Page 35 of Who Pissed Off Ivy Dell?

“What?”

Everyone talks at once, rapid-fire words, obviously meant to distract me, or to drown out April’s response.

“What do you mean about a windfarm?” I ask, raising my voice.

They all stop talking and glare daggers at April.

“Why?” Myrna goes up onto the toes of her red snakeskin ankle boots to make eye contact with her. “Why!”

“Damn you, April.” Petra shakes her head.

In April’s defense, she looks genuinely stunned. But I still don’t know what the hell is happening. “Tell me what you meant.”

She looks at the floor in silence.

Jensen’s hand meets the small of my back. “This is it, Ivy. The last year for the festival.”

“Why?”

Petra closes her eyes like she’s summoning strength. When she opens them, she says, “Because none of us will be here next year. You leave next week, and over the following month, we will all do the same.”

“But why?”

Jensen moves his hand to my hip. “Because the women who own Ivydell have sold it, which was the exact right thing for them to do. It was time.”

“No! Let’s talk to them. You have to fight. Y’all did it once. And you won!”

“But we don’t want to fight anymore, doll.” Myrna’s voice is soft.

“Jensen speaks the truth, Ivy.” Alma sighs. “It was time.”

“Who are these women?”

Petra steps forward. And then Myrna. Alma and Elma fall in line next to them.

“The four of you own Ivydell?”

“Well, doll,” Myrna begins. “When we won the right to come back, someone had to start paying the taxes. It was abandoned land when Ivydell was originally settled, and it sat under the radar for nearly sixty-five years until that oil and gas company took notice. Before that, it was just a patch of worthless land nobody else cared about, but by fighting over it, we declared it had worth, so someone had to take legal ownership.”

“The four of you stepped up and took it on.” I’m in awe. It should’ve occurred to me that someone had to own Ivydell. It’snot really an autonomous magical realm in the middle of the desert. It’s land, and land has value. I understand that. But I don’t understand this.

“Is it really going to be turned into a windfarm?”

Petra laughs. “God, how I wish your Gran was here to give her perspective on this, complete with all her wind metaphors. There were so many signs that we were doing the right thing. But somehow, when you reached out to ask if you could come and see Ivydell, I finally stopped questioning it. Knowing you were coming to see it, to experience this place Patty loved, it closed the circle for me. I knew we’d made the right decision.”

“You knew this was happening before I even came?”

“These things take time.”

I look around at these faces I’ve come to consider friends. “Did everyone know? Everyone except me?”

“Ivy.” Jensen’s tone is stern and condescending, and I hate him for it.

Spinning to step out of his reach, I turn toward him. “You knew. This whole time, you fucking lied to me.”

“I have never lied to you.”

“A lie of omission is still a lie. If you can justify that, maybe I don’t know you at all. What else would keep from me and feel totally fine about?”

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