Chapter 4

The money finally had a job, and Sol's hands were all over it.

For ten years Sol had kept a homeware line breathing out of the back of her studio — candles, stoneware, linens her grandmother taught her to finish by hand. Beautiful. Broke. Hannah didn't want a bakery. She didn't want her own face in a window. She wanted something real and entirely Sol's on the outside, with herself behind the wall.

They called it Marlowe & Vine. Sol picked the name. Hannah signed the papers no one would ever read.

The money moved through the LLC. Never Hannah's checking account. Never anywhere a bored sister-in-law could trip over it on a holiday. A lease on a small warehouse by the rail spur. Inventory bought outright, so a slow month couldn't strangle them. A second kiln. A retired potter named Gus who worked for the joy of it and the health insurance. A website that made the stoneware look like something you hadn't known you were missing.

Cole knew the shape, not the size. "You put some savings into helping Sol," he said, and Hannah said yes. True in every word. False in the sum. He liked it. He liked Sol. He liked that Hannah lit up at the dinner table over something of her own. He never asked the number, because Cole had never once priced a person — which was the whole reason his family could not learn there was a number to find.

Sol took the Birchwood meeting. Hannah sat in the corner as "operations" — clipboard, quiet. The buyer was a brisk woman named Priya Anand who scouted regional makers, and she stayed forty minutes past her slot, turning a mug over in her hands like she was reading it. "Spring feature. Real makers, real stories. I want Marlowe & Vine in it." Then she said a number with the words opening order in front of it. Sol didn't move. Her mouth opened and shut. Ten broke years sat behind her eyes and refused, for a second, to believe the room. Hannah pressed a hand flat to the table under the clipboard so she wouldn't reach for Sol and give the wall away. On her way out, Priya mentioned she'd be swinging through a few regional markets that spring, just to see what else the area was hiding.

By the second month there were people who drove in from the next county for Sol's stoneware. A bride registered her whole kitchen on the site. A hardware store two towns over asked to stock the candles. None of it had Hannah's name anywhere a stranger could find it. That was the point. Sol got the door; Hannah got the wall.

The first Birchwood pallet shipped on a Thursday. Sol stood in the loading door and watched the truck pull out and didn't say anything for a full minute. Then she signed the bottom of the next mug — her own name, small, in the glaze — something she'd never let herself do in ten broke years.

Three days later, Brittany's voice came down the family thread like a cold front.

BIG NEWS — I'm chairing the Hadley Spring Showcase! Curated maker's market, downtown, press, the works. And I've personally lined up a buyer from a major national retailer to scout local talent. This is how we put our little town on the map. Spots are LIMITED and by approval.

Hannah read it twice. A buyer from a major national retailer. She thought of Priya Anand and her swing through the regional markets, and something cold and clear settled into place.

Cole read the family thread over Hannah's shoulder that night and snorted. "Brittany. Running a craft fair. Since when does she know a candle from a hole in the ground." He didn't know the buyer in Brittany's post and the buyer in Hannah's warehouse were the same woman. Hannah didn't tell him. She just watched him laugh, and thought about how much louder the laugh would be in three weeks.

A second message landed — screenshotted from Sol a minute later.

Sol! I'd LOVE to squeeze your little garage stuff in, it's so charming. Vendor fee's six hundred — curated event, we have standards, you understand. Spots are going fast!!

Sol's reply to Hannah was three words. Tell me we're going.

Hannah could decline. Six hundred dollars and a corner among Brittany's curated darlings was a humiliation built to order. The safe move was to skip it and ship to Birchwood quietly. But Priya was coming to that market anyway, on her own clock — and Brittany didn't know it. A woman who builds a stage rarely checks who already owns the lights.

She looked at the screen a long time. The wall she'd built so carefully was about to become a stage — and Brittany was the one selling tickets to her own undoing.