Page 54

Outside, the sky felt too bright. I let out a long breath.

How had it come to this?

Jumping from crisis to crisis, surviving on caffeine and borrowed grace, hoping pie could keep me upright. I used to be someone who had plans and direction…a future with bullet points and deadlines. Now I was just trying not to fall apart in public. And the terrifying part was wondering whether, if I went down, I’d know how to get back up again.

“So far,” I whispered to no one, “I’ve been almost assaulted by elderly bingo players, and I briefly blacked out because of a man’s chest.”

Blackwood 2, Sienna 0.

I took a breath, steadying.

“You can do this. You are going to walk into the next place like a normal, functioning adult,” I said, hoping no one could see or hear me talking to myself—but knowing this town, there was surely someone watching. Probably a shirtless cowboy that tasted like cherry pie. “You are going to speak in complete sentences. You are going to keep your balance. And you are absolutely not going to lose your mind over anyone’s…anything.”

A beat.

“…Even if it’s very nice.”

I exhaled sharply, pushing off the sidewalk.

“All right, Sienna,” I muttered. “Woman up.”

The Blackwood Historical Society lived in a room that looked like it had lost a prolonged, really personal war with time and paper products.

The sign on the door—Historical Society, Knock if you must—hung crooked enough to suggest it had given up halfway through existing. I knocked anyway and pushed it open when it creaked in protest.

Dust and old ink hit me first, followed by the faint, stale scent of something that had once been coffee in another life.

One metal filing cabinet leaned against the wall, its drawers labeled A–C, D–F, G–O, P–Z with strips of masking tape and fading marker. Next to it, a cheap shelving unit sagged under the weight of newspaper stacks tied with twine. Someone had written 1983 in red across the top bundle. Beside it, 1997. 2004.

A desk sat under the lone window, buried beneath a landslide of paper and a chipped coffee mug printed with a fat, contented cat that looked wildly out of place in this room of bureaucratic despair. A shoebox perched on top, marked Photos—Do Not Touch!, each word underlined with escalating intensity.

And on the newspapers, between “1983” and “1997,” an elderly man lay sprawled on his back, snoring. He had a newspaper draped over his stomach like a blanket and a pen cap still clutched in his hand. His mouth hung open. For a split second, my brain tried to categorize him as a body—because apparently spending five minutes in Blackwood meant everything now came with a serial killer filter—and I had to actively remind myself that not everyone lying still in this town was dead.

“Hello?” I said.

The man exploded upright with a snort, sending sports pages sliding to the floor. “Charlie?” he barked. “You’re late. The zoning hearing started fifteen minutes ago.”

“I’m not Charlie,” I said.

He squinted at me over smudged glasses. “You’re not,” he agreed slowly. “You’re…you’re…” His finger wobbled in my direction. “The cow-killer girl.”

I sighed. “Close enough.”

“You here to testify?” he demanded.

Did this place double as a courthouse? I could get behind that particular combination. “In…what, exactly?”

“Sidewalk widening,” he said gravely. “Corner of Maple and Third. Been pending since ’83. Can’t go forward until we get proper statements. The cows get confused if you change things too fast.”

I stared at him. “You’re telling me there’s a forty-year-old zoning hearing still going on because of…livestock traffic.”

He sniffed. “Do you have a problem with that, Miss Cow Killer?”

“I plead the fifth,” I said. “I actually came to see if you needed help. As in, a job. Filing. Answering phones. Local history stuff.”

A job that kept me hidden away from the public seemed my best bet at success here.

He waved vaguely at the chaos around us. “You know how to find my pen?”