Page 1 of Moonlight With Maddox
1
Leni
I can practically hear the sound of my boss’s blood pressure ticking higher through the phone.
“Let me get this straight,” Franks says, his voice unsettlingly calm. The same kind of calm that comes right before the storm. “You skipped the photoshoot in Fiji for Maple Grove, Tennessee?”
“It’s actually Maple Ridge,” I correct.
“I don’t care if it's the maple capital of North America! You are supposed to be on a plane right now!”
I pull the phone away from my ear, sparing my eardrum from the impending blast of my boss’s emotional outburst.
Okay, maybe it does sound ridiculous, giving up a trip of a lifetime for my sleepy mountain hometown, but another stamp in my passport won’t help Aunt Connie when she needs me the most. She’s the one who raised me when no one else would. She is my family.
“The shoot will still go on,” I say, in a reassuring tone. “Carson was happy to take my place when I asked him.”
I was fully aware that sidestepping my boss in case would lead to this very phone call. But when the hospital called and told me that Aunt Connie had a bad fall and broke her arm, I was willing to take the risk.
“If I’d wanted Carson, I would’ve given it to him in the first place.”
“Frank,” I sigh, staring out my childhood window at the lush maple trees that lined the dirt drive up to the house. A gentle breeze makes the branches wave in the wind like they are calling me out to play like I did when I was a little girl. “I’ve given you ten years of my life. Have I ever not delivered an assignment you’ve given me?”
There is a long sigh on the other end of the line. “No.”
“Have I ever missed a deadline?”
Another reluctant breath. “No.”
“So, maybe when I tell you that I need to take some time off to help my aunt, the only family I have left, you cut me some slack?”
Silence hums on the line, and for a moment I think maybe the call dropped. The reception this far out of town on the mountain can be tricky if you walk into the wrong dead zone in the house.
“Fine.”
“Besides, I still think I can get some work done here that you might be interested in.”
I hear him shift in his seat. “Go on.”
“I was thinking about something as I drove through town this morning. What’s something that never goes out of style when it comes to traveling?”
“A first-class ticket and a sleeping pill for the flight?”
“No,” I chuckle. “Nostalgia.”
“I’m not following.”
“When you were a kid, did your parents ever load you into the car for weekend road trips?”
“Are you kidding?” His tone softens. “We had this ancient station wagon that my parents used to pile my sisters and I into and take us on weekend adventures to the most random places. It’s the reason I got into the travel business in the first place.”
“And in your mind don’t those trips bring to mind a feeling of simpler times? A time when you didn’t live and breathe by the time on the clock or the number in your bank account?”
“Keep talking.”
“Americana,” I tell him, letting the word settle between us. “More specifically fall Americana in the Great Smokies. Picture it a small town’s Main Street dressed head-to-toe for the annual Fall Festival, pumpkins perched in shop windows, garlands of red and amber leaves dusting scattered on the ground. The air smells like warm cider and wood smoke. The mountains paint the horizon as far as the eye can see.”
“That sounds nice,” he sighs. “But what you’re talking about doesn’t exist anymore.”
