Chapter 19
Casey hesitantly climbed the steps of the Down-Montgomerys’ porch for the umpteenth time this summer. When he was a teenager, he’d spent countless hours (the ones not spent on the soccer field, the basketball court, or the farm, of course) lounging around this house with Sera, Darryl, Celia, and the rest of their circle of friends. Sometimes he’d see George, just in passing, flitting from room to room as fast as she could before her older sister threw a shoe at her to make sure she disappeared, but usually the girl was invisible. Back then, a George sighting was something to treasure, because they were so few and far between.
And now here he was, spending more time at the house than he ever had since then, since they’d all graduated and gone their separate ways, since Sera and Darryl had their falling out and splintered the group. He never expected to be back here so frequently, never expected to see George so often, although he was grateful for every moment he got to spend with her. And he definitely never expected to have Georgiana Down shatter his world so damned completely.
Casey took a breath and knocked on the wooden screen door. Yes, he’d waited almost a week to approach the house. And yes, he’d ginned up a cheap excuse to stop by, but it had to be worth it. Darryl was right; he couldn’t just ignore what had happened between them. He’d waited years to make it right between them . . . and to finally show her how he’d felt about her all this time. To walk away now would be crazy. He’d never be able to live with himself.
Nobody came to the door. He let himself in, peeked in the living room, which was empty. But he heard noises coming from the kitchen, so he headed down the hall. It was George in the kitchen—alone, not even minding Amelia—and the place was a wreck. Practically every surface was covered with a fine dusting of flour, the countertop littered with a dozen or more empty canning jars with various colors of whatever had been in them shading the glass, the sink filled with dirty mixing bowls, and the stovetop decorated with a mess of spatters. But it smelled fantastic.
The incredible mix of fragrances was coming from pies. Not one pie, not two or three pies, but enough to fill the kitchen table. And apparently there was another one in the oven, because George bent over to check on something in there, giving Casey a sudden and glorious view of her shorts-clad backside.
Realizing he was pretty close to leering—oh heck, he’d crossed the line already—he decided to clear his throat to announce his arrival. George jumped like someone had poked her with a stick, and she whirled around, ponytail flipping forward over her shoulder.
“Oh my God, you scared the shit out of me,” she breathed, as the lock of hair slid back out of sight. Casey watched it slip away, transfixed.
After way too long a moment of silence, he stammered, “Sorry. Didn’t mean to.” Casey put his toolbox down in the doorway and looked around, as if for the first time. “What in the world are you doing?”
She fidgeted for a few seconds, ineffectively swiped at the counter with a dishrag. Then she said, hesitantly, “Remember the apple pie I made to say thanks for fixing the sink?”
“Couldn’t ever forget it. Delicious.”
“Well, I figured it was going to take more than one pie to say I’m sorry for the other night.”
At the sight of the anxious expression on her pale face, something twisted behind Casey’s navel. He wanted to gather her up, hold her tight, but he forced himself to stay where he was. Instead, he took a quick inventory.
“Fifteen pies? That’s one hell of an apology.”
“I owe you at least that much.”
“These are really all for me?”
“No.”
Despite the tension in the air, Casey laughed a little. “Didn’t think so. So what’s going on?”
She sighed. “I have no idea. Nate Carroll called Sera, asking for contributions for the chamber of commerce’s bake sale table for the Fourth of July thing, and she volunteered me. So here I am.”
“Chamber of commerce?”
“Or maybe it was the Ladies Auxiliary. Whatever that is. All I know is I have to bake twenty-five pies by Saturday, and I’ve raided just about everybody’s gardens for rhubarb and their pantries for their preserves. Thank goodness for Mrs. Rousseau and Mrs. Monroe. They’re canning machines—and they didn’t mind giving up some of their stashes to fill the pies.”
“You do realize we have a market? And it sells these things called cans? And some have fruit filling in them?”
“You, of all people, should know I am well acquainted with canned food.”
He made a face.
“But,” she went on, “store-bought fruit filling is out of the question. You should know better than that.”
“I do. I’d temporarily taken leave of my senses.”
“Don’t let it happen again.”
There was another awkward pause, then Casey jumped in with, “Look, about the other night . . . I’m sorry too. I offended you, and I apologize—”
“You didn’t, honestly. You don’t have anything to apologize for.”
“If I made you cry, then yeah, I do.”
“Goddammit!” George burst out, making Casey jump.
“What?”
“It never ends, does it? Is there
nothing
that doesn’t get back to everyone in this town? How did you hear the rumor about my crying? Is there a gossip pony express? Did Jack call you directly? Or did he tell Mrs. Preston, and she texted it to you and twenty more of her closest confidantes, who then passed it on? Or maybe Sera saw Jamie the shampooer at the hair salon and then, I don’t know, Jamie told the mailman? Come on, I really want to know how all the gossip travels in this town. I’m thinking of mapping it. It’d be fascinating.”
“Uh . . .” Casey was pretty sure she didn’t really care how it got back to him, but he felt compelled to answer her. Wincing, he said tentatively, “Jack told Nora who told Darryl who asked me about it?”
“Of course. I should have known.”
“No, there are way too many routes. You’d never have guessed.”
She sighed again, and some of her anger seemed to dissipate. “True,” she muttered, her voice softer.
“Just comes with the territory.”
“I don’t like the territory.”
“It shows people around here care about you.”
George cocked an eyebrow. “
You
can call it that.
