“Goddammit, Jill, what’s the matter with you? We’re trying to build something, here, not play demolition derby with the Bobcats!”
“
Sorry,
Casey! I’m sorry! It was an accident!”
“Just drive it into the ditch next—make it a trifecta.”
“Hey, man, lay off,” Darryl called from across the yard. “She said it was an accident.”
“And why are you here when those pumpkin slingshots need to be put up?”
“Like I’m going to go halfway across the farm when you’re doing your best impression of the Hulk. Somebody needs to babysit you before you start throwing picnic tables.”
Casey turned away, so aggravated he felt like his skin was on fire. Why the hell had he ever hired Darryl and Jill, anyway? The first rule of running a business was never to hire your friends. But then who else could he get to work for him? He knew everybody in town. It was a pain in the ass when your employees thought they could talk to you any way they wanted. He should reprimand him. Both of them. Why was everybody going off the rails lately? It was like they were possessed or something.
“What the hell is the matter with you?” Darryl demanded, marching up to him.
“What’s the matter with
me?
”
“
Yeah,
you—aw, shit. Never mind. I know what your problem is. But it is
not cool
to take it out on the rest of us.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Like hell, you don’t. You’re still pissed off about the whole George thing.”
“I am
not
—”
“Don’t waste your breath, dude. This is me you’re talking to. Jesus, what’s it been, two weeks now? Go and see her. Try again.”
“No way in hell.”
“Then suffer. But keep it to yourself. Don’t take the rest of us down with you.”
“I’m not suffering. And I’m not stuck on ‘the whole George thing.’ I’m just trying to get the farm ready for the opening. There’s so much—”
“Aw, quit that. We’re right on schedule.”
“We’re opening in six weeks, plus all the stuff for the gala!”
“Never thought I’d hear you use the word ‘gala,’ like, ever, let alone with a straight face.”
“This is huge, D. You know that.”
Darryl shook his head, incredulous. “Of course I know it. You’ve been working on this for years. But you always forget we have too. What you want is what we want. You’re not on your own with this. The place is going to be great, I swear. So just chill, all right?”
“I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not. You’re about as far from fine as you can get. You’ve been working nonstop ever since—”
Darryl stopped short, but Casey knew what he was going to say. He’d been up to his eyeballs in the farm since George had shut him down so definitively on the Fourth of July. After he’d spent a little time in Self-Pity Land, he pushed past it and decided to focus solely on work. It felt good to have specific goals to reach, things to check off his list: finishing the petting zoo corrals, clearing the ground for the punkin-chunkin’ slingshots, installing the playground equipment, making the hay bale mountain bigger, painting the picnic tables. His employees hated him by now, because he had been working them till they dropped. That hadn’t been fair. He was willing to work till
he
dropped, but he was exhausting them right along with him. Putting the pumpkin farm together wasn’t fun anymore. He regretted that.
“I’m sorry, man.”
“It’s okay. We understand.”
“No, it’s not okay. Look, I’m going to get out of your hair for a while—take a drive, take care of some things. I’ll be gone for the rest of the day. Tell everybody to . . . keep doing what they’re doing. Oh—and tell Elliot to get everybody sundaes from Lix around three o’clock. There’s money in the petty-cash box.”
He started to walk away when Darryl called after him, “Hey! Case!”
“Yeah?”
“It’s gonna be okay, dude.”
Casey smiled grimly. He wasn’t sure if Darryl was talking about the farm or the situation with George. He also didn’t believe it was true for either thing, but he nodded all the same. “Sure.”
Chapter 22
“George.”
“Ssh.”
“George!”
“Ssh!”
“Will you
please
—”
“What part of ‘ssh’ do you not understand? I’m trying to concentrate!”
Sera crossed her clay-caked arms and leaned in her sister’s bedroom doorway. “Fine. I’ll wait.”
