Page 17 of Kylo
What the kitchen did have was a bay window that I believed, according to Rue’s little chart, would provide the best indirect light for some of the plants I’d bought.
I found, oddly, that I actually gave a shit that they lived.
If you asked me before I’d gone into that shop if I’d had any kind of feeling about plants, I’d have said no. Sure, they added a certain something to the rooms I’d seen them in. I’d just never felt the need to have any of my own.
Now that I did, I wanted them to thrive.
Maybe my claim to be really into plants hadn’t been a complete lie after all.
I found the placements for three of them, deciding to bring the ‘starter’ pothos plant back to the clubhouse with me so McCoy knew I was committing to the job.
I walked back through my house, finding myself viewing it through the eyes of someone who loved plants and wanted more of them. I could imagine where I’d put all the ones I’d spotted at Vital Greens that I’d been interested in.
“Christ,” I said, letting out a huff of a laugh as I made my way back down to the first floor, looking around the empty space and suddenly feeling like I needed to fill it. A couch, coffee table, some lamps so I didn’t have to use the overhead lights, a nice TV. And, of course, a coffee maker and a mug for the kitchen.
Just the bare essentials I’d need to feel comfortable if I needed a break from the clubhouse and all the craziness there. A place to unwind. I wasn’t going to move in or anything. Even if I was suddenly imagining how I would decorate the primary bedroom.
Maybe I would do just one more quick errand to the home improvement store for some paint, drop off the supplies at my house, then head back to the clubhouse to debrief McCoy about my suspicions that Rue wasn’t in bed with the competition.
With any luck, McCoy would tell me to keep investigating. Then I’d get the excuse to keep visiting the shop. And the time to disappear for hours to work on my house without anyone getting suspicious.
Just until Huck came back.
Then I was going to fess up.
Well, to the house.
Not the fact that I wanted to fuck the woman who may or may not be working directly with our competitors.
That shit was something I was going to play close to my vest.
CHAPTER FIVE
Rue
Vital Greens was closed one day per week. Tuesdays, which my grandmother had learned after years of operation, were the slowest day of the week.
Maybe it was crazy, but I didn’t love days off.
I found that when I had too much free time on my hands, my anxiety tended to spike. Would my old therapist think that simply avoiding free time was the healthiest way to cope? No. Of course not. But we all had to work with whatever coping mechanisms made our lives easier.
For me, that meant that Tuesdays were full of everything I could pack into them. All my cleaning chores, grocery shopping, lunch-prepping for the week, lawn care, laundry, and socializing were done on this one day a week.
It kept my mind and body busy and also allowed my evenings after work to be free so I could watch shows, relax, and occasionally doom-scroll social media.
So by the time I drove out to the fringes of Golden Glades, I already had a fridge full of ingredients for easy breakfasts and lunches, two loads of laundry washed, dried, and folded with athird tumbling with my bedding for when I got home, a weeded front flower bed, and sparkling floors.
I was feeling a little sweaty and grubby but very accomplished as I grabbed the two cups of mocha iced lattes and climbed out of my car at the nursing home my grandmother had doggedly researched, visited, and planned for before setting her plans in motion.
Honestly, as much as she claimed she’d been having memory issues that made her want to retire, I had some trouble believing that. Because, apparently, she had it all worked out so that she not only didn’t have to use Medicaid to pay for her current or future care, she also didn’t have to liquidate her house or business to do so.
See, my grandfather didn’t give her much in life. In death, though, the money he so painstakingly invested in stocks his whole life did pay off. And since she didn’t need the money while she was in business herself, she just kept rolling it back in.
She covered her assisted living fees and her borderline obnoxious shopping habits all on her own.
In turn, her careful planning left me pretty comfortable as well, since the house I lived in was paid off and she owned the shop outright.
I would never say it aloud, but I kind of suspected that my sharp-as-a-tack grandmother simply wanted to retire from the business, find new friends, and enjoy some crazy antics that, if confronted, she could blame on her old age or memory loss.
