Page 59 of Stuck with the Hero Next Door

I felt tears starting again and didn’t try to stop them this time. “I can’t...this is too much. You don’t have to⁠—”

“Yes, we do,” interrupted Dot from the bakery, who was setting a large container on the table. “Homemade bread. And soup. And a casserole that’ll feed you for a week.”

“We take care of our own.” Mac from the diner nodded toward a small cardboard box filled with Mason jars of local preserves and bags of fresh-ground coffee. “My wife made enough strawberry jam this year to last Everwood through next summer's harvest.”

I looked around the room at all these faces, people who’d become friends, neighbors, family in the months since I’d arrived in Everwood. My students, who’d convinced their parents to contribute to this impromptu relief effort. Town council members, shop owners, and the people I recognized from the post office or the grocery store.

They’d all come together to help me. Not because they had to, but because they wanted to. Because in their minds, I belonged here, and when someone in the town needed help, you helped.

“Thank you. All of you. I don’t know what to say.”

“Don’t say anything,” Janet said gently. “Just let us love on you a little.”

The next hour was a blur of hugs, helpful suggestions, and more generosity than I knew how to process. My students told me dramatic stories about being snowed in and getting to build snow forts in their backyards. A few of the guys made usable tunnels between houses. Sarah Baldwin from the library gave me a detailed inventory of the books she’d selected. Mac explained the proper storage method for his special coffee blend, claiming it was better than “that stuff from Missoula” when Janet was safely out of earshot.

Through it all, Levi stayed quietly in the background, helping carry boxes back to Janet’s storage room and offering practical advice about insurance claims and contractor recommendations. He didn’t push or hover, just remained available, a steady, reassuring presence that made everything feel manageable.

When the crowd finally began to disperse, I found myself alone in the parlor with Janet and enough donated supplies to stock a small apartment.

“How am I supposed to repay all this?”

She smiled and began folding a donated blanket with the kind of practiced efficiency that comes from years of inn-keeping. “You don’t repay it, honey. You accept it gracefully, and someday when someone else needs help, you pass it forward.”

It was such a simple concept, but it felt profound sitting there surrounded by evidence of Everwood’s care. This was how small towns worked—not through grand gestures or formal organizations, but through neighbors looking out for neighbors, through people showing up when someone needed them.

“I need to find a place to live. I can’t impose on you indefinitely.”

“You’re not imposing. But I understand wanting your own space. And as it happens, I might have a solution.”

She disappeared upstairs and returned with a newspaper and a phone number written on a piece of inn stationery.

“Mrs. Walton,” she said, pointing to a circled ad. “It’s a beautiful place, it’s clean, it’s furnished, and it’s available immediately. Mrs. Walton is a friend of Mom’s. Her son and his new wife just moved out. The house has its own entrance, and Mrs. Walton makes the best blueberry cobbler you’ve ever had in your life. She’s won the county fair blue ribbon three years and counting. I already called and told her about your situation. She’s holding it for you if you want it. It’s a block from Main Street and faces the Anderson’s hay fields.”

I looked at the ad—a simple two-bedroom guest home, walking distance from the school and downtown. The rent was reasonable, especially with the insurance settlement I’d hopefully be receiving. It wasn’t the cottage, but it was a place to start over.

“It sounds perfect.”

An hour later, Levi and I were standing in the doorway of what would be my new temporary home. The guest home was perfect and charming, with hardwood floors and tall windows that let in lots of light. The furniture was simple but comfortable—a couch, a dining table, a bed that looked like it had been made with actual care rather than mass-produced efficiency.

“What do you think?” asked Mrs. Walton, a woman in her sixties with kind eyes and sensible shoes.

“I love it. It feels like home.”

She beamed and handed me a set of keys. “Wonderful. Take all the time you need to get settled. And don’t worry about the paperwork and all that stuff right now—we can work that out once you’re settled in. You can rearrange anything you want.” She paused at the door. “I make soup on Thursdays, and if you need anything, I am only a hop and a skip away.” She smiled and winked at Levi.

After she left, Levi and I stood in the living room, taking in the space that would be mine for however long it took to figure out what came next.

“It’s good,” he said, walking to the window that looked out over the back fields. “You’ll be able to walk to school, and you’re close to everything.”

“It’s not the cottage,” I said wistfully. The cottage had been perfect for what I needed when I first settled in Everwood. A place to land, to figure out who I was outside of my mother’s dreams. This house was different: a place to build from, for whatever came next.

“No. It’s not.” Levi pulled me into his arms for a hug. “But it’s yours.”

Over the next few hours, we ferried box after box from the inn to the guest house, setting up my new space with the donated supplies and the few possessions I’d managed to save. It was like a very specialized form of interior decorating—making a home from other people’s generosity and a lot of creative problem-solving.

Levi unpacked boxes and organized the bookshelf while I rearranged kitchen supplies and tried to figure out the optimal coffee-making setup. We worked mostly in comfortable silence, but there was something different about the quiet now—less tentative, more settled. Like we’d moved past the careful politeness of a new attraction into something deeper and more certain.

“Hand me that hammer?”