Page 98 of One More Made Up Love Song
“Does he? What is it?”
“You’ll have to go see for yourself,” she says. “He’s waiting for you on the back porch.”
I nod, then look up at Freddie. “Will you be okay here?”
“Absolutely,” he says. “Your mom already promised me albums full of your baby pictures if I finish the rest of the dishes.”
“See, you expect me to complain about that, but I was a very cute baby. So go ahead. Knock yourself out.” I lean up on my toes and press a quick kiss to his lips. “I’ll be back soon.”
Something flickers in his eyes. “When you are, Ialsohave something I want to show you. Or…play for you, actually. If you’re up for it.”
I think about the moment in the car when he told Carina he’d never written a song about someone specific until recently.
I’ve never been a fangirl. It’s not really my nature or my personality to freak out over artists or authors or any other kind of celebrity.
But the thought of Freddie Ridgefield singing a song that he wroteaboutme…to me…that probably deserves atinybit of fangirling.
“I take it you won’t give me any clues either?” I ask.
“Not a one,” he says. But he does give me one more kiss before I go.
As promised, Dad is waiting for me at the base of the back steps. It’s already after nine, and the farm is bathed in the soft moonlight of a summer night, the stars twinkling overhead.
Dad doesn’t say anything as we cut across the back lawn, which isn’t typical for him. Even if he’s just talking about farming, he’s usually got something to talk about, some newimprovement in the greenhouse or a new tractor he loves more than all the others.
His silence makes me wonder if he’s nervous about something, and it piques my curiosity.
When we reach the edge of the grass, we turn to the right, moving away from the commercial operations of the nursery. The greenhouses, the employee parking lot, the tractors and mowers and other machinery used for everything from seeding to harvesting.
Once, when I was in middle school, I asked Dad if he wanted me to help him run the nursery one day. It was a much smaller operation back then, half what it is now. I remember he’d just purchased a second delivery truck, the Conway Nursery logo painted onto the side.
“I want you to grow up and do whatever you want,” he said, like it was the easiest answer in the world.
“But what will you do if I don’t? Or if Daphne and Carina don’t want to either?”
He shrugged. “I’ll sell it all and move to the beach.”
When we pass the firepit, I finally realize where Dad is taking me. There’s a small workshop on this side of the property, one of the only places that doesn’t have anything to do with Dad’s business.
He’s always enjoyed a little bit of wood carving, and the workshop is where he keeps all his tools.
Somewhere in the house, in the boxes of things I left at home when I moved out but didn’t want to throw away, I have at least a dozen tiny animals my dad carved for me over the years. Donkeys and goats and bears and rabbits. Even an octopus, because I watched a documentary about one and became fully obsessed for six solid months.
His carvings are good enough that he could sell them ifhe wanted to, but he’s always said that selling them would ruin the fun. That he’d rather not turn his hobby into a job because then it would be a job, and then what would he have as a hobby?
Hard to argue with that kind of logic.
We finally reach the workshop, and Dad pauses before opening the door. He turns to look at me, his expression a little sheepish, then he clears his throat. “So, your mother was cleaning out one of the closets upstairs, the one in Daphne’s room, and she came across a box of Daphne’s things. I don’t know how we missed it before, but it had a notebook in it that seemed to be ideas for a wedding. Pictures of flowers, dresses, that sort of thing.”
“Daphne’s perfect wedding,” I say. “I remember. It was one of those black and white composition books, right? And she glued in pictures of what she liked.”
“That’s it exactly,” Dad says.
“Oh my gosh. I haven’t thought about that thing in years. We were in middle school when she made it.”
“I’m surprised it wasn’t you who made one,” Dad says. “You were always more of a planner.”
“True. But Daphne was the romantic one.”
