“Why not?”
“Because, frankly, you have to be real brave when you first try broccoli—which is delicious, by the way. I heard Caitlynn Pennington tried some broccoli, but I don’t think she actually ate it. Just put it in her mouth. But even that takes guts, boy. It takes real nerve to chew and swallow something for the first time. Think of all the people who had to try stuff for the first time. Chocolate. Cotton candy. Pepperoni. Someone had to be the first person to try all those delicious things. Someone had to be a pioneer.”
Eden was absolutely motionless. She was staring at him, fascinated.
When he’d imagined Eden Harwood hanging on his every word, it hadn’t been about broccoli.
But he’d take it.
Annelise stared at him with shrewd little blue eyes, looking for a way to poke a hole in that argument.
And he could see it was killing her, killing her that Caitlynn Pennington had done it first.
Gabe took a bite of broccoli and closed his eyes in bliss. “Wow. Just . . . wow. Am I right? Your mom doesn’t want you to miss out on something wonderful, is all. Isn’t that right?”
“He’s right, Leesy.” Eden swiftly took a bite of her own. Tipped back her head and closed her eyes. Gave her shoulders a little shimmy as she chewed. “Oh, maaaaannn . . .” she sighed. “So good.”
Gabe’s head went light. He carefully laid his fork gently beside his plate. He studied his own plate again, awash in an inconvenient tide of lust.
Pretty sure he was going to add that to his inventory of Eden moments.
Annelise’s eyes remained narrowed, investigating all the adults for evidence of perfidy.
Avalon took a bite and chewed it happily. “You know, I never feel luckier than when I have a plate full of broccoli, Leesy.”
Mac concurred somberly. “You know, it’s the one food I’d take with me to a desert island. The last food in the world I’d ever eat.”
All the adults were now busily chewing broccoli.
Annelise seized her fork with a certain resolve.
Clutched like Poseidon held a trident.
Everyone jumped when she stabbed a floret with her fork as if it were a mastodon needing killing.
She lifted it up and eyeballed it like Hamlet communing with a skull.
Brought it closer, and closer still, to her face.
Gazes ricocheted every which way around the table.
“Don’t move,” Eden whispered to her sister. They were seconds away from gripping hands, like people in an aircraft going down.
Then Annelise levered it up to her mouth and whispered something that sounded like an incantation.
She opened her mouth.
Eden’s brow appeared to be sweating.
And Annelise thrust the broccoli inside her mouth.
Screwed her eyes closed.
Clapped her mouth shut.
Experimentally moved her jaw.
Once.
Twice.
Three, four, five times.
The chewing accelerated.
And, for the denouement . . .
. . . her throat moved in a swallow.
Not one adult in that room was breathing.
“It’s good,” Leesy said mildly, finally, as if the tectonic plates of her life and her mother’s hadn’t just shifted. “I like it.”
And then she . . . voluntarily took another bite.
Silence, of the ringing awestruck sort, ensued. The kind of silence often punctuated by chanting medieval monks and celestial music. A hushed and holy silence.
Eden looked drained and pale and wearily happy. As if it was the aftermath of childbirth.
“What did you whisper, Annelise?” Gabe asked.
“Promise you won’t get mad?” Annelise said to her mom.
Eden sighed. “Sure.”
“Up yours, Caitlynn.”
Eden closed her eyes, shook her head slowly to and fro.
“That’s how I say grace, too,” Mac said happily.
Chapter 4
Immediately after dinner, Avalon said, “Hey, Eden, would you do me a favor?”
“Sure, babe.”
“Could you go check on that hanging ivy you gave me? The one out on the porch? I think it has brown spots on the leaves. Gabe can reach up there and get it down for you, right Gabe? Leesy, come with me and Mac upstairs to get that trifold paper. It’s in the turret!”
“The turret!” Annelise needed no persuading. The turret was magical, as far as she was concerned.
Eden knew exactly what Avalon was up to.
