“That is so cliché,” Trista said, but silenced when he shot her a look. The easy smile that followed made her heart trip.
He went outside, and she looked at Louis.
“He’s pretty good at this stuff,” Louis assured her, for once serious. “My mom is terrified of spiders and when we moved in with him and his dad out in the country, she was constantly finding wolf spiders in unexpected places. I have to admit, I’m not a fan of them myself, so luckily Brice handled them.”
She smiled, picturing Mrs. Williams freaking out in a big country house over some spiders. How lucky that she’d met a man and fallen in love and gotten a nice stepbrother for Louis, who, let’s face it, needed a comrade who was stuck with him.
Funny, in high school Mrs. Williams had seemed way too old for things like love and romance. Now, of course, Trista realized she had only been in her early forties. Tops. Maybe even younger. Not much older than Trista was now probably. And Trista had never been married, never even been engaged, much less had a child.
Times were sure different now.
She wondered if Denise was going to be Brice’s first marriage. “So when’s the wedding?” she asked Louis.
“Oh gosh, I haven’t even thought about that,” he said, pushing his brows down thoughtfully. “I don’t have a girlfriend.”
She pressed her lips together, counted to three, and nodded. “Right. I meant your brother’s. Brice’s,” she clarified quickly, in case somehow it wasn’t already clear.
The light came on in Louis’s eyes. “Oh, right! I don’t think they’ve set a date yet. Denise keeps trying for the holidays but he’s always got a reason not to do it.” He lowered his voice conspiratorially. “I’m not sure Brice wants to go through with it.”
Details? Yes, please. But it would have been the height of tacky to ask for them. And what if word of her interest got back to Brice? She already thought of Louis as an unreliable narrator, so, with great difficulty, she let his comment slide.
Work continued as usual. Business was steadily creeping up, but creeping was the operative word. She still wasn’t quite making rent, much less covering salaries and supplies. She’d planned for a bad year to start, just because that was common wisdom, but she’d really hoped her prime location and great enthusiasm would make it all come much faster.
It hadn’t.
She also hadn’t anticipated a staff shortage. Back in the day, it seemed like everyone was looking for work. It was hard to find someone who wasn’t desperate enough to wash dishes just to have a little income. Now, though, she’d had an ad for servers and cooks online for weeks with barely any responses and even fewer remotely qualified ones.
That Louis Williams was in her kitchen right now was a testament to that.
Still, if Brice hadn’t come, she’d be out there looking for Ratt Damon by herself, and that was not a task she relished.
About an hour and a half after he’d gone out into the hot night, Brice returned, this time through the front door. He looked only slightly disheveled, despite having been out in the heat for so long. Trista’s immediate thought was that he must not have found the rat, and that Ratt Damon was probably, even now, flattening himself into a pancake and slipping under the closed back door. She didn’t know how they managed those maneuvers and she didn’t have the stomach to try to look it up on YouTube.
“No luck?” she asked. Then, so she didn’t sound ungrateful, she added, “What can I get you to drink? You must need one.”
“I think you’ve misnamed him. Her name should be Merlene Ratty.”
Trista looked quizzical.
“Female sprinter with more world championships than anyone else,” he explained.
She laughed. “You had a bit of time to think of that, huh?”
“I had to google.”
“Why not just”—she thought for a second—“Cristiano Rataldo?”
Brice put his hand to his forehead. “Seems obvious now. You just have a gift for this.”
“My parents are very proud.” She pulled him a pint of the last beer he’d liked. She handed it across the bar to him, and he drank it gratefully.
“I chased that rodent almost all the way to the cathedral,” he said.
“That’s probably why he kept running,” Louis offered.
Brice shot him a look. “And he was really nimble. Left, right, left, right, left, left.” He shook his head. “He was a low, gray blur. People must have thought I was nuts.”
