Page 8 of Over the Verdant Hills
“Josiah, go on. Sit down for a bit.” Miss Mattie smiled engagingly. “I have some chocolate cake that I was holding back, but… I’ll get you a piece. That ought to make waiting a little easier.”
He did have a weakness for chocolate cake, and she knew it. Which was why there was cake there, he was sure. He couldn’tdecline her offer.
“Claire, darling, why don’t you grab the cake that’s on top of the refrigerator and cut a nice generous piece for Josiah. You can get one for yourself too if you want to. You look like you could use a little meat on your bones.”
Miss Mattie wasn’t wrong. Claire looked as skinny as a rail. Unhealthily skinny, if there was such a thing, although the more he looked at the weight tables in the doctor’s office, the more he felt like being so skinny that your bones stuck out was what they considered healthy nowadays.
When he was younger, he was all elbows and knees and knobby bones that stuck out in odd places. But he’d filled out some and put on some muscle, so he didn’t look like a toothpick with elbows anymore. Still, he’d probably never be heavyset.
“It’s been a while, Claire,” he said as she set the cake down on the table without saying anything.
Miss Mattie set two plates down and the spatula to scoop the cake out with. Claire murmured a thank you, and then she looked directly at Josiah.
“It has. On purpose, for my part.”
Okay. He wasn’t sure what to say about that. Was she talking about him, or was she talking about being in Raspberry Ridge in general?
“It’s good that you’re back.” He tried to rack his brain for something else to say. “It’s pretty this time of year.”
The weather. The good old standby when a person couldn’t think of anything else to say. And Claire was not exactly looking welcoming at him in any way.
“I suppose,” she said, and he didn’t know whether she was answering his first comment or his second. Maybe she was combining both answers into one.
This was going to be a long half hour until the bread was ready. He wasn’t sure he was going to be able to endure this level of passive-aggressive almost glaring from Claire the entire time.
“You know what, it’s pretty warm in this kitchen with the oven heating up and everything, so why don’t you two take your cake and go sit out on the front porch? Lana and I will tidy up in here, and thenwe’ll go make sure that Dan didn’t wander off. We’ll have to talk to him about lake safety soon.”
“Yeah, I wanted to do that, but I haven’t gotten around to it. I figured after they get back from school tomorrow, we’ll?—”
“We’re going to school tomorrow?” the girl said—what did Miss Mattie call her? Lana? She didn’t sound very happy.
Maybe Josiah should thank her, because it made Claire move a little quicker, and she was hurrying toward the front door with two pieces of cake almost before he was able to catch up to her and open the door before she got there.
“Thanks,” she said without looking at him as she used her elbow to push the screen door open.
“No problem,” he said as he shut the door behind him and then caught the screen so it didn’t slam. Miss Mattie had yelled at him years ago when he was a kid for slamming the screen door, and those lessons stuck.
“Here’s your cake,” Claire said, still not looking at him.
“Is there something I did that made you mad?” he asked, knowing that he hadn’t seen her for more than ten years. It was probably closer to twelve or more. She might’ve been around a bit during college breaks, but he couldn’t specifically remember seeing her.
“Not really,” Claire said, taking her cake and going over and sitting in the rocking chair that was the farthest away from the door. The one by itself.
He figured he could either slide a rocking chair over to her or sit down away from her. He decided he’d sit down on the porch swing, since that was the most comfortable, and it was his favorite spot anyway. If she didn’t want to talk to him, he wasn’t going to make her.
He’d tried to ask her if there was anything he needed to apologize for, and she’d acted like there wasn’t. Except…she’d said “not really.”
“‘Not really.’ Does that mean there is something?”
“No. It’s just that seeing you brings back bad memories.”
“In what way?” he asked, truly baffled. There was that game of truth or dare, and she had been his first kiss, but…they’d been…eleven? Twelve? Maybe fourteen, but definitely no older. All he knew was it had been nice, and he wouldn’t have minded more, but she had acted like it wasthe grossest thing that had ever happened to her, and he’d ended up embarrassed.
If anyone should have bad memories about that, it should be him, right? Except… It had been his first kiss, and he mostly remembered it with fondness. Although he’d had better kisses over the years, there were none that he remembered with quite so much nostalgia. In fact, if he remembered correctly, it had happened just past the chicken coop in her gram’s big barn.
“I don’t really want to talk about it,” she said, rocking in the chair and not looking at the cake that sat in her lap.
Well, he wasn’t going to pass up a piece of homemade cake. His mom’s good days were fewer and far between, and she didn’t do much baking anymore. Not that chocolate cake was good for him or anything. Still, he took a nice bite and enjoyed the flavor on his tongue as he looked out across the greening pastures.