George held up one hand and kept staring at her laptop screen. Then she slouched and rubbed her eyes. “And whatever that idea was . . . it’s gone. Thanks a bunch.”
“I still don’t understand why you act like you have to bleed for that blog of yours.”
“Never expected you to.”
“Nice.”
“Mind telling me why you yanked me out of my groove?”
“That’s what you’re calling it?” Sera smirked.
“Well?”
“You have a visitor.”
Legs crossed, George leaned back against the maple headboard of her old twin bed. “There is nobody out there I want to see.”
“Nevertheless—”
“Tell them to go away.”
“Nope.”
“You are such a pain in my ass.”
“I’m your sister.”
“Synonymous.”
George slammed her laptop shut, threw herself off the bed, and pushed past Sera, intending to get this over with as quickly as possible. She’d spent the past couple of weeks hiding out in the house, avoiding the folks in town—and even her own family—as much as possible. Whoever this person was, the conversation was going to be so brief they wouldn’t know what hit them.
Then she paused halfway down the stairs. What if it was Casey? She hadn’t seen him since the Fourth. Since she’d blatantly rejected him, for the second time. And this time he hadn’t come back around to see if she’d changed her mind.
She started down the stairs again. George really didn’t blame him—after all, there was only so much a guy could take. Which was what she was counting on. She really, really needed him to give up. She needed him to go be with—
“Celia.” The dark-haired woman was standing on the porch, looking out over the yard. George pushed the screen door open. “Why didn’t Sera let you in? I swear, my sister has no manners—”
“Hey, George. It’s okay. I just came by to give you this.” Celia held out a purple flash drive. “It’s the photos I took for the Bowen Farms brochure.”
Oh, right—the Web site she’d promised to build for Casey. What was she going to do about that now?
“Wow, Celia, thanks. You didn’t have to hand-deliver them. You could have e-mailed them to me.”
“I know. But I wanted to talk to you. If you have a minute.”
“Yeah, sure,” George stammered, stepping outside with her.
They sat on the top step, and George suddenly remembered a late spring day, years and years ago, when she had been about eleven and Celia twelve. Their mothers had gotten together to discuss some PTA stuff, leaving them to spend time however they chose. So they ate popsicles and talked about boys and gossiped about girls and discussed their plans for summer camp. George had done a little skateboarding, and Celia had watched. No, wait, George had managed to get her on the board eventually and had shown her a few moves. She’d completely forgotten that day till just now, completely forgotten she and Celia had kind of been if not friends, then amiable acquaintances before they had been relegated to their separate social corners as teenagers—Celia to the cheerleaders and the popular kids and classes one year ahead of her, and George to the geeks and intellectuals. Well, not even that. George had been an island, with just Megan as a best friend. Still, their school was so small the social divides weren’t too severe, and bullying was minimal, but it was the last time the girls had spent time together. And from what George recalled, they’d had a really nice time. She wondered if Celia remembered that day as well.
If she did, she didn’t mention it. Instead, she pressed her palms together between her knees and said, “It’s about the whole ‘taking sides’ thing. I guess you probably figured that out,” she added. “I just . . . couldn’t believe those shirts and everything.”
“You and me both.”
“I didn’t know anything about that.”
“Of course not. Why would you?”
Celia shrugged and fiddled with her earring. “Well, I should have figured it out. Ray and Nate got into this argument—I suppose you could tell Ray was on, uh, my side, and Nate took yours—and it just snowballed from there. I tried to stop them, but they wouldn’t listen. So we got . . .”
“Dueling T-shirts.”
“Yeah.”
“Celia, can I ask a question?”
“If I were you, I’d ask a whole lot more.”
“I’ll start with one:
Why?
”
Celia laughed, showing off her perfect white teeth. She and Casey had always looked so good together—the ideal couple everyone wanted to be like. Of course, the entire time they were going out, the rest of the girls were plotting ways to wrest Casey away from her. And it was likely the rest of the guys were thinking the same thing about Celia.