Trista had to agree, people didn’t usually do their evening jog in an Italian suit. “I really appreciate your trying,” she said. “Maybe he’s at least relocated to a new neighborhood.”
“Sorry to say, rodents can easily find their way back two or three miles to a place where they know they will reliably find food.” Louis shook his head. “We should probably get a pellet gun.”
Trista shuddered. “We’re not shooting vermin outside the kitchen,” she said, and shook her head. Then she looked back at him. “Absolutely not.”
“While I appreciate everyone’s faith in me,” Brice said, “the rat is gone for good.”
“You killed it?” they both asked, Louis with a hopeful inflection and Trista with a sad one.
“No, I threw the crate over him when he stopped for pizza, then begged a box off the pizza place where it probably came from. So basically I trapped him, came back for my car, and took him for a pretty harrowing ten-minute drive through the back streets to Key Bridge. He’s safely in Virginia now.”
“Good work,” Louis said approvingly, nodding like a bobblehead. “Very good.”
“I happened to know about the distance thing”—he shot Louis a look—“for some reason.”
“Oh, thank you!” Romantic gestures had been made for her before. Sometimes even gallant ones. But no one had ever given her the thrill that removing an exceptionally well-nourished rat gave her.
He tipped an imaginary hat and downed the last of his beer. “And now I have to go,” he said. “I was supposed to meet Denise half an hour ago and she hasn’t answered my texts. I’ll probably have hell to pay for this, but”—he laughed—“no one can take away my pride.”
It was hard to imagine being so petty that she wouldn’t answer a text saying someone was going to be a little late, but Trista conjured the brightest smile she could. “I really, really appreciate your help. Honestly, I don’t know what we would have done without you.”
For once, Louis wasn’t popping up with how he could and would have done something. No one wanted to wrestle a forty-pound rodent.
Her gaze lingered on Brice for a moment, and his on her, before he said, “All in a day’s work.”
“Where do you work, anyway?” Trista asked. She retrieved his jacket and handed it over to him. “This isn’t Humane Society garb, as far as I know.”
“He’s a lawyer,” Louis said.
Brice glanced at him, and then looked slightly . . . embarrassed? “That’s right.”
“Cromwell and Covington,” Louis added, pride shining through in his voice. “One of the best on the East Coast. He just started but he’s going to be a partner, you mark my words.”
“Thanks, Louis.” Brice pulled his keys out of his jacket pocket. “Have a good night, guys. It was fun.” He smiled at Trista. “Let me know if you have any more trouble. I’m trying to build my résumé in case the new job doesn’t work out.”
Her face felt frozen. “Thanks again.” She gave a half wave and he was gone.
As soon as he was out the door, she slumped down onto a barstool and sighed.
“Something wrong, Tris?” Louis asked.
“No, no.” She waved him off to the kitchen. “Just relieved.”
Susannah approached them. “Bud, you better get cooking, this is my third ticket.” She handed him an order.
“Aye-aye.”
Trista watched them both part ways before whispering, “Oh my God,” under her breath.
Brice had taken over her job at Cromwell and
Covington.
Brice was the reason she was fired.
Chapter Twelve
Max
Nothing about living in the country was a surprise per se. Country life had not lied about itself: the farm was as quiet and verdant as he’d imagined, the air smelled of earth and greens, and the night sky was far more dark and star filled than it would appear just a few dozen miles away in the city. In a lot of ways, it had been a fantastic few weeks.
Maybe it was Max who had been falsely advertised—to himself. Because he’d pictured himself meditating in the stillness as dusk fell over the fields and filled the rooms inside the house, gaining in sound—crickets, frogs, the bark of a distant dog—what it lost in scenery. This, he’d thought, was a place where he’d put the electronics away and just soak in the peace. It would be a medicine like nothing you could ever find in a pill or potion. It was the antithesis of all the noise and negativity that filled him, day in and day out, in a crowded metropolis where no one had any patience for anyone else, and where public figures were targets for vitriol from strangers who were just looking for something to complain about.
