Page 5 of Off the Beaten Path

“Yes, Daddy,” she says calmly, ignoring my stare by smoothing down the pleats in her skirt. “But cupcakes tastesomuch better.”

I let out a puff of air that plumes white in the chill of the car. This girl will be the death of me.

“What else did you do today?”

June’s chatter fills the truck as we drive the few minutes across town. Our little town is dead at this time of year, all the hikers and tourists gone until spring, just like I like it. It’s cold and a little bleak, but it’s quiet, and there’s no traffic. Once spring arrives, the town will be bustling again until the leaves turn, and I won’t be able to get groceries without waiting in a mile-long line.

My headlights slice across our front yard as I turn down the long gravel drive that leads to our detached garage. I let out a curse under my breath when I catch sight of the stack of boxes on the porch.

“You still have to put money in the swear jar even if you whisper it, Daddy,” June says from her booster seat. I mumble another curse, exasperated by how good her hearing is.

I throw the truck into park, grumbling the whole time I help June from the back. Her high-pitched giggle rents the night air as she runs up to the porch. Her hair swings around her when she spins around after reading the labels on the packages.

“They’re not ours,” she yells, loud enough to alert the neighbors.

She didn’t have to yell for me to know that I didn’t order six boxes’ worth of packages. No, that amount of destructive online shopping can only belong to one person.

“Go inside, June. I’ll be back in a minute.”

She giggles again, no doubt running inside to the window that faces our neighbor’s front porch, eager to watch the action. If I had more cash, I’d let her watch from the porch, but her hearing is too good for my wallet.

Gathering the packages in my arms, I stomp across the yard separating our houses, dead grass and snow crunching beneath my boots. My hands are icy, but my blood is boiling as I pound on my neighbor’s summer yellow front door. Even the color is making me angry.

It swings open a second later, and Wren stands across the threshold, smiling brightly. She looks like a ray of eye-searing sunshine, and it makes me glare even harder.

“Good evening, Holden,” she says calmly, glancing down at the packages in my arms. “Oh, some of my packages must have been delivered to your house by mistake.”

The sparkle in her blue eyes and the smirk on her face tell me this was no accident, not that I thought it was even for a second. At least once a week, I come home to her packages on my porch, and every time I storm over here to deliver them, she seems more and more delighted.

Wren Daniels likes to mess with me. Sending her packages to my house, parking her car in my driveway instead of her own, putting plastic forks in my yard on mowing day, leaving her Christmas lights up way too late.

It’s the middle of January, and those fat, bright bulbs are still lighting up the whole neighborhood.

“Stop sending your packages to my house, Wren,” I say through gritted teeth.

She props her tiny hands on her hips and tips her chin, giving me a hard stare. “You called the cops on me last week for not taking my Christmas lights down.”

“It was the nonemergency line,” I say, as if that makes it better. Honestly, if anyone else in the neighborhood had left them up, I wouldn’t have given it a second thought, but Wren has a way of getting under my skin. That, and I’m pretty sure she’s the one who told my mom that there was a woman at my house two weeks ago, which my mom didn’t shut up about for three days. I’m never hiring a housekeeper again.

“Next time, I’m taking these to a dumpster,” I say, dropping the packages at her feet. Something rattles in one of the boxes, sounding almost like breaking glass.

Her eyes flare wide, and she drops to her knees, setting the packages to rights. “Holden, there’s breakable stuff in there.”

Despite everything, I feel a little bad, but I don’t show it. Instead, I cross my arms over my chest and stare down at where she’s crouched on the ground. “Don’t send breakable stuff to my house, then.”

She tears open the biggest package, and guilt pools low in my stomach when I see the shattered remains of a broken light fixture. Hard blue eyes meet my own.

“Look what you did,” she says.

The words snap me out of my guilt and back into anger. “WhatIdid?” I practically yell, shoulders stiffening. “Stop sending your damn packages to my house.” I enunciate every word, and her jaw ticks with each one of them.

“Fine,” she says, voice rising. And then she slams the door in my face.

I stare at that stupid yellow door for way too long before spinning on my heel and going back to my house. June is standing at the threshold, a jam jar stuffed to the brim with bills in her hand.

“I heard that,” she says, grinning up at me with her gap-toothed smile.

I love June more than anything or anyone else in this world, but my favorite part of my day is after she’s gone to bed. I get to set the house to rights, putting everything back in its intended place. Then I turn the lights down low, make myself a cocktail, and settle into the deep leather chair by the fireplace to read.

---