“You asked me that first night what my dad and I fought about.” Charlie stares at an unremarkable spot on the stone wall across from him. “I called him to ask for help, for money. When I realized my grandfather needed specialized care, I talked over the financial aspects with my dad. I told him my priority was keeping the farm. I needed him to pay for the nursing facility so we wouldn’t have to sell off Grandpa’s assets. He asked me a bunch of questions about profit and loss, then pronounced that Gilded Creekwasn’t worth keeping. As if it was a simple matter of addition and subtraction and not a family legacy spanning centuries. He said it was a bad business decision and he wouldn’t support it, even indirectly. So I wound up paying for Grandpa’s care with my savings. I’m running out now. So.”
Charlie shifts and clears his throat. Gretchen subtly inches her hand closer to his on the hay bale until their pinkies are a hairsbreadth apart. To her surprise, he closes the small gap, forming a small connection between them.
“As much as my dad can be an asshole, maybe he’s onto something. Because this... this is so much harder... than I thought it would be. The money stuff... it’s just... I need to invest more into the farm to get the kinds of profits we need to stay afloat, and I don’t have that kind of cash to put back into the business because of my grandfather...” Charlie pulls his hand away, breaking the contact. He runs it through his hair and lets out a heavy sigh. “You’re too easy to talk to, Acorn. You know that?”
“I’ve never heard it used as an insult before,” she says, still flattered despite the censure in his voice.
“Not an insult. Just an observation. Sometimes I forget I need to be extra careful around you.”
Gretchen frowns, ready to counter that he doesn’t need to be careful at all, that she’s not going to do anything to hurt him, that she doesn’t do anything to hurt anyone. But she somehow doubts he’ll believe her even if she says it. Besides, what if it isn’t true? What if she does have to hurt him in order to save him?
Regardless, she’s figuring out that Charlie is a man of action, not of words. Nothing she can say is going to make him believe her.
Which gives her the seed of an idea, actually.
“If you could make enough money to get the farm in the black so your dad would cover your grandfather’s care, would you want to stay?”
Charlie stares at a kid who’s made its way over to try to burrow its head into the side of the hay bale. “I... I don’t know. I like the work fine, but I don’t...” He runs a hand over his face. “I don’t think I realized until I started running this place alone that the main reason I enjoyed being here when I was younger was because I got to work with my grandparents. The family part of it being a family business was what I loved. And without that... I’m starting to wonder if I only ever loved it because I was expected to.”
That taps into something deep inside Gretchen’s heart. Would she be a bullshit artist if it hadn’t been expected of her? If she hadn’t been raised to expect it of herself? Doing it without her father has actually been freeing, for the most part, but there’s still a large part of her that misses what it used to be like back when she had someone to count on. Someone shethoughtshe could count on. “So is there something else you’d rather do? Maybe what you were doing before you had to take over here?”
At this he smiles. “I’m not sure my body could handle going back to what I was doing before. I’m feeling a bit too old and rickety for the high seas.” Her expression must show that her mind has immediately dressed him in a stereotypical pirate’s outfit, because his smile widens and he explains, “I spent my twenties working for a few different tall ship cruise companies in the US and Europe.”
“A tall ship,” she repeats. “Is that like... the kind with all the sails and... poles and stuff?”
Charlie lets out a small laugh, the first she’s really heard fromhim since the day the goats almost devoured her in the pasture. It snakes through her and squeezes. “Yeah, with the sails and poles and stuff.”
She recalls Everett’s mention of Charlie traveling the world, the board that used to be in the laundry room. “You sent your grandparents postcards from everywhere you went,” she says quietly.
“How did you...” He trails off and shakes his head, unwilling to follow her down that path. And Gretchen is grateful, because this conversation... it’s nice. She wants it to continue.
“Anyway,” he says. “Whatever I do next will ideally involve more sitting around than sailing and farming allow. I’ve always thought I might like being a librarian.”
