Page 112 of Chasing the Sun

I tucked away the letter and focused my attention. I made a messy, sprawling list of every person I could call. Every contact I’d ever made who might have a line on funding, grants, investors, or fairy godmothers. I emailed the state historical commission. I left messages for a business start-up incubator. I reached out to grant writers who might be interested in helping.

There had to besomeonewho could help me.

One by one,the doors closed.

“Too risky.”

“Wrong kind of nonprofit.”

“No ROI.”

Every rejection was a paper cut, small and mean and stinging more than it should. By the fifth one, I didn’t even bother to respond. Instead, I just dropped my phone on the kitchen table and went out back to cry in the empty barn.

It was the paint that got me really rolling. The stupid, brilliant blue was so bright that it felt like hope, like a glorious middle finger to the idea that this place wasn’t worth saving.

“Dang it, Stan,” I whispered, dragging my fingers along the interior wall. “Why couldn’t you have just given it to me?”

I laughed at my own ridiculous thoughts. Stan wasn’t the kind of man who believed in handouts. He valued hard work. Grit. Pulling yourself up by your bootstraps.

Feeling sorry for myself, I stepped out of the barn and stared at Lake Michigan, tracking the distant caw of a crow overhead, as I made my way back to the cottage.

By the time I got back inside, my crummy black coffee was cold, but I forced it down anyway.

I was utterly exhausted. Not just physically, but bone-deep tired. The kind that made your soul feel like wet sand, heavy and clinging to everything.

And yet, underneath the ache, under the grief and rejection and fear, something small and bright and furious was surviving, like a weed that refused to die no matter how many times you stepped on it.

I wasn’t ready to give up.

Not yet.

Even if I didn’t know how to win. Even if I didn’t have a plan or a partner or a dollar to my name, I wasn’t walking away.

Because I knew this dream was worth fighting for. ThatIwas worth fighting for.

I stared at the stack of rejection emails, at the empty grant applications and loan documents spread across the table like battle plans, and I exhaled slow and steady.

I could do this. Iwoulddo this.

Even if it broke my heart. Even if I lost Cal in the process.

The truth I didn’t want to face was the fact that there might not be a way for both of us to get what we wanted. Cal was right—if someone else bought the farm, there was no telling what they would do to it. I just knew that if Isomehowscraped together enough to buy it, it would solve everything.

I took a deep breath as the house settled back into its usual quiet, and I opened my eyes.

I started again.There has to be a way.

THIRTY-FOUR

CALLUM

She was tenacious,I’d give her that.

Elodie was still tending the pumpkins. From the edge of the orchard, I watched her crouch in the dirt, her fingers curled around the stem of a vine like it might slip away if she let go. The hem of her T-shirt rode up just enough to expose the slope of her back, and I could see a smudge of blue paint on her skin, dried now but still defiant. She wiped sweat from her brow with the back of her wrist, leaving a streak of dirt across her temple, and I swear, it unraveled me.

The sun hung low in the sky, warm and syrupy, casting her in that golden glow that made everything on the farm look like it belonged in a painting. The cottage. The barn. Her.

Especially her.