He had been sure that being alone on a farm in the country would be the cure for all that ailed him.
He hadn’t planned on being so bored.
He’d been sitting in the musky kitchen on a wooden barstool, nursing a double Casamigos for what seemed like ages. And twilight had come exactly as expected. So had the accompanying quiet. Realistically, it had been quiet all day except for the damn rooster he couldn’t locate or block out. Who knew that roosters crowed all day long without regard to the sunrise? Charlotte’s Web and Babe had clearly indicated that there would be one or two cheerful cock-a-doodle-doos at sunrise and that was all until tomorrow.
He hadn’t anticipated that the strangled avian screeches would repeat ad nauseam, often sounding like a guttural cat in heat, driving him through all the stages of grief right to his form of acceptance, which was that it was better than the utter silence that surrounded it.
He looked at his phone, having removed it from its sequester within two hours of putting it away, and saw that it was 9:17 P.M. He had felt sure it was closer to midnight. In fact, he’d been sitting there, waiting for the sweet relief of exhaustion to take over after an entire day of fresh air and hard physical work, scrubbing the sinks with Ajax until his hands were red and pruned, and moving the dusty, creaky furniture around to make at least one room feel comfortable and homey.
It wasn’t easy.
But he wasn’t giving up, he knew that. So he’d gotten his phone out for the singular task of ordering a bed—some things could be cleaned and some things had to be started fresh—and then he’d allowed himself a quick foray into the news headlines, and the next thing he knew he had familiarized himself with every article on Huffington Post during the last week, and fact-checked each and cross-referenced until he felt sure he knew as much of the depressing truth as he could.
As he went to put the phone back, it slipped out of his hand just as it started to ring. He inadvertently tapped the “answer” button as it fell to the floor. It was Margo. “Hang on,” he called. He reached for the phone, gave an embarrassing shriek when he touched something furry (which turned out to be dust on the floor), and finally put it on speaker. “Hey, Margo, what’s up?”
“Did you just scream?” She wasn’t making fun of him, she sounded concerned.
“No, no.” He cleared his throat. “I dropped the phone. And then the chair scraped the floor.” Hopefully one of those things would seem capable of making a sound like that.
“O . . . kay.” She didn’t sound convinced. “Well, I hope I’m not bothering you but I’m wondering how it’s going there. It’s only occurring to me now that you might not be awake. Sorry if I—”
“Oh, no, I’m up. Up, up, up. Wide awake.”
“I was just thinking that it must be really gloomy there at night. Do you need some floor lamps to brighten it up?”
He looked at the single lamp he had turned on—a floor lamp with the kind of shade a tedious party guest might don as a hat—and it was as dim as an evening set on The Waltons, but it was on. And it was soothing, in a way. Almost like candlelight.
“I have a light on,” he told her. “It probably wouldn’t be a bad idea to go around and see how many bulbs to pick up, though.” The idea of having something constructive to do for maybe ten minutes or so gave him a lift. “Do you know if anyone delivers pizza out here?”
She drew a breath in through her teeth. “I don’t know but I kind of doubt it. Postmates would be hard-pressed to find a way around those dark, winding roads at night. Can you imagine being the person charged with delivering to a stranger in the woods? There’s no chance they pay them enough.”
“Yes.” He laughed. “I can imagine it all too well. That is both the curse and the blessing of being me.”
She laughed outright. “Look,” she said, “I know you’re here for the solitude and all, but I just made way too many biscuits and too much sausage gravy from Magnolia Table—it’s the source for my cookbook club meeting tomorrow. Do you want me to bring some over?”
He had literally never had a better offer in his life. “I’d love that,” he said. “I’m just starving.” Like a fool, he hadn’t figured out where the nearest grocery store was before he got there.
“It’s a deal! It’s not much but it’s fresh.”
