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“Nobody,” Ruthie said. “Just a male escort I hired for Clover.”
“Is that in your job description?” he asked.
“Yeah, of course. What do you think I do here all day?”
“Your daughter is weird, Erick,” Clover called after them, considering moving back into her desk nest.
“You don’t have to tell me that. Have a good Thanksgiving,” he said, gently force-marching Ruthie out to his truck.
“You, too,” she said. After Erick and Ruthie had gone, Clover forced herself to reply to her two emails.
To the first—the five-million-dollar buyout offer she’d received from PNW Garden Supply’s CFO—she replied with a simple I’ll let you know on Monday. Happy Thanksgiving.
To her sister’s email she replied with a smiley face emoji and a Great! Can’t wait to see everyone!
She made sure to fill the email with unnecessary exclamation points to mask her incredible sense of dread about the whole shebang. All her family—her parents, two siblings, their spouses and seven kids under one roof for an entire day? There was not enough punctuation in the world to fake how much she was not looking forward to that.
Kelly replied to the email almost immediately.
Mom wants to know if we’re going to be meeting anyone special on Thursday, Kelly wrote.
Clover picked up a trowel and considered stabbing her laptop with it so she wouldn’t have to reply.
Instead she simply ignored the email and got to work cleaning. Potting soil and wheelbarrow went into the storage shed. Ferns back into the greenhouse. It wasn’t the right time of year to trim a lemon tree so she moved it to the opposite corner of the office where it could spread out a little more until she could trim it down again to a more indoor-friendly size. And all the while she though
t about what she would do with five million dollars and all the free time anybody could want.
Five million was a lot of money. Not enough to buy the world but plenty to go into her retirement account and leave enough to start a new company. But with the noncompete clause in the PNW Garden Supply offer, she wouldn’t be able to start another nursery in Oregon. She could move to Northern California and open a nursery there. Then again, that’s where her parents lived, which meant instead of hearing about how she needed to get married and have kids ASAP and STAT on major holidays, she’d hear it every single week.
Or she could stay in the Mount Hood area and open a landscaping business. Not quite as much fun as a nursery but it was still working with plants. Or she could take a few years off. Or she could move to Hawaii. Or Alaska. Or she could spend the money on male escorts for the next five years.
“You are not calling Sven,” Clover said to herself. “Even if he is half-off this week.”
Clover went to the sink and considered sticking her head under cold running water until she calmed down or drowned. Either would be preferable to her current confused, miserable and muddled state of mind. Instead she just washed all that potting soil off her hands with her lava soap and a nail brush. As she was drying her hands she saw headlights in the parking lot. After six already? She couldn’t believe so much time had passed that it had gotten dark. She needed to head home and get to work cleaning her house. The deck needed to be cleaned off, too, in case the weather was clear enough to grill outside or use her fire pit for s’mores. Her nieces and nephews would make s’mores over that fire pit in the middle of a snowstorm if their parents would let them. She better get someone to fix the loose boards by the pit.
So much to do, so little desire to do any of it.
“Knock, knock.”
Clover turned around and saw Erick sticking his head in through the workroom door.
“Oh, hey,” she said, tossing her hand towel on the counter. “What’s up?”
“My lovely brilliant wonderful daughter left her phone here. I have been commanded to fetch it and overnight it to her mom’s house.”
“Ruthie left her phone here? I thought she had that thing surgically attached to her hand.”
“Yeah, me, too. And didn’t I specifically ask her if she had her phone and her charger?”
“You did. Right after asking her if she had her meds.”
“Okay. Glad I have a witness for this so I know it’s one hundred percent her fault.”
“All her fault,” she said, trying not to laugh. Erick and Ruthie were hilarious together. Ruthie was comically sullen around her father, who was comically sullen around his daughter. They snarked at each other so well one would think sarcasm was the only language they both spoke. But it was impossible not to see how much Erick loved his girl and how much Ruthie adored her father, even if they did constantly harangue and harass each other. She called him “Pops,” which he hated, and he called her “Ruthless,” which she hated even more. Clover found it all endearing and entertaining. She wished she could tease her own parents like that.
“Ruthie said her phone’s in her desk but she might have locked it in there.”
“I’ll get my key,” Clover said. He followed her back into her office and Clover took the key off the wall hook. “You know, it is really not like her to leave her phone. She okay?”
