And yet here he was, leading a dozen goats into my poison ivy patch.
Also strange.
Then again, people changed. This sleepy town had changed in hundreds of little ways. It was still sleepy, farmland and ancient windmills dotting the landscape with old stone walls slowly sinking into the earth, but now there were quaint shopping centers, coffee shops with strung-light patios, and signs announcing high school football games and upcoming festivals.
My memories of this place weren’t cozy. I’d managed through the years my mother and stepfather had left me in Lollie’s care and some of that time had been happy though I barely remembered who I was in high school. Hell, I couldn’t remember who I was before falling down the wedding rabbit hole to hell. Shit happened and it made people different in the process.
If Noah was a grouchy, glarey man now, who was I to judge? Not me. That was not in my job description.
“Shay!” Gennie yelled. She abandoned Noah’s leg and ran toward the porch, her dark, tangled hair flying behind her and the sword scraping along the brick walkway. “We brought all the good goats. We left the naughty ones in the pen.”
“You have naughty goats?”
She barreled into me, her little arms locking around my waist and her face pressed to the squish of my belly. “Two of them,” she mumbled into my shirt. “They learned how to get out and they went to the dog run and made all the dogs angry. And they did it at four-fucking-thirty in the morning. That’s what Noah said. He said the bad word. Not me. I didn’t say fucking. He did.”
“And you’ve repeated it fifteen times since then,” he said from the walkway. He didn’t come any closer, instead shoving his hands into his jean pockets and watching the goats.
Maybe he didn’t like people. He’d always been far on the introverted side.
I still couldn’t get over his physical transformation. It was like he’d traded in his body for a much taller, more muscular version. His hair was still dark, and his eyes—when not hidden behind sunglasses and under the shadow of caps—were still hazel, but I had to go looking for those familiar pieces of him. His skin was tanned and freckled from his time outdoors, and confidence blared from the sharp cut of his scruffy jaw and those broad shoulders. This was no self-conscious kid. He was in control and he knew it.
“You’re welcome to stop saying it any time,” Noah explained.
“I said fuck because I was telling the story,” she replied.
He sighed. “You could say something else. Like fudge.”
“Why fudge? That’s dumb.”
I smiled at Gennie. “Have you ever seen the fairy garden?” I pointed toward the barn. “It’s around that way. Follow the stones painted red with white dots, like toadstools.”
She gave me a serious stare. “Are there real fairies there?”
“You’ll have to look for yourself.”
She considered this for a second before handing her sword to Noah. “I don’t want to scare them,” she explained. “They might think I’m trying to conquer their land if I’m armed.”
“Smart thinking,” I said.
Gennie ran off, leaving me and Noah alone. I tipped my water bottle in the direction of the goats. They were penned in with flexible fencing and busy munching everything in sight. “They get right down to business,” I said, unscrewing the cap on my bottle. “Do you lease them out? Is that another one of your new ventures, goat landscaping?”
He shrugged, still watching the animals. “Sometimes.”
“When did you come back?”
There was a long, long moment where Noah didn’t respond. Then, “Five years ago.”
“Where were you before that?”
“Manhattan.”
“Oh, really? Where?” New York was my hometown, even though I hadn’t lived there in nearly twenty years, and I loved talking about the city with anyone who knew it well. It was like discovering you had a mutual friend who was always involved in the drama. There was always so much ground to cover.
“Lived in Brooklyn. Worked on Wall Street.”
I marched down the steps. “You worked onWall Street?”
“Yeah. Worked on the legal side of mergers and acquisitions.”