I
call it being nosy.”
“They have a vested interest in you.”
“In us, you mean.”
“Is there an us, then?”
She hesitated, looked away.
“Ah,” Casey said in the silence. “I see.”
“Casey, I can’t. I really can’t.”
“‘Can’t’?”
“Okay. I don’t want to.”
“Wow.” It felt like he’d been smacked, hard. Suddenly he didn’t know what to do with his hands; they felt like lead weights attached to his wrists. He plunked one on his hip and ran the other through his hair, scratching the back of his head.
“It’s not you.”
“You are
not
going to finish that thought with ‘it’s me,’ are you?”
“Of course not. I don’t do clichés.”
“You sure? Because it sounds like it from here.”
“So I shouldn’t ask if there’s any way we can be friends?”
“Good grief.”
“That’s a no, then?”
This time it was Casey’s turn to heave a sigh. He didn’t want to be
friends
. Not
just
friends, anyway. They’d already done that. For years. Even when Casey had wanted more from her, he’d held back. Told himself to forget it. Told himself he could never seriously consider his buddy Sera’s younger sister, the girl he’d known when she was . . . just a girl. Told himself to go off to college and find someone who was at the same stage in her life as he was. And he had. But none of those relationships had ever felt right, or as real as when he was sitting with George, in a shaft of sunlight in the library at school, just talking . . .
Back then, she had been ready, and he hadn’t. Then he had been ready . . . and then he hadn’t. Well, he’d talked himself out of it. And now he was paying for that moment years ago, when he’d stopped himself from going any further with her, when he knew in his heart that he wanted to, that he should. But his head had told him to walk away. And he’d regretted it ever since. Now he was ready, and she wasn’t.
The goddess of timing, if there was such an entity, was an evil, manipulative bitch. He was pretty sure he could hear her cackling laughter as she jerked him around.
He was stuck. What could he do? Demand that she love him? He couldn’t force her to feel it if she didn’t. Although he suspected she did. But it didn’t matter. Evidently she’d made up her mind. He knew that look on her face—it was her steely determination look. The gates were down, the door locked. Nothing got in or out when she had that expression on her face.
He could say no, he couldn’t be friends with her, and then they’d be . . . estranged, awkward, and all those other things it’s difficult to be when you live in a small town, when you end up seeing the other person on an almost daily basis, and you never know where you’ll run into them. It wouldn’t end soon, either—these Down girls sure could hold a grudge. He’d been witness to that with Sera and Darryl. He couldn’t risk it.
So he put on a grim smile and said, “Sure. Friends. That’s fine.”
“Good.”
Casey wondered if he detected a little disappointment in her eyes, or if it was just wishful thinking on his part. He picked up his toolbox. “Going to replace the outlet in the bathroom.”
“Yep. Try not to wake Amelia, okay?”
He nodded and turned to go, then set the box back down and flicked the latches open. “Almost forgot. I have something for you.” He picked out several items from under the cascading trays. George drifted closer, curious, and he placed them in the last clear space on the table among all the pies.
She peered at the three six-inch-tall white letters cautiously, as if they’d bite her if she got too close. Then she sorted them out with a tentative forefinger. “Ned? Who’s Ned?”
Without speaking, Casey rearranged the letters.
“Den? You’re going to put an addition on our house? That’s cool, because we sure could use the room.”
“Don’t be coy.”
George flipped them over, saw the splintered patches of dark brown wood, still attached to them with industrial-strength carpenter’s glue, the letters pierced with screw holes. “Are these—?”
“The very ones.”
“‘Welcome to Mars.’”
“—Den. D-E-N.”
“Why are you giving me the letters you stole off the sign?” she breathed, acting for all the world as though he’d handed her a fistful of diamonds.
“Eh, the cops are onto me. I was hoping you could do me a favor, sit on these for a while till the heat’s off.”
That finally got a genuine smile out of her. “I knew they’d never give up hunting for the perp.”
“Yeah. They don’t have to obey no stinkin’ statute of limitations.” He paused, then charged ahead with, “Goose . . . do you remember why I committed this heinous act of vandalism?”
A fond look softened her expression. “Um, at the time, you said, ‘It’s not vandalism; it’s street art.’”
“Marsdy is street art. This was straight-up vandalism, no matter what I said back then.”
“It made a social statement. That means it was art.”
“Fine—believe what you want. But do you know why I did it?” he pressed.
“I never knew. I just remember thinking you were hardly the type.”
“That’s true.”
“So whatever possessed you?”
You,
he wanted to say. But he decided to take the long way around so he didn’t spook her. “Remember the time you were in the school library, and I came in looking for books on President Taft, and I asked you to help?”
“I told you to get out of my face and find your own damned books.” George smiled sheepishly and rolled her eyes. “And then I got yelled at by Ms. Sullivan, the substitute librarian who was out to score some points because she was angling for a permanent job. I almost yelled back at her. I’d . . . had a rotten day.”
“You said you were fed up with the whole town. You said you felt out of place, and you wished you had been born somewhere else. And you said sometimes it felt—”
“Like I was living on Mars,” she finished for him.
“So I thought maybe seeing ‘Welcome to Mars’ might cheer you up.”
Her smile broadened. “It did. And you risked life and limb to do it.”
“If it made you feel better, it was worth it. Even though I’m still a fugitive from justice.”
She picked up the letters. “I’ll guard them with my life.”
“Don’t be a hero. If they come for you, give me up.”