“Um . . . Leesy and I kind of need to get going, Avalon . . . We have to get that Aztec project—”
“Hey, we can pretend to be horses on the way upstairs, Leesy!” Avalon interjected, ignoring Eden. “Let’s canter.”
“YAY!” Annelise exulted.
That was a dirty, dirty trick. Annelise would never miss an opportunity to pretend to be a horse.
Avalon pawed the ground and tossed her head. “C’mon, Mac, let’s go!”
“We’re all going to the turret?” Mac was confused. “I’m not sure I understand this game.”
Eden mouthed a furious you’re dead at her sister. “Annelise, we’re leaving here at seven on the dot. Avalon, make sure she’s back down here at seven!”
Avalon batted her eyes at her, then darted up the stairs, dragging Mac by one hand. “C’mon Mac, gallop,” she said. “And don’t forget to neigh.”
“What the—?” Poor Mac still hadn’t copped on to Avalon’s little machinations.
Avalon was already galloping up the stairs, and Annelise was loping after them, tossing her head and whickering. And so Mac went, because frankly he liked to be wherever Avalon was.
And so Eden went out onto the porch.
And Gabe went out on the porch.
And they stood there.
Eden wondered if this was how endangered rhinos felt when someone shoved another random rhino into their enclosure and expected them to mate.
And they stood there in silence, as the lowering sun painted long shadows across them.
“There’s nothing wrong with that ivy,” Eden said finally. Dryly.
“Yeah, I know.”
“They’re real sly.”
He laughed softly and leaned against one pillar and faced her. “You sorry?”
She turned and leaned against the other pillar. She didn’t answer that.
She gave him a crooked, speculative smile.
No one said anything for an awkward few seconds.
But they also did nothing but look at each other.
“That was some fine broccoli balderdash at the dinner table tonight by the way,” she said finally. “Thank you. That moment in there was practically as profound as her first step. Annelise’s war on vegetables is the only reason I actually drink the cheap wine at the Chamber of Commerce mixers.”
He grinned and shrugged one shoulder. “She’s got a vivid imagination, and she’s a tough kid with a lot of pride in her work and a competitive streak. If there’s anything I’ve learned over the years, it’s that someone’s strengths can be weaponized and used against them.”
She laughed. “Did they teach you that strategy in the SEALs?”
“Hey, I’m the principal. Which means to Annelise I have pull and a certain mystique, in school and out. So don’t give me too much credit. Unless she keeps eating broccoli at home, well, then . . . I’m going to insist on a commemorative plaque, to hang alongside my other diplomas on my office wall. I have a lot of them. Diplomas and certificates.”
“You don’t say.”
“I was trying to impress you just then.”
“I know. Mystique, huh?”
He gave a one-shouldered shrug again. “What can I say? One of the perks of the job.”
Eden darted a glance toward the double doors. Naturally, no sign of any members of her family.
She was going to kill her sister.
She snuggled deeper against the
porch pillar. It still held some of the day’s heat.
“You and your sister are pretty close, huh?” Gabe offered.
“Yeah. And it’s great to see Avalon so happy. I’m thrilled to have her living in town again. Not the least of which is because she’s now become an integral part of my whiteboard.”
“Whiteboard?”
“My kitchen calendar. I consider it my masterwork. Like the Sistine Chapel, only with scented erasable markers.”
“Oh, gotcha. Yeah, Mac is the best guy in the world. But he’s not the easiest guy in the world, believe me, so, you know, hats off to her.”
“Avalon isn’t exactly a walk in the park herself. I’m having fun watching the fireworks.”
They smiled in a certain solidarity.
The next silence got a little long.
And a little tense.
She kind of knew what was next.
“Ever been married?” he asked finally. Quickly.
“Nope. You?”
“Nope.”
“Single?”
“Yep. You?”
“Yep.”
There ensued the kind of relieved silence that often followed ripping off a Band-Aid fast.
