“I know. The bags. I just — she's almost done.”
I came around the side of the SUV and looked down at what she was drawing. It was a glacier lily, like she'd said. There were three of them in the grass by her knee. Pale yellow, the kind that came up first when the snow started to melt.
In her drawing, the lily had a face. It had eyes and a mouth and was looking up at something not on the page. The flower looked hopeful. Like it was waiting to see if whatever it was looking at would acknowledge her.
It was just a flower. But she'd given a flower a face. She'd given a flower a face and an expression and the expression was good. Whoever taught her to draw had taught her well and I wasn’t sure how I felt about all of that.
Soleil hummed something under her breath. Then she leaned closer to the actual flower, her voice low. “Where are your friends, huh? Are you the brave one? The scout?”
For fuck’s sake. I had work to do. I had four more cabins to get ready.
“Do they come up like this every year?” she asked.
It took me a second to realize she was talking to me. “Yeah.”
“Just like this? This early?”
“Some years earlier. Depends on the thaw.”
She nodded like I'd given her something more than a simple answer. “Thanks, Treyton.”
I should have left then. Instead, I opened my big mouth. “There's a bunch of them. Up the south trail about a quarter mile. They’re bigger, and the light’s better up there.”
She turned her face up at me. The smear of dirt was still on her cheekbone, and a piece of her hair had come down out of the tie. Her eyes had gone bright like I'd handed her a gift.
“Don't go past the second marker,” I said. “And watch for bears.”
“Got it.” She gave me a huge smile. “Thank you. Really.”
I shook my head and wondered what the hell had gotten into me as I headed back into the cabin for Biscuit. He followed me out, pouting the whole way, and the second he hopped into the front seat, he hung his head out the window and looked back at her.
She waved at him.
Through the windshield I watched her go back to her sketchbook. She'd already forgotten I was there. The pencil moved fast and she was talking to the flower again and the wind had picked up enough to lift the loose strands of her hair off her neck.
I started the truck. Biscuit whined. “Don't,” I told him.
I put the truck in reverse and turned out down the dirt road, gravel crunching under the tires, and I checked the rearview without meaning to. She was still kneeling there. Sketchbook on her thigh. Honey-blonde hair coming undone. Talking to a flower in the grass like the flower could hear her.
Biscuit had the decency to look guilty in the passenger seat.
Three months. How was I going to survive her for three damn months?
CHAPTER 2
SOLEIL
The mug saidWorld's Okayest Gardener, there was a chip on the rim, and I'd never loved a piece of kitchenware more in my life.
I'd been in the cabin for nineteen hours. I'd unpacked three duffels, made the bed wrong twice, found a lone coffee mug in the back of a cabinet, and discovered that the meadow behind the cabin had at least four different wildflower species I'd only ever drawn from photographs.
I had also, in those nineteen hours, thought about Treyton Berg six times.
That was unacceptable. The book was the point. The flowers were the point. I had three months and twenty-four illustrations to finish and a deadline that didn’t care about my landlord's forearms.
I poured coffee into the okayest gardener mug and carried it out to the porch.
The morning was cold. Not Vermont cold, but thinner. The kind of cold that felt like the air had been filtered through a mountain on the way down. I sat on the top step, pulled my sweatshirt sleeves over my hands, and smiled at the sun coming up the side of the ridge.
