The more tourists who came to Love You, the better her job performance.
Ding ding!
Heart swelling with pride, Rachel grinned as the small electric trolley made its way down the street to the town common stop, the flash of pink and white blending in perfectly with the town.
It was on brand.
Seating thirty-six and holding another thirty people standing, the trolley was a long metal tube painted white with red trim, and pink hearts all over it. Logos from various companies in town were imprinted inside the hearts, and on any given day, the trolley was packed with tourists and the occasional townie using it for convenience.
Getting a clean energy grant for the trolley, an idea she’d had two years ago to cut down on parking issues, had taken so much work, the majority of it convincing wary townies that it would be an improvement. Nadine Khouri, the police department’s administrator and primary town gossip, still complained about the trolley bell, but most of the town’s twenty-five hundred residents agreed that it had reduced traffic and made everything run smoother.
Which was Rachel’s goal. Efficiency mattered.
Thirty craft tents of different sizes (but all with awnings of red, white, or pink) spread out along the periphery of the common, with the gazebo set up as a stage, amplifiers and microphones in the right place, a young girl belting out her soulful version of “I Will Always Love You” as if she were competing in America’s Got Talent.
There was no sign of Kell.
“Hey!” Kylie Hood touched her shoulder, her voice familiar enough that Rachel didn’t even have to turn around to know who it was, her cheerful tone a dead giveaway. There was a better than even chance she had eight-year-old Harriet with her, and as Rachel looked to Kylie’s left–yes.
She was right.
“Hi, Rachel!” All dark curls and lanky legs, Harriet was a delightful kid, and Kylie was soon to be her stepmother. Kell groused about the fact that his brother Luke had beaten him to the punch in proposing to his girlfriend, but Rachel hadn’t minded at all.
Luke was a widower, and he and Kylie had reconnected after fifteen years apart. The two couldn’t be any more perfect for each other. If Kell really were proposing to Rachel today, there would be intra-family discussions about which wedding came first, but Rachel knew one thing was certain:
Both weddings would be held right here, in Luview, Maine.
“Hey yourself. Isn’t this beautiful?”
“It always is.”
“Hotel room and Airbnb rentals are up twenty percent. Informal polls of all the stores are showing a fifteen to thirty percent increase in sales. I’ve been surveying people in the parking lot for the trolley and universally, they love it! We do need a structure, like a bus stop, for people waiting in the rain, and someone suggested stroller rentals.” Feeling her own breathless excitement, Rachel reined it in.
“And it’s just so pretty!” Kylie gushed, making Rachel laugh.
“There’s that, too, of course.”
“Have you been down there already?” Harriet asked as they walked. “I want the funnel cake!”
Like every other baked good in town, all the funnel cakes were in the shape of hearts.
“Pierre is there! Just like every other year,” Kylie assured her. Harriet wore a unicorn on one cheek, painted by the ever-creative Kylie. While Rachel had moved in with the Luview clan at the sprawling former kids’ camp that Luke, Kell, their sister Colleen, brother Dennis, and parents had all bought together, Kylie still lived separately, renting Kell’s old apartment above Bilbee’s Tavern. They’d decided to move in together after getting married.
It was old-fashioned, in Rachel’s mind, but it worked for them.
And likely meant their wedding would be sooner rather than later.
“Excited about Kell’s singing?” Kylie asked with something in her eyes that made Rachel feel glee.
Glee that she was right. Kell was definitely proposing today.
At the festival.
On stage.
While singing his version of the special song.
“Of course,” she said as she picked up her step, Harriet running ahead of them, shouting out to someone named Mariah. The more she got to know Kell’s niece, Harriet, the more in awe she was of small-town life. Watching a young girl grow up surrounded by people who had known her since she was a newborn, and who was part of a family with roots so deep they stretched back centuries, gave Rachel a window into a life she’d never had.
Harriet was ensconced in a world of love, acceptance, and deeply known.
Life as the child of a television star and a Hollywood entertainment lawyer had been comfortable and loving for Rachel, overall, but it wasn’t this. Harriet had roots and wings, as the saying goes.
And hearts. So, so many hearts, literally and figuratively.
Tragedy had touched her at such a young age when her mother died, but her family and town had provided support and resilience.
And now she had Kylie. No one would ever replace her mother, but Kylie had already stepped in and opened her heart to Luke’s daughter in a way that only a fairy-loving, glitter-baking woman like Kylie could.
And the town considered Kylie one of their own, too, after a rocky start. Kylie Hood was born in Luview to a dad who came from a “summer people” family and turned a summer cottage into a year-round home. When her father cheated on her mother when Kylie was fifteen, she’d been uprooted, forced to move with her mother and little sister to Indiana to live with her grandparents.
But Kylie had come back, and soon Kylie and Rachel would be sisters-in-law.
If Rachel could hand-pick a sister, it would be Kylie.
“I love your ring,” Rachel said to Kylie as they got closer to the gazebo, now past the rows of vendors with their colored awnings, all of them red, white, or pink. The town’s Love Committee had just had a heated argument over whether Luview should regulate the permitted shades of red and pink, leading Mike Forsythe, one of the owners of Love You Handy Jobs, to pound his fist on the table and insist that “fuchsia is a perfectly reasonable color, damn it!”
Rachel only knew this because Kell’s sister, Colleen, served on the committee and shared the story over beers at Bilbee’s Tavern after it happened.
Lots of beer. So much beer.
“I love it, too. Moore did such a great job with the design.”
“The ring is original, and your proposal was definitely one that stands out.”
“No one can copy Luke,” Kylie laughed. After dating in high school, Luke and Kylie had spent fifteen years apart, until they’d run into each other in an unlikely confluence of events involving Kylie getting stuck inside a metal charity donation bin while Luke was donating his late wife’s clothes.
Weird as it was, that had ignited a spark.
And Luke had taken Kylie back to that bin at Deke’s Service Station and Breakfast Diner, turned it into a romantic candlelight dinner (after a careful sanitation via powerwashing), and proposed.
Deanna Luview had one kid engaged.
And if Rachel was right about Kell, soon it would be two.
Kylie grabbed Rachel’s hand as they reached the edge of the crowd around the stage. A group of young kids were doing an adorable hip-hip version of “I Will Always Love You.” Legs and arms worked in varying beats until the crowd was clapping along. Searching for Kell, Rachel’s eyes landed on the very last person she expected to see today in Love You, Maine.