Subject: Revelation (no, not the Bible)

I realized something tonight. I realized that I’m in deep with you. I guess that should be obvious, considering how much I look forward to every email and text. But that’s what I’m trying to say here. It’s your words. Parts of me have forgotten your touch, your face. But it doesn’t matter at all. It’s you that I miss. You’ve shared so much of yourself with me through these messages that what you look like doesn’t even enter into the equation anymore.

Is that strange? I know you’re proud of the way you look. And you absolutely should be—don’t get me wrong. But it’s just . . . that doesn’t matter to me anymore.

And now that I’ve typed this all out, it doesn’t seem like as much of a Deep Thought as it felt like it was in my head. Hopefully you know what I mean.

To: Stacey Lindholm

From: Dex MacLean

Date: June 6, 1:13 a.m.

Subject: Re: Revelation (no, not the Bible)

I do know what you mean. And it’s a much deeper thought than you realize.

Anastasia, there are things I need to say to you. Things I need to say in person. Words on a screen aren’t good enough. Even Skyping with you wouldn’t be enough. I need to see your face. Be in the same room with you, breathe the same air. Maybe even touch your hand, if you’ll allow it after you hear what I have to say.

I’m going to be completely honest, it’s a conversation I’m a little afraid to have. But it’s necessary. Our stop at Willow Creek can’t come soon enough. At the same time, I don’t want this to end. Our emails. Our texts. Getting to know you this way feels so much more honest than through the masks we wear on a day-to-day basis. That seems counterintuitive, doesn’t it? Face-to-face communication should be more honest, while we can hide behind words on the internet. But here we are.

Dex’s email woke me up more than the mug of coffee in front of me that next morning. Things I need to say to you . . . His words squeezed my heart, and I couldn’t take a good deep breath. What did he need to say, and why he was afraid to say it? Now I was afraid too.

But I didn’t have time to think about it the way I wanted to. It was Saturday morning. A Faire rehearsal morning. Chris had returned from Florida and was here to wrangle the kids, but she’d asked that I come and help out. It wasn’t my usual gig—I’d been a tavern wench for years now—but it was nice to be helpful in another way. So off I went.

* * *

  • • •

Taking over Faire planning for Mitch turned out to be a lot of work, but it was work that I was good at. I spent most evenings after work behind my laptop at my little kitchen table. Now that I’d been emailing with Dex for so long and knew some of the ins and outs of the lives of the traveling performers, I knew that our accommodations were some of the best they got on the circuit. I considered bringing it up with Simon; surely he’d like to know if there was a way that we could be saving money on running things. But Dex had spoken of staying in campgrounds when hotels weren’t available or affordable, and Willow Creek didn’t have anything like a campground anywhere nearby. So hotel rooms it was.

Organizing the rooms was a complex affair. First, I figured out how many rooms each act needed, then I worked to Tetris everyone into the blocks of rooms at each hotel. Once that was done, I logged into the Faire’s email account and started sending emails to the managers of each act with confirmation numbers and directions. Mitch had never signed any of the emails since it was just from a generic business account, so I didn’t bother letting anyone know that the person handling things had changed. It wasn’t likely they’d care; we were all part of the Faire’s organizational committee. I did add a note to all the confirmations, letting them know that Simon and Emily’s wedding would be the second weekend of Faire, and anyone who was performing that weekend was welcome to join the festivities. Most of these people had been working with Simon and this Faire since the beginning, and I figured they would want to know.

Simon checked in on my progress a few times when I’d first taken over, but once he saw that I had it all under control he was able to let go and let me handle it. And not a moment too soon; Emily basically swooped in and took him away to finalize their wedding plans. He had enough to do without needing to micromanage me. And from Simon, there was no higher compliment than not needing to be micromanaged. That made me feel good. I was doing something right.

Meanwhile, Mitch’s baseball team did indeed make it to State, which he told us all in a badly spelled group text that appeared to have been sent after more than one beer. But what the hell. He and his boys had worked hard for that victory, and he deserved a chance to savor it. April’s congratulatory response corrected his misspellings. His reply was a middle finger emoji.

When school let out later in June, Mitch’s time freed up, but Emily and Simon’s was nonexistent. Mitch offered to take the booking assignments back from me, but I was almost done with them, so he went back to planning a bachelor party for Simon. I didn’t want to imagine the kind of shenanigans that would pass for a bachelor party in Mitch’s mind, so I did my best to not think about that at all.

By early July, the summer progressed from pleasantly warm to oh-my-God-it’s-hot, just in time to go to the Faire site and help with the main prep. We spent two weekends placing benches and painting sets.

“Okay, this is what I don’t understand.” Emily opened the cans of paint while I taped out lines on the wooden information booth in the shape of a Tudor-style thatched cottage. “We painted a bunch of stuff last year. And the year before that. Why are there new things to build and paint every year?”

I stepped back and checked my handiwork. The wide masking tape was in a Y-shape. Last weekend, we’d painted this booth dark brown. Today, we’d paint the booth with a textured paint to look like stucco with the tape marks on; then once the paint dried we could take off the tape, and the darker color underneath would look like the timbers of a Tudor-style house. We’d get a couple kids to climb ladders and paint the roof to look like a thatched cottage. Easy. At least, easy when you’ve been doing stuff like this for a decade or so.

Satisfied with how the tape looked, I turned my attention to Emily’s question. “It’s all about what needs to be refreshed. I think the booth we used last year was from when we’d first started. We reuse the benches every year, but some of them get broken during each Faire, so they have to be replaced.”

“Yeah, but the stages . . . we have to rebuild the stages every year too.” She stirred the paint while she thought. “But I guess they would look pretty crappy if they were left out all winter.”

I nodded. “Weather isn’t kind to wood.”

“There should be a better way, though. I’ll talk to Simon about it.” She handed me a paint roller, and we got started on the first coat of primer. It would dry fast in this heat, and we would be able to get the cream-colored faux stucco done by the end of the day.

I had to laugh at her. “Don’t you and Simon have enough going on right now without worrying about that?”

“Well . . .” She stretched up on her toes but still couldn’t reach the top of the booth. I wasn’t much taller than she was; we were definitely going to need to grab some assistants. Tall ones. “Yeah,” she finally admitted. “I guess we have enough on our plate right now.”

“Mmm-hmm.” I refrained from an I-told-you-so and we painted in silence for a few minutes. “Anything you want to talk about?” I finally asked. “Wedding-wise?”

“No.” Her denial was tentative. I didn’t push her in the lie. Instead I concentrated on coating the roller with more paint and attacking the next wall. We were good enough friends by now that she knew she could confide in me. But we were also good enough friends that I knew she talked about things when she was ready.

I didn’t have to wait long. “It’s getting away from me.” Her voice was quiet. “Between work, and Faire, and the wedding . . .” She sighed. I raised my eyebrows in response but didn’t speak; she wasn’t done yet. “It’s too much,” she finally said. “I don’t know how it’s all going to happen, and Simon isn’t any help. He—”

“Okay,” I said. “Take a breath.” I stretched on my toes and rolled paint as far as I could reach. “You know how Simon is about Faire. It takes over his life this time of year, right?” I didn’t look over at her to see her nod; I knew she was doing it. Faire wasn’t Simon’s true love the way it had been before Emily had come into his life, but it was still an all-consuming project. And all the help in the world, from Emily and Mitch and me, wasn’t going to change that. Simon was a make-lists-in-his-sleep kind of guy, and he always had been. I knew that. Emily knew that. At least I hoped she did, since she was about to marry the guy.