I was polishing off my fries when Ruth finished hanging a paper from her order pad in the kitchen window and turned to me.
“Tell me what?” I asked.
“That she’s comin’ to town in a couple days.” There was a smile in her voice although none materialized on her face. Myhand faltered a fraction as I shoved a fry in my mouth. “I reckon I’ve been tryin’ to get her to come back home for five years now, at least,” Ruth added.
Four. It had been four years since Margot last visited Bluebell Cove. Not that I was keeping track—that day would just be seared into my memory.
“Uh… yeah.” I stared at my empty plate, an invisible bubble of frustration exploding in my chest. Nothing left to distract myself with. “She texted me today,” I mumbled.
Ruth clapped her hands together. “Oh, I’m so glad. I can’t wait to see y’all together again.”
“It should be fun,” I responded quickly, grabbing the shake and drawing an exaggerated swig.
Nothing prevented me from handling it all alone: the Summer’s End Festival, my grandmother’s legacy, and my estranged best friend appearing from obscurity. All I needed to do was channel my inner Marigold and move the mountain in my path with sheerwilland a dash of my natural can-do attitude. That couldn’t be hard, right?
If I was being honest, the thought of Margot Wade back in Bluebell Cove scared me more than my drawer full of ignored bills.
Chapter Three
The meeting went about how I expected.
Having forgotten my purse, I was left to scrawl everyone’s questions and feedback on a handful of napkins. I lost track of the amount of times I said, “I’ll get back to you on that”. By the end, a bead of sweat steadily trickled my back, and I was sure my cheeks had invented a new shade of red.
The people of Bluebell Cove were kind and patient. That didn’t include the new guy.
He sat in the booth with Janice and Frank, boring molten holes into my profile as he watched me slowly unravel.
I should be used to it; my entire life, I’ve been a tiny bit late and a lot disorganized. My friends coined the nickname “hurricane of chaos” when I broke my foot walking on flat ground and managed to take Serena’s art project down with me. No, none of this was out of the norm.
But something about Rhett Briggs made me infinitely more embarrassed to exist.
I was busy gathering my spread of napkins when a voice called out to me. Captain’s had gradually emptied after the meeting. Most of them with businesses that opened early and families they were eager to see, perhaps I lingered too long afterthe processional of questions ended. So, I had nowhere to hide when Janice waved me over, still neatly tucked beneath Frank’s arm.
Normally, I’d be thrilled.
If not for the guy still occupying the other side of the booth.
“Hey,” I said as I walked up, a stack of napkins exploding from my back pocket. “Did I do okay?”
My fingers danced on the edge of their table as I tried not to look in his direction. One quick conversation and I’d be home free. Janice and Frank deserved that much—even if I was fighting hard to hide the jumble of nerves churning in my stomach.
“I think you did great, sweetie. Don’t you think, Frank?” Janice nudged him with her elbow.
He looked up from his slice of pie, offered me a mustache-lifting grin, and resumed.
She rolled her eyes playfully and motioned to the seat in front of her. The one beside Rhett. The silent, judgy guy whose critical gaze had a tendency to make me feel like pudding.Meltedpudding. If that was a thing. My fingers paused.
“Come, sit,” Janice added.
For a split second, my mind ran through a sequence of excuses that I could use to get out of this situation. I could fake a medical event, but Janice would take me to the hospital and harangue the doctors until they came up with a diagnosis. And if I pretended to be sick, she’d insist that I stay at the farm for the next week and cook three meals a day while I stayed in their guest bedroom. There was no way out of this.
I plastered my best imitation of a smile on my face and slid into the booth, gaze trained forward. “Frank told me that you’ve been feeling better?”
Janice propped her elbows on the table and waved an arthritic hand at me. “Oh, that doesn’t matter. I wanted to make sure that you and Rhett are properly acquainted.”
My throat tightened. “We met earlier.”
“You two will be working closely together.” She grabbed my hand and reached for Rhett’s. I watched from the corner of my eye as he met her halfway across the table and squeezed. The image was so jarring that I struggled not to linger on it.
