“I do have a business plan,” Lark said.

And she was thankful for her friend Rusty who had told her in no uncertain terms that “starting a crowdfunding campaign is not a business plan.”

Then had helped her make an actual business plan.

“And I know it’s going to take some time and money to rehab the place, but, if we’re working on the house here, I can easily get the same crew to go down the street and do some work there too. Two houses, one stone. Or one phone call.”

She took a breath. “I sold everything. I mean, all my furniture. And my lease was up. I...I want a fresh start here.”

The deep irony of looking for a fresh start here. This place that had made her, then unmade her. Tearing out each and every stitch that had held her together so she’d been forced to go off in pieces and find a way to repair what was.

It wasn’t holding. That was the problem.

All these years later. Nothing was healed, just hidden.

She felt like she’d left pieces splintered of herself all over the country. On rivers and lakes in the Midwest, in the Atlantic Ocean. In different towns and different cities, different jobs and groups of friends.

She’d been searching for things there, but it had only left her more fragmented. And none of it had brought her healing.

She’d been everywhere else looking for it. But she hadn’t been back home, not really. Visits with her parents, the will reading, the funeral, that wasn’t the same as really being here. When she came back she didn’t spend time on Main Street in town, didn’t visit old friends. She usually holed up in her parents’ house and went between there and The Miner’s House to spend time with Gram.

“If you can open this shop, you’ll stay?” Her mother’s expression was neutral, and Lark couldn’t really tell what her feelings were on the subject.

“Yes,” she said.

“Then try it,” Mary said. “Why not?”

“A ringing endorsement,” Lark said. “What about you two?”

“I figured I’d just line up the renovations for The Dowell House,” Hannah said, in her typical, straightforward fashion. “Avery and I have already gone back and forth on furniture, and I ordered some.”

“You didn’t ask me?” Lark asked.

Avery and Hannah both had the decency to look slightly guilty. “I didn’t think you’d care,” Avery said.

But they hadn’t asked.

Their skepticism about her ability to run a business combined with this felt...

Like something you’ve earned?

She ignored that. Even if it was true.

She felt nearly divided sometimes, into before and after. Before she’d left home, and after. When she’d been young she’d been...well, young. And probably a little bit spoiled because she was the youngest. She’d always wanted to have fun, to have good feelings because bad ones had been unbearable and she didn’t know how to keep them in, and when they came out it was always a whole meltdown.