Page 47 of Once Upon a Fall

“I can help too,” Emma says, looping her arm through mine as we head for the cars.

“Thanks, but you have too much going on,” I say. Emma works at the library directly across Main Street from the inn and does all the fundraising for it, even though it’s not her job. You’d think that would mean I see her all the time, but somehow we’re both always too busy.

“Dom has way more time on his hands,” I say.

“Actually, I don’t, Rosaline,” he says, and I stick my tongue out at him.

“Don’t call her that,” Emma chastises. She knows why I don’t like the name.

She turns back to me. “But you’re running the festival too.”

I wave her words away. “It’s going just fine.”

It’s basically a lie, but one I tell my sister easily. If I tell Emma that I’m basically drowning and the only thing keeping me afloat is a handsome man staying at my inn, she’d be over at the inn running herself ragged, trying to do all the things.

We’re a lot alike in that way.

Dominic falls into step beside me as we head toward the sidewalk, while Emma and my dad continue toward the parking lot. “Thanks to Dom, huh,” he mutters. “You know Emma will figure it out.”

“And then she’ll be worried about me. Neither of us wants that to happen, so keep your piehole shut.”

Since our mom died, Emma has taken on a lot of responsibilities that aren’t hers.

Dominic huffs out a breath. “That’s true.”

At the corner, I side-hug him goodbye and start down Main Street toward the inn. Behind me, I can hear car doors shutting as my family heads home.

For one strange second, I want to turn around and admit it all in one of my Rosie rambles: I’m drowning in debt, my inn isn’t close to finished, and there’s a leak in the Cinderella room. I’ve barely done anything for the festival and have a list a mile long. Oh, and I shared a bed with a hot man last night, and I liked it a lot. Byeeeeeeee! Then I could just keep walking before any of them had time to respond.

But I won’t. Because I know exactly what will happen if I do. The Harpers would descend on the inn and make my struggles their problem. It’s what they do.

It’s hard to keep it all from them. But I have to. Someday I’ll admit it all, when it’s over and everything has turned out just fine.

Because it will. It has to.

“This was not terrible,” Dean says, eating the last bite of his pot pie as he sits next to me at the island.

“See? I told you.”

We were working so hard on the Rapunzel room that when dinnertime rolled around, Dean didn’t want to stop. So I suggested we heat something up for dinner. His idea was to order out from the Maple Bar and Grill, but I convinced him to let me make dinner this time.

So that meant frozen pot pies.

I’d like it to be noted that he’s eaten two of them. Whether it was out of sheer hunger or the fact that he liked them more than he’s willing to admit, I’ll probably never know. This is Dean we’re talking about here. He did say they weren’t “terrible,” so I’m calling it a win.

“My mom used to make these from scratch. This is the sad version,” I say, picking up my empty pie tin and dropping it on my plate.

“What was she like?”

“She was amazing,” I say. I’m always happy to talk about my mom, to keep her memory alive.

“She took care of everybody. Not in a big, obvious way. She just noticed things. She’d know somebody was having a hard week before they said a word about it, and then there’d be a casserole on their porch. She’d bake cookies and send the three of us out with plates for the neighbors. I didn’t always want to do it, but I remember feeling amazing after I did.”

Dean watches me for a minute.

“She sounds like she was a great mom,” he finally says.

“The best,” I say.