May 5, 2026
The town wouldn’t stop talking about it.
By 10:00, nine people had come through the door. More traffic than she usually saw in a morning. Most of them bought something—a book, a skein of yarn, something small—as if purchasing gave them the right to stay and chat. They talked about the parade. About the speeches. About the Sergeant in the wheelchair who saluted the band and cried during Bill Hayes’s remarks and held every child’s card like it was a letter from a general.
“You organized this?” a woman Kim barely recognized asked. She was holding a coffee from the bakery and smiling as people smile when they’ve been part of kindness and want credit for noticing.
“It was a community effort,” Kim said. The same line she’d given Emma Richmond three weeks ago.
It worked then.
It worked now.
It still felt like a lie.
David Fleming stopped by at 11:00. He didn’t come in, just leaned against the doorframe with his hands in his pockets.
“Good day yesterday,” he said.
“It really was,” Kim said.
“Jan and I are talking about keeping the food table going. Monthly thing. Community cookout, maybe. Her idea.” He shrugged. “Figured I’d mention it.”
After he left, Kim thought about Jan Williams and David Fleming, who hadn’t spoken in six months before this, now planning monthly cookouts. Something real had happened. She couldn’t deny that. The lie had produced something real. That was the part she couldn’t dismiss.
Frank called at noon. “How’s the victory lap?”
“People keep coming in to congratulate me.”
“And?”
“And I smile and say ‘thank you’ and feel a bit like a fraud.”
“You pulled it off, Kim,” Frank said. “The town showed up. The man saw his parade. He kept his promise to Charlie. That’s not nothing.”
“It wasn’t July 4, Frank.”
“No,” he said. “It wasn’t. But everything else about it was real. The band was real. The speeches were real. The people standing up at the end. That was real. You can’t fake a crowd getting to its feet.”
Kim didn’t answer. Frank let the silence sit.
“Go easy on yourself,” he said. “At least today.”
Annie came in at 2:00. She looked different. Not lighter, exactly, but close to it. The relief showed in her shoulders.
She sat in Ron’s chair. The reading lamp was off. The pencil cup was still there. She picked up a pencil. Turned it in her fingers. Put it back.
“How is he?” Kim asked.
“Asleep. Carol says he’s been out since last night. The day took everything he had.” Annie paused. “But he was smiling when he fell asleep. Carol saw it.”
“That’s something.”
“It’s something.” Annie spotted the flags on the wall. “I’m going to tell him tomorrow. Or the next day. Whenever he’s strong enough to hear it.”
Kim nodded. The pact. The deal they’d made on the bridge.
“Are you ready?” Kim asked.
“No,” Annie said. “But I’m going to do it anyway.”
She left and Kim stood alone in the shop. The afternoon light came through the window and caught the flags like it always did, and for an instant the shop looked as it had on April 3, when a ninety-one-year-old man walked in with a teenager and told her to put her flags back up.
We lied to him, Kim thought. But we loved him. That was real too.
She didn’t know if it was enough. She suspected she’d be asking that question for a long time.
