Page 5 of Who Pissed Off Ivy Dell?

“Nope. No such luck.”

It’s not just her knock that’s snappy tonight.

“I didn’t mean to imply I wasn’t happy to see you. What’s on your mind?”

“Just wondering if there was anything I could do to help out tomorrow.”

“What’s tomorrow?”

“It doesn’t have to be tomorrow, specifically, Petra. Just if you need anyone to do anything soon to help get ready for the festival, I’m available.”

“Well, thank you, but you’ve done a lot already. And I appreciate it. We all do. But you’ve got a job to keep up with, too. I don’t want your time here to have a negative impact on your real life.”

“I can manage my work schedule and still contribute.”

I try to choose my words carefully. She’s too much like Patty to accept a placating response. She’s got that sixth sense. “To be honest with you, we’re scaling back a little this year. There will be more to do, but nothing right now.”

“Why are you doing less this year?”

“You put on an event long enough, you ultimately learn some things.” I laugh at myself, and it’s genuine. “We never really needed to go all out with the decorations. It’s a lot to clean up and store after the festival is over. Some of us are getting too old for all that.”

“But you’ve got Josephine, Cujo, and Jensen. And me, even though I’m not aregularresident.”

“Is this about the meeting?”

“No. I mean, it does kind of sting to not be included, but I understand that not everything in Ivydell concerns me. I just want you to know that I still want to be a part of things. As much as I can be.”

“You truly have no idea how much I love that you are here for this year’s festival, Ivy. I promise I will let you know every time there is any prep to be done.”

“Thanks. But let’s don’t scale back, okay? I think Gran would’ve wanted me to experience the festival at its most over-the-top level possible.”

Oh, she’s good. Knows just when to play that card. And she’s right. It’s exactly what Patty would want. It’s how she’d want us all to experience it.

“Maybe we won’t cut back as much as I’d planned. We have fewer artists this year, though, so we don’t want to overhype it. I want it to be clear when people arrive that it’s smaller. Don’t want anybody thinking we pulled a bait and switch on them.”

“Why are there fewer this year?”

Well, at least I know Jensen wasn’t texting her the minutes of the meeting when he kept looking at his phone.

“Like I said, hon, people are getting older.”

“If you put the word out online, you could get artists to rent space for the festival. Probably more than you have room for.”

“It’s a little late for that.”

“Maybe next year. I could build a website for the festival and create an application for interested artists. You could rent out any available casitas to them, and I bet Jensen could renovate some used campers for temporary housing.”

“Whoa, there. You don’t let any grass grow, do you?”

“Sorry. I get excited, and I love planning things. I used to help Gran with an arts festival at home. She was on the planning committee, and then she became the head of the planning committee, and then she took on so much of the work that it became a one-woman committee.”

“She never got over that, huh? When we were together, she was always volunteering for shit, and then taking up everybody’s slack until she was the only one doing any damn work. God, it used to make me so mad when she let people run roughshod over her like that.”

“Yeah, but she wasn’t good at delegating because she couldn’t let go. She felt responsible, so she maybe micromanaged a little.”

“They say we recognize our own traits in others.” I smile at her because there’s no way she doesn’t already know she’s just like Patty in that way.

“Well, they say we’re attracted to our own traits sometimes, too.”

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