The pretty woman shook her head and sighed. “God, I don’t know. Ray got it into his head a while back, after my husband and I divorced, that I needed another guy. Even though I told him I didn’t. He looked around, zeroed in on Casey, and has been doing the full-court press on the poor guy ever since.”
“And you’ve never considered it? Going out with Casey again?” George ventured. Celia looked at her strangely, so she pushed on. “I mean, he’s nice, he’s handsome, he’s single. You’re nice, you’re beautiful, you’re single. Why not?”
Celia shook her head again. “Honestly, Casey’s great and everything, but I don’t . . . I don’t think I’m ready to date just yet. And I mean anybody, even somebody as great as he is. I had an ugly breakup. I need some time just for me, you know?”
“I do know. I went through something similar last year.”
“You got divorced too?”
“A live-in-boyfriend situation. Even so, it was tough moving on from it. Even if he was a jackass.”
“Then you know where my head is. The need to take a break.”
“Yeah . . . but . . . put a time limit on it. It’s okay to take that break, but if you stay there too long, you get stuck. Take it from me.”
“You really are good at this advice thing, aren’t you?”
George rolled her eyes. “Oh God, no. ‘For entertainment purposes only. For actual guidance that won’t completely screw up your head, consult a professional therapist.’”
“I don’t know. I’ve heard good things about you.”
“Celia,” she said suddenly, “are Marsden folks writing in to the blog?”
Celia smiled slyly. “Oh, yes. I know that for a fact.”
“Great,” George groaned.
“And they like the advice you’ve been giving them. They really have.”
“They’ve gotten me away from my standard ‘dump his ass’ reply, you know. That was always my policy—to recommend breaking up with a significant other if you had any complaints about them. I mean, any
at all.
Well, anything that would make you write in to a strange relationship-complaint blog, anyway. If you do, you’re pretty much asking for it. But now that I suspect I’m actually getting requests from my friends and neighbors, I’ve ended up being more . . .”
“Thoughtful in your responses?”
“Ugh. Sounds awful when you say it like that.”
“Like what?”
“Out loud.”
Celia laughed again, stood up, and brushed off the seat of her shorts. “You’re doing great, George. Don’t worry.”
“You should go out with Casey again,” George heard herself say, even as another part of her brain screamed in protest—at her bluntness? Or because she was still campaigning to get Casey out of her life when it wasn’t what she wanted at all? She avoided examining the reason.
“I . . . uh . . . don’t know how to answer that, to tell you the truth.”
“Just think about it, okay? He’s a really great guy,” she added, well aware she was parroting Sera and hating herself for it.
“There’s just so much pressure lately. I feel like everybody’s always watching me. And him. And you.”
“I know.” George thought for a minute, then said, “Well, there is one way to get everybody off the proverbial ledge, if you’re interested.”
“I’ll try anything.”
“Well, this was a total washout.”
George and Celia did their best to blend into the white wall at the Marsden Gallery, despite their colorful dresses. Across the brightly lit gallery, tangled masses of nubby yarn hung on the wall at evenly spaced intervals. Most of the people in the room were staring at the art with interest.
Celia sipped her white wine. “God, this is awful.”
“Bedelia Swift’s weaving, the opening itself, the string quartet, or Paulie’s chardonnay?”
“Is that what this stuff is supposed to be?”
They looked out over the crowd and recognized pretty much nobody, besides Paulie behind his white-cloth-draped table filled with wine bottles, watching them hopefully, ready to pour them another glass.
“There’s nobody here we know,” Celia said, still scanning. “What’s the point of you and me showing solidarity if there’s nobody here to see us?”
“What is the matter with these Marsden natives, not going to the artsy events in their own backyards, leaving them to the tourists? Where’s their hometown pride?”
“Honestly, I think we’ve hit saturation—too many artistic events, you get kind of jaded.”
“I am supremely disappointed in my neighbors.”
