Page 33 of Almost True
“Need you to sign some paperwork. We’ve got two guys out the rest of the week, so I’ll need you to—”
“I’m on it. I’m just leaving my meeting, and so I’ll be there soon.”
“Good man.”
I ended the call and exhaled slowly, pushing away the frustration that cropped up every time he called. I loved the man. He’d been my father-in-law for eight years before we lost Vivienne and another eight since. But the call was unnecessary. I’d told him we were missing men. I’d told him I’d be there to run through the cutting we had scheduled tomorrow and would do the prep today.
I’d been managing his business full-time for more than two years and had a hand in it for more than seven. It was always supposed to be temporary, but things were shaping up much differently than I’d planned. I worried that maybe they were looking exactly as he’d hoped, and that was why he and Martha were dragging their heels on listing the place. He’d seemed amenable when I’d suggested we sell it this summer. We were doing everything we could to make it show-ready and saleable. Meanwhile, I recently found out he'd spent all his time applying for grants and who knew what else to assist since it was a sustainable project and somehow qualified. I’d stayed out of all of that with one focus: sell the farm, free them up to be fully retired, and free myself up to live my own damn life.
The only problem? I had a feeling they didn’t have the same thing in mind.
Dahlia pulled up next to me and rolled her window down. “Oh, hey, did I mention I got a few new recruits for planting this weekend?”
With all the legal and support logistics in place after this meeting, this weekend, we’d begin some of the initial planting for the show. We’d gussied up the beds, brought new displays in, and then the day of, Dahlia would bring in her arrangements. We’d decided we needed a lot more help this year than we’d had last year, so we’d both been tasked with bringing in ten volunteers. Something about the glint in her eye told me I wouldn’t need to ask, but I did anyway. “Who’d you get?”
She grinned. “All the girls, of course. And my new friend, Maddie Reynolds.”
CHAPTEREIGHTEEN
Maddie
Ishould probably feel embarrassed by how long the week had felt without Aidan here the last few days. I’d seen him on Tuesday. We’d agreed to be friends. Then… nothing. His crew had showed up every day with two new men I hadn’t met—they must’ve been the ones he’d stepped in to replace.
Could I have texted? Called? Sure. But was I going to? No. Absolutely not. Because as much as I’d declared we were going to banish our weirdness and be friends, I didn’t know how to get there.
“What if you ask him to dinner? Invite him and Luca so it’s clearly not a date, and see how that goes?”
Juliet’s suggestion kept swimming around in my head. She’d left two days ago, which contributed to the way the week stretched out and dragged.
In my normal life, weeks flew by. I’d settle in on a Monday and what felt like hours later, my Friday agenda would be getting checked off and Anthony would be listing what he had booked for the weekend. At one point, I’d relished it.
I hadn’t missed that pace—much of me had dreaded returning to it and knew I needed this break to circle back around to being able to tolerate it. And yet this week? I’d take it.
It was weird to be here without plans or obligations. I’d done every bit of work I could on the two projects I’d promised to wrap up. Now I was just pacing the house, making odd desserts that didn’t taste as good as they looked on the box I’d bought from the market. No-bake Oreo cake batter pops? Not actually very good at all. Far inferior to a plain and simple Oreo.
A text came in as though Juliet knew I was thinking about her.“Just text him. Invite him to dinner. Dazzle him with your planting abilities tomorrow and all will be well.”
I missed her. I always did—we only saw each other in person a few times a year these days. But right now, I missed her so fiercely it made my head ache. It had to be thanks to knowing it’d likely be a solid six months before I’d see her again. Maybe I could fly out and track her down in the fall, but who knew what I’d be doing then?
My stomach sank because actually, I did know. I’d be back in New York, back to my regularly scheduled programming. Because I had to be. Because that was the plan.
I groaned aloud, glad that Anthony was taking some well-deserved vacation and wasn’t there to hear me. Security was off-duty, too, thanks to the surveillance of the property Wilder had set up and the surprisingly quick quelling of the hysteria over the stalker incident. Instead of finding me here, people had swarmed Saint Security and had been flatly and entirely shut down by Wilder and his partner, Bruce.
Good men.
“Fine, woman. I’ll do it,” I said aloud to Juliet’s text, then followed it with sending that very response. And then I did the weirdest thing—I called Aidan instead of texting because I didn’t think I could handle a slow back-and-forth and potentially getting ghosted. This way, I could leave a message, get it all out there, and I’d see him tomorrow at the planting and he could decide whether he wanted to pretend he’d never heard the message or not, like all normal people did.
But instead of ringing through to voicemail, he answered. “Hello?”
Wait. That couldn’t be Aidan. “Luca?”
“Yeah?”
“This is Maddie Reynolds. Is your dad around?”
“Oh! Hi, Maddie. Let me get him. He just got out of the shower. Hold on a sec.” The line went completely silent—he must’ve muted himself—and after a beat said, “Okay, he’s getting some pants on, but he’ll be here in a sec.”
I covered my mouth so he couldn’t hear me laugh, even as I banished the rather tempting mental image of a shirtless Aidan wrestling on his pants from my head. Only a child would tell me all those details. He was even a little old to be giving me that level of information, but somehow, it fit. I wondered if he was a bit like my friend Julian—a little too smart to set people at ease and a little less socially capable than most. I had a bit of that going, too. I’d learned how to mask it over the years, but I’d never had the social graces my brother Nate had. My parents still bemoaned the fact that he wouldn’t leave the military and do something that would capitalize on all that charisma.