“It sounds perfect,” he said, and meant it. At that moment, the single lamp began to flicker, then popped off, leaving him alone in the dark, with only the glow of his phone. He hadn’t brought extra bulbs, and he had no idea if there were any in the house already. “Oh, and, Margo? One more thing.”
“Yeah?”
“Maybe you could bring a lightbulb or two?”
* * *
Of course she forgot the lightbulbs from her house, of which she had too many. Fortunately, she remembered in time to stop at CVS and pick up a four-pack, but she was so excited to have something different to do that she’d left as soon as she and Max hung up. She did, however, grab a bag of various cleaning solvents and tools from underneath her sink, since the thought of the filth at the farm had been plaguing her all day, even while she didn’t want to bother him with offers of help.
Now that he’d asked her over, though, she was glad to give it some muscle.
It was a balmy clear night, and as she drove through the country roads with her windows down, the smell of cut grass was just intoxicating. For months she’d been in bed by this hour—not asleep, that didn’t come until about 4:00 A.M., but in bed because there was nothing else to do—and she almost couldn’t believe that Max was at the farm.
She really hoped he wasn’t put off by the state of disrepair.
The farm, when she pulled up next to the house, was no different. The entire house was dark, except for the slight glow of a light in the kitchen window.
She gave the horn a tap, in case he hadn’t seen her pull up, and got out of the car. She collected the food and the bag with the lightbulbs and went to the side door. She gave a knock and walked in.
“Hello?”
“Hello!” She heard creaking floorboards and then Max came into the kitchen, his smile wide and bright in the very dim light.
“Is this it for light?” she asked, gesturing at the desk lamp that was now on the counter by the sink.
He laughed. “Even that one didn’t work until I gave it a jiggle. I can’t believe it didn’t even occur to me to pick up lightbulbs when I was getting cleaning supplies. I really have gotten to be a spoiled city boy. Serves me right.”
“I didn’t think of it either,” she said. “We get used to flipping a switch and witnessing a miracle. Then when the power goes out, we flip the switch a hundred more times, as if something has suddenly changed without our knowing it.”
“Exactly.” He nodded.
“Well.” She set the casserole dish down. It was still warm. Which was a good thing, because she didn’t kno
w what the state of the oven was but she had a pretty good idea it was repulsive. Even the smell of the place put her off her appetite, though she didn’t want to say anything and show what a picky baby she was. Something about the combination of mold, mildew, and linen-scented cleaner was particularly noxious. “I brought some disposable plates and utensils, since I didn’t know what your situation was.”
“Oh, it’s fine, there are some dishes in the cabinet. And look”—he came over and opened a drawer—“knives, forks, and spoons.” And some sort of fuzzball that she hoped had never been alive.
“I—” Her face must have shown her abject horror because he simply laughed.
“It’s disgusting.” He nodded. “I know. I was joking. I also picked up some paper plates and bamboo cutlery when I was out earlier. I also got a bunch of microwavable stuff but . . . no microwave. Which is probably a good thing, now that I think about it.”
“And the oven?” she asked.
“About what you’d think. Well loved, shall we say. There’s so much grease you could melt it and power a diesel engine for a thousand miles.” He tapped the range. “It’s a really nice piece though, did you notice? Viking. Really solid.”
She looked now. Six burners and that familiar Viking logo. How on earth had she never noticed that before? It was exactly the sort of thing she cared about. She looked at the fridge and saw the same logo. “I had no idea this stuff was here! It’s got to be, what, from the nineties? Eighties?”
“Maybe the nineties,” he said. “Maybe newer. I got a better look earlier and there’s no structural damage, it’s just . . . dirty. I plugged in the fridge and it works—didn’t even blow the fuse. How long ago did someone live here?”
Margo thought about it. “Calvin’s grandparents died shortly before we got married so”—she shrugged—“at least eleven years or so.”
“I’m putting Easy-Off and steel wool on my list for tomorrow. Twice.”
The Cookbook Club Page 14