“So what do we do now—get drunk?”
“On this swill? Not a chance.”
“Then tonight
is
a total washout.”
“Oh, I didn’t say we weren’t going to get drunk. Come on.”
George shepherded Celia back into the Pink Lady, fresh from Jack’s garage, and headed into town.
“Now this is more like it.”
Everything in Beers came to a screeching halt when George and Celia walked in. Just like in the movies. All they needed was the spaghetti western whistly music. The crackling of the popcorn popper would have to do. Perfect, George thought. There were enough people here to make the visit worthwhile
and
to take news of the sighting to all the others who weren’t.
“Time for a drink, Celia.”
The other woman made a move toward an empty table, but George grabbed her elbow at the last minute. “Nope. We’re sitting at the bar.”
“Won’t we look . . . available?”
“Who cares? That way we can talk to Charlie Junior, and he can spread the news far and wide, like the Marsden town crier.”
“I thought that was Mrs. Preston.”
“Oh, I think there are plenty of people who share the title,” George said with a grim smile, sliding onto a bar stool right in front of the owner.
After she and Celia ordered their drinks, a woman came up and put two single-page menus coated in protective plastic in front of them. “Want to try some of our new menu items, girls?”
“Hey, Mrs. Beers,” Celia said. “I didn’t know you changed the menu.”
Ah, so this was the chicken lady, George thought. She was a pretty blonde, but she looked tired around the eyes. Still, she seemed happy.
“Sure did. We’re doing some new burgers, and we’re heavy on the chicken wings and chicken fingers. We’re doing our own chicken now,” she said with a significant inflection, winking at George for emphasis.
George raised an eyebrow. What the hell was that—oh. It seemed Mrs. Beers had given up the, er, Chicken Shack and all its . . . amenities. “Was this new menu your doing, by any chance?”
“Yep. Working right alongside Charlie every night.”
This made the woman beam, and George smiled right back. Wow, she may actually have helped someone with her cockeyed advice. Who’d have thought?
“What was that all about?” Celia whispered as Mrs. Beers scurried away with their order for honey-glazed chicken wings.
“I’ll explain later. Right now we have to look approachable.”
“Are you sure this isn’t crossing the line into pickup territory? I don’t want Officer Will thinking we’re up to something illegal, either.”
“Hey, we look cute, not slutty. Just smile and wait. It’ll happen.”
“What will?”
“Hello there.”
“There we go.” George turned to a familiar-looking guy—weren’t they all, in this town, though?—and made a point of brightening up. “Hello yourself.” She looked him up and down. He was a little scruffy, with dirt-stained jeans, a denim jacket, plaid shirt, and John Deere cap, but she’d seen worse. “Do I know you?”
“Hi, Lester,” Celia said.
“Oh—Lester Biggs! Weren’t we lab partners in chemistry?”
“Hey, good memory.”
“How’ve you been?” Celia asked. “How’re the girls?”
“Good, good. And by ‘the girls,’ she means the cows on my dairy farm,” he clarified, specifically for George.
“I remember your family had a dairy farm.”
“Yep, took it over from my dad. Three hundred head.”
“Is that so?”
“Yeah, but no
girls
like wife or daughters or anything like that.”
George tried to smile encouragingly.
He took a pull on his beer, then looked around. “Where’s Casey?”
Ah-hah. “Why would you assume Casey would be here?” she asked disingenuously. She refrained from batting her eyelashes. That would have been a bit too much.
“Well, I heard . . . isn’t he with you?”
“Doesn’t look like it, does it?”
“Well, then, he’s with you, Celia?”
“Nope.”
Lester studied them for a long moment. George knew what was coming next. She’d fielded the next question, in one form or another, and always from terribly uninformed people, many times since Sera came out. “Uh . . . are
you
two ... together?”
George gave him what she hoped was a flirtatious smile. “No, we’re not, Lester. Contrary to popular belief, it doesn’t run in the family.”