“Like to keep your options open, huh?” She sounded chirpy and insincere and even a little mean in her own ears.
He looked startled and maybe even ever-so-faintly offended. “No.”
Eden sighed.
She felt like the old rototiller her dad would whip out every spring in order to get the garden ready. It would cough and sputter and shudder when he tried to start it, then speed away from him, then abruptly stall, nearly sending him ass over teakettle.
Her flirting carburetor was clogged.
“Sorry,” she said. Glumly. “I was just . . . saying things.”
He laughed. “Boy, this is some scintillating banter, Harwood.”
“Hey!” she said with feigned indignation. “I haven’t learned to ‘weaponize’ my ‘strengths’ the way you have.” She heartily air-quoted the words.
“But I was including myself in my own sarcasm!”
“Courtly of you, but . . . well, let’s put it this way. If PTA moms are cobras in baskets, then you’re the guy with the flute.”
“I swear to God, it’s different when it’s someone who I . . . Someone who’s . . . I mean, when I . . .”
He stopped.
Took a breath.
Exhaled, with a sort of resignation, and the exhale turned into a short laugh.
And something like lovely spangles raced along her skin. A fierce sort of tenderness that robbed her of breath.
“Okay, so you can do awkward with the best of them,” she teased gently.
He quirked his mouth wryly.
Honestly, had she ever known how to talk to a man when she wasn’t trying to sell him flowers? It seemed like a skill belonging to the distant past. It felt awkward. Like that time she’d seen her grandmother attempt to break-dance.
“Um, you ever look at those dating apps?” he asked, after another of their now patented Awkward Silences™.
“You know . . .” she said, haltingly. “I looked at Tinder, but only once. I just wanted to tell all those boys to put their shirts back on, for God’s sake. Do they really think that’s what a woman is looking for? I look at every girl making a kissy duck face and I think, what if that were my daughter? I’m barely thirty, and I see everything through a mom filter now. And . . . maybe an experience filter. It’s just . . . so much posturing. It seems dishonest and needlessly difficult. It’s hard to conceive at this point in my life of having time for that sort of thing. I want to tell them, c’mon, cut to the chase, kids.”
She felt like she’d said too much, but he listened to this with the sort of somber, flattering intensity one listened to his commanding officer’s orders.
“Ah. So you’re saying I should keep my shirt on in my photos if I give Tinder a shot?”
“For you, I’d make an exception.”
Those words had just popped out, special delivery straight from her id, utterly, frighteningly sincere.
It shocked both of them into momentary speechlessness.
And he smiled.
It started with one corner of his mouth. And then it spread to the other. Slowly, the way a fire took over a coal. Until it was a wicked little curve. Above it his eyes kindled in a way that ought to come with a mature content warning attached.
Hoooolly shit, was that ever sexy.
She wasn’t viewing that through a mom filter.
She turned away swiftly and pretended to critically inspect the perfectly healthy hanging plant, which she’d sold to Avalon at a family discount.
She reached up and fingered a leaf, which was basically the equivalent of tucking a strand of hair behind her ear or flicking it.
She didn’t know where a conversation could possibly go now. She needed a cigarette after a smile like that, and she didn’t even smoke. She had no idea what to say next, and it was both unnerving and delicious. She wasn’t at all accustomed to feeling uncertain of herself; surprises really had their work cut out for them if they wanted to sneak through her airtight schedule.
“You know how they have those free buffets on cruise ships?” he said suddenly. “Just heaps and heaps of food, chocolate fountains and prawns and things on sticks?”
“If you’re still hungry, I think there’s some broccoli left.”
“Ha. I’m good. What I’m trying to say is that after a while you don’t want any of it because it all looks the same and there’s just too much of it and . . . that’s kind of how Tinder—well, all sites like that—feel like to me.”
“Mmm. So do you think ‘hard to get’ inherently adds value to something?”
