“You want to walk back with me?” she asks, but Gretchen shakes her head.
“I’m going to stay here for a minute. Besides, it’s almost four?” She checks her phone to confirm. “Charlie has someone coming to look at the place soon, and I don’t feel like fighting about it.”
“Good luck with him,” Yolanda says. “Whatever you want that to mean.”
“Thanks. Be safe.”
Yolanda stares at her for a moment, then plants a noisy kiss on her forehead. “Love you. See you soon.”
And as she watches Yolanda walk away, Gretchen wishes she could hear those two sentiments placed back-to-back like that and truly believe it.
27
Gretchen slips off the sneakers Yolanda thoughtfully brought her from the apartment, then takes off her socks. The grass here under the weeping willow is spring-new and cool. It’s feathery beneath the soles of her feet and between her toes. She didn’t grow up a country girl, yet being barefoot in the grass under a tree beside a burbling creek feels like it aligns just right with something inside her soul, something she didn’t know was there until recently.
Then again, there’s so much she didn’t know was there until recently. (Or, at least, didn’t want to acknowledge was there.)
Maybe that’s what happens when you spend most of your lifeusingyour feelings instead offeelingthem. All those years of treating her emotions like models in a figure drawing class—memorizing their shape and shades so she could accurately replicate them on cue—have made it so uncomfortable to sit still with them now. Working on the farm and living with Charlie have given her abetter tolerance for discomfort, though, and she’s determined to allow herself to simplybe sadfor a moment without her heartache needing to be molded into something more practical.
Yet when the tears come, Gretchen can’t help but notice that they’re like those tears from the first day she arrived. They generate somewhere deeper inside her than the ones she usually produces on demand, down somewhere where the ache of loneliness rests against her ribs like a bad chest cold. She lies back now, letting the wispy grass cradle her, and closes her eyes, wondering how she might replicate that depth at a future time when it would come in handy. Instead of forcing herself to cry, she could learn to make herself feel this horrible sense that she’s never meant to keep anyone, and the tears will simply come on their own. Another way to make her lies a little more true.
So much for feeling her feelings without trying to make them useful.
A jangling sound approaches, quickly followed by a warm, wet tongue between her toes. “Arghhh!” Her eyes spring open as Clyde’s big, drooly mouth heads for her face next. “No!” she shouts as she hoists herself up to a seated position in order to better resist the dog’s overly zealous affections.
“He’s just checking if you’re alive,” Charlie says from a few feet away.
Gretchen’s attempts to fight off Clyde’s tongue are unsuccessful, and he gets in a good, long taste of her salty cheek. “I am, I am; god, make him stop.”
With a hint of a smile, Charlie whistles a sharp command, and the giant marshmallow barrels off, back toward the herd.
“Did you need me for something?” she asks as she swipes a forearm over the grossly wet part of her face.
“Yolanda told me you were here and that you might need a friend, so I...”
“So you came. To be my... friend?”
Charlie pulls off an excellent nonchalant shrug, but the way he glances away as he speaks tells Gretchen that he understands this is the equivalent of declaring a cease-fire between them. “Yeah. Plus I figured it would be smart to keep an eye on you while that prospective buyer is checking out the place.”
As if Gretchen is the one who is going to get up to mischief. She considers going to find Everett to ensure he doesn’t do anything dangerous again, but she isn’t quite ready to leave her spot beneath the willow tree’s ethereal canopy. Besides, she’s lectured the ghost enough on not engaging in attempted murder that she’s confident he’ll stick to his usual spooky shit instead of getting handsy. Well. Moderately confident.
Charlie kneels on the ground in front of her. He reaches out to wipe residual moisture—tears or dog spit, who knows—from her jaw with his thumb, and her attention jumps back into the moment.Charlie is here to be myfriend. And god, he’s certainly the type of man who knows what friendship means, and doesn’t take it lightly.
“Yolanda is moving out at the end of the month,” Gretchen lets herself say. “So she can live with Penny. And I’m really happy for her, I am. They’re great together. But, well, Yolanda also helps me out a lot with the business.” A flicker of suspicion flashes in Charlie’s eyes, and she hurriedly adds, “Admin stuff. Scheduling, bookkeeping. I compensate her through a reduction in her share of the rent. I’m not sure I’ll be able to afford to keep her on after she leaves.” She swallows. “And I don’t know if I can do it all alone. Or... if I even want to.”
Charlie rubs a thin blade of grass between his thumb and forefinger. “I get it. It’s hard. To do things alone. Especially when you’ve grown accustomed to having someone around.”
He might be talking about his grandparents, and how much he misses helping them run the farm instead of doing it all by himself. But he might, she realizes, be talking abouther.Will he miss me when I go back to DC?Has she made herself useful enough to miss?
She looks out toward the creek, watches the way a big gray rock in the middle forces the water to part around it. But it all winds up in the same place despite the detour. Maybe that’s what her time at the farm has been—a big gray rock in the middle of her life, something that forces her to take a different path but will ultimately lead nowhere else than where she was already heading. But maybe...
“I like it here,” Gretchen says, as if trying to feel out the universe.
Charlie’s gaze drifts to the same rock in the water. “Me too. It’s my favorite part of the property.”
Herewas supposed to mean Gilded Creek as a whole. And, well, near Charlie. But this exact spot also happens to be Gretchen’s favorite part of the property, so she doesn’t bother correcting him.
He adds, “I played over here a lot as a kid. I liked to wade into the creek, catch the frogs and minnows. Dry out on the bank and then roll under here to take a nap in the shade.”