“A librarian? Really?” It seems incongruous at first, but then it becomes so easy to imagine Charlie shelving books and shushing people. The man can pull off a ridiculous sweater like no one’s business; she can only imagine how well he might wear a dress shirt and cardigan. The mental image has her feeling a little flushed.
“I’ve always loved to read. I was pretty seriously looking into MLIS programs right before... I didn’t expect—well, I thought I had a bit more time before this all would become my responsibility.” His voice goes quiet on that last sentence, as if he’s talking to himself.
She’s about to tell him he still could be a librarian if he wanted, but that isn’t true. He can’t walk away from the farm and survive, and there isn’t enough money to have someone else run the farm while he pursues a new career. A different life is truly out of reach for him. The unfairness of it sends a jolt of anger through her. Charlie shouldn’t have to stay here doing work that’s begun feeling like a burden when there are other things he wants from life.
The very least she can do, as the person (well, living one) he will probably blame for forcing him to stay here, is increase his cash flow to get him through the worst of it. To her surprise, she’s been subconsciously compiling a few ideas over the last several days. Charlie might not like them—especially the ones that involve him shirtless on the internet—but it’s something. Something she can offer to ease his stress. One less thing for him to worry about.
But before Gretchen can ask any questions about the farm’s accounting or propose Charlie let her take over the business side of things for the next few weeks, he stands and holds out a hand to help her up. She shouldn’t take it, because she’s starting to think she’s the one who might need to be extra careful aroundhim. The feelings he sparks in her aren’t necessarily new, but they’ve grown much stronger. Harder to slip a rope around to lead them somewhere more useful.
Except as she tries to rise on her own, her body reminds her that she’s been sitting on a hay bale for several hours, some of them asleep in an awkward position. Against her better judgment, she grabs Charlie’s hand to keep herself from falling atop the several baby goats now swarming them. The warmth that permeates her skin feels like both a reward and a punishment, straddling the line between too much and not enough.
Maybe Charlie feels the heat of their connection too, because he visibly swallows once they’re face-to-face. “Let’s get these kids back to their moms for the day,” he says, and gives Gretchen’s hand a light squeeze before releasing it.
18
Gretchen has considered Charlie’s suspicions something of a cinder block wall between them since she arrived at Gilded Creek. But after their conversation in the outbuilding Tuesday morning, she wonders if perhaps the wall has been replaced by a... privacy fence? Something tall and still extremely difficult to make her way over, but at least now there are cracks of light shining through. It’s like she’s found a way to look through the slats and see to the other side.
Simultaneously, there’s now a sense that something is surrounding her, squeezing her just tight enough that she’s always aware of the constriction. She’s become tangled in something she can only describe as a fierce affection and... yearning. Convincing Charlie of the curse no longer feels like the centerpiece of her bullshit artist career, but something sheneedsdeep inside in order to feel complete. Because the way he looked at her as he sat there on the hay bale, as if maybe she’s someone he could confide in, maybe even learn to care for... now that’s all Gretchen wants. A voiceis whispering to her that if this man, thisgoodman, can see through her and find something somewhere in there to like, maybe she can put to rest this constant need for reassurance that she isn’t ruthless, like her father. That she’s—at her core—good too.
She’ll need to do some reconnaissance. Everett doesn’t know much about the farm’s business dealings. When she interrupted his recitation of all the local women he wished he had managed to kiss before kicking the bucket to ask if he had any information about how the farm got to be in such a precarious spot financially, he simply shrugged and returned to the M section of his list, picking right back up with Margie Halifax, who apparently wore thick spectacles but made up for it with—Gretchen stopped listening there, to be honest, and instead came up with a plan to seek out information from another person she figures knows a lot about Gilded Creek and the Waybills.
“So. You’ve been here awhile,” Gretchen states as she helps Lori wrap cheese in the barn’s second-floor cheesemaking room Friday afternoon. It took some sweet-talking (and pretending that Gretchen possesses a strong desire to learn more about the cheesemaking process) to be allowed in here. “Working here at Gilded Creek, I mean.”
Lori raises her eyebrows. “You calling me old?”