His eyebrow shot up. He heard the faint challenge in the question.
“I know the difference between ‘hard to get’ and ‘worth the effort to get.’ I’m hardly a kid anymore—I’m pushing forty. I guess I see things through an experience filter, too. Life is short and time is scarce, and all the guessing surrounding dating feels like . . . I dunno, been there, done that. I don’t need to graze at the buffet. I’m all right with waiting until I see something that feels right. And when I see what I want, it’s hard not to just cut to the chase. Like you said.”
Damn, but he’d just accomplished a lot with a few sentences.
He was telling her he wasn’t a pushover.
That he’d probably known some loss.
And, if she was not mistaken . . . that he’d seen something he wanted.
And she was standing right in front of him.
She turned her face away from him a little too swiftly again. Her heart was doing a sort of fox-trot.
“Yeah, I don’t really have time for . . . Tinder and dating and stuff like . . . like that, anyway.”
She’d said that like a falling person scrambling for a handhold.
And regretted it instantly.
It was a reflex born of nerves and newness, and it just seemed easier not to do . . . whatever this was.
This time instead of fondling the plant she looked up pensively, as if captivated by the stars, the same ones that winked on every night in Hellcat Canyon. What use are you, stars, she thought, if you can’t perform as a sort of celestial teleprompter and tell me what I should say or think.
Gabe didn’t say a word.
She imagined, however, she could feel him silently x-raying her words for evidence he’d been blown off.
“It’s just . . .” she began. And stopped.
“Just?” he prompted. Voice quiet, soft as a pillow.
“It’s just that between Annelise and my business, someone needs to know where I am and what I’m doing and how to reach me pretty much every single hour of the day, and nearly every minute of my day is filled. It’s actually kind of exhilarating—like American Ninja Warrior and Tetris and Whack-a-Mole all in one.”
He gave a soft laugh.
She rushed on.
�
�But whole weeks go by in a heartbeat, and I don’t want to miss a single second of Annelise’s childhood and it’s just . . . easy to forget I’m a person apart from my kid. And the awareness that I might be missing out on something is kind of this . . . background noise, I guess. Like the whir of a fan, or something. You can kind of tune it out, until . . .”
She left that word hanging there, which lent it a melodrama she hadn’t quite intended.
She didn’t know how to finish that sentence.
She kind of wanted him to finish it himself, in his head.
She immediately felt peculiarly raw, again, like she’d said too much.
But he took all this in with that same flattering interest.
“Oh yeah, believe me, I completely get it,” he said easily. He curled one hand around the post. “I’m on about four nonprofit boards locally, I’m in a softball league, I run a sort of informal group for veterans, I’m helping Mac and Avalon get their programs for at-risk kids and veterans up and running, I pinch-hit as soccer or basketball coach as needed, and next week I’m even standing in for a couple of days for Ray—”
“Ray, the guy who directs the kid pickup after school? Parking-monitor Ray? What’s going on with Ray?” Her mom usually picked up Annelise after school, but Eden did occasionally, too. Everyone knew Ray.
“Gallbladder. I’ll get a sub in by the end of next week. Mrs. Maker is circulating a card if you want to get in on that.”
“I’ll add it to my whiteboard.”
He flashed a grin. “I guess what I’m saying is I swear sometimes I forget what the inside of my house looks like, because I come home and I’m out like a light the minute I hit the bed, then I get up and do it some more. And I love my job—I love making sure kids have what they need to thrive and shine, helping the teachers get it . . . I mean, one kid is like a whole world—often they’re enchanting and other times they bore or madden the crap out of you, but it’s all a piece of the puzzle. It’s impossible not to give yourself over to that. They deserve everything we can give them.”
But as she listened to this, she had a hunch there was a reason he didn’t want to be home at his presumably empty-apart-from-him house.
She in fact had a million questions, all jostling for the exits. But once she started, she didn’t know if she could stop.
The First Time at Firelight Falls Page 5