Everett’s smile falls. “Oh, come on! Haven’t you ever heard that you’re not supposed to hate the player, you’re supposed to hate the game?”
“Where didyouhear that?” She crosses her arms. Not to close herself off but to hold everything in. Because she’s angry, so angry, but she’s also... kind of touched. Like, in a really fucked-up way, of course. It’s just that this is so opposite of everything that’s ever happened to her—someonewantingher to stay to the point of actually conning her into it. Anger is still the main thing Gretchen is feeling, but now it’s tinged with these bright edges, like the sun peeking out from behind a storm cloud. “Look.” She sighs. “Oneday, possibly, I will be able to forgive you. Because you might be a devious little fucker, but so am I. Or I was. So I can’t hold it against you forever, as tempting as that might be.”
The corner of his mouth lifts, and he’s about to say something—probably a smart-ass comment about how he won’t actually be around forever anyway—but Gretchen cuts him off. “You were a friend to me when I needed one. But whether I’ll be ready to forgive you before you’re gone, I don’t know.” She pauses. “When are you gone, anyway?”
“I died December fifth, 1924,” he says. “So December fifth, 2024. That’s... soonish? It’s what—like, May 2023?”
“It’s April twenty-sixth, 2024. We’ve got about seven months.” She pauses, wondering if it makes it better or worse that he was intending to let his deception go on for literal years if that’s what it took.
“Are you still going to go through with the marriage thing?” Everett asks after a moment.
“I don’t know,” she says. There’s currently a lot she doesn’t know. Her brain feels like it’s filled with scrambled eggs. “I have to say, it’s awfully tempting to marry Charlie, send him on his way, and then leave myself, knowing it would mean you’re stuck here for eternity. I think that would really serve you right.”
“But then you’d be dead and have to stay here too.” He tilts his head and smiles, as if declaring a checkmate.
“Which is why I’m not going to do that. Because I’m not willing to sign up for an eternity with you. Plus, if I’m alive, it’ll be much easier to make the rest of your afterlife a living hell.”
Everett scoffs. “How do you plan on...”
His voice disappears as Gretchen strolls over to the TV she brought back from DC, now sitting on the dresser. She reachesfor the plug and pulls it out of the wall. “Downstairs too,” she says.
“Oh,” he says, eyes wide and his blue-white Adam’s apple bobbing.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me,” she says, “I need to go figure out what the fuck to do now.”
38
This is such an absolute mess, Gretchen thinks as she stabs a stick into the ground beneath the willow tree. Charlie’s ordained friend is supposed to arrive in less than twelve hours to marry them. And now she’s going to have to go tell Charlie that it’s not necessary after all, he just needs to hang out until December and then he’s good to go. Then Gretchen will... Well, she’s not sure what she’ll do, since she’s already given up her apartment and emailed all of her clients in DC to let them know she was retiring from the business.
She pulls the stick toward her, annoyed that it doesn’t move more than a fraction of an inch. It would have made sense to find a shovel, probably, but she was too discombobulated as she left the house to think that far ahead. At least the bag of sunflower seeds was right where she remembered seeing them the other day.
She could, of course, reinvent herself in a new city, set up shop there. Except the idea of that holds no appeal whatsoever. Maybe she could still give Charlie the money to keep him afloat, then go tryto work on another farm somewhere. Although she suspects that no other farm will feel the way this one does (or be so willing to accommodate her inability to lift more than twenty-five pounds).
Giving up on digging with the stick, she pokes a finger into the largest of the holes she’s made and uses it to pry the earth away. Ah, much more efficient. Sunflowers grow to be pretty big, she thinks, so she presumes the hole also will need to be on the larger side.
As the cool, claylike soil buries itself beneath her fingernails, her mind returns to the problem at hand. What if... what if she doesn’t tell Charlie about this new development at all? Does the change in timeline even matter? Why make him wait for his freedom when he could have it now? Then they could still get married. Gretchen could stay at Gilded Creek. She could reveal everything in seven months, after Everett is gone. Claim to be absolutely shocked that Everett misled her, or simply chalk it up to some strange nuance of the curse of which no one had been aware. Charlie could sell the farm then if she hasn’t made it profitable, or even if she has. They could get divorced and sever the small thread of legality binding them together. But in the meantime, at least, she’d get to stay.
It’s so tempting to lie. To ensure she’ll still get the things she’s put so much effort into telling herself will be enough. To give Charlie the freedom she promised him without delay. Her body buzzes with the thrill of it. One last con. Who would it hurt?
But then Gretchen imagines standing under this tree tomorrow morning—they never discussed it, but she’s been picturing that this is where they would do their little perfunctory ceremony—beside her freshly planted sunflower field, and exchanging the verybasic vows required by Maryland law to make Charlie her legal spouse, and...
Oh god, she can’t do it. Gretchen’s spent the last week telling herself that she’s giving Charlie what he wants most—his freedom. Except that’s never been what he’s asked of her. All he’s ever asked Gretchen to give him is the truth. How can she deny him that now? She can’t foist freedom upon him in some twisted attempt to keep her own heart safe. She doesn’t want to trick him into thinking that he never cared for her, or that she never cared for him.
The chilly late-April nighttime breeze flutters her sleeve. A jacket would also have been a good idea, but she left the house so flustered and angry and sad that she didn’t even think to grab hers from the hook by the door. She claws again at the soil, determined to get this done. It’s intended to be part of her grand gesture, although what she’s gesturing toward she still isn’t sure.
And then, suddenly, she is.
“I have to tell him everything,” she says aloud. Everything. That’s the scary part. Because if she’s going to be honest, she’ll need to tell him that she’s in love with him. And then when he inevitably tells her to leave, or decides to leave himself, she won’t be able to console herself with him not being aware that he was breaking her heart.
She thought that living at Gilded Creek without Charlie for the rest of her life was meant to be her punishment for all of her previous misdeeds. But maybethisis actually the punishment intended for her: to crack open her chest and hand her heart over to someone else to do with as he pleases. If she’s going to do that, be so exposed, what does she have to gain by holding back? Whyshouldn’t she beg him to love her too? To be her partner in... well, not crime. But her partner in life? To ask him to please, please let her stay and see what they can make out of all this?
Movement out of the corner of her eye has her turning her head. Lori once said something about coyotes, and Gretchen doesn’t know anything about their habits, but her heart races in anticipation of getting gobbled up. But as her eyes focus in the deepening dark, she sees that it’s a person, that it’s Charlie, making his way from the house to the willow. As he gets closer, she spots something thrown over his arm—the deformed sweater she stole from the attic.
“There you are,” he says, ducking under the tree’s low-hanging branches.
“Here I am,” she answers, her voice barely above a whisper. Her heart, which slowed a bit when it realized it wasn’t in immediate danger of becoming coyote food, speeds up again.
“What... are you... doing?” he asks, now close enough to see the small trench Gretchen has excavated beneath the tree.
