the town, this time with a different lens.
She noticed things she’d missed before, like the faded paint on the dress shop sign and the empty storefronts at the south end of Main Street.The tourist families who wandered through quickly, bought ice cream, and left.
No one stayed long.
There was no reason to.
She found herself standing in front of a community bulletin board outside the post office, scanning the flyers.
Harbor Festival – July 12-14
Lighthouse Tours • Local Vendors • Live Music
Family Fun on the Waterfront!
Similar to the flyer she’d seen yesterday.The design was dated, with no clear call to action and no sense of what made this festival different from any other small-town summer event.
She pulled out her phone and took a picture.
Then she put the phone away, annoyed with herself.
This was not her problem.How many times did she have to repeat that?And hadn’t she just turned down the mayor?
She walked back to the cottage and sat at the table with her laptop.
Opened a blank document.
Stared at it, then typed: Starlight Harbor Festival.A Preliminary Assessment.
She stared at that, then deleted it and closed the laptop.
Her phone buzzed with a message from her mom:How are you doing?Maybe you should come home for a bit.
Home.
A town smaller than this one.A house that still had her high school photos on the wall.A mother who’d never understood why Cassidy worked sixty-hour weeks, why she couldn’t just relax, why she needed the promotions, recognition, and the proof that she was worth something.
She had left at eighteen and never looked back.
And now she was forty-two, sitting in a cottage a thousand miles from her apartment, with no job to go to and no idea who she was if she wasn’t the woman who delivered results, exceeded expectations, and made things happen.
Well, she sure wasn’t going home, that was for sure.
She opened her phone, pulled up the photo of the festival flyer, then spread out the paper flyer she’d picked up yesterday.
