Beneath it, his phone number.
“What is this?” I flip over the card. The back is blank. “Are you looking for, like, literal pen pals? Do you and Earl write to each other?” Penn runs a hand over the back of his neck, pink rising to his cheeks. “No, I mean, that’s sweet, if you do,” I say, backpedaling. “Maybe I’ll slip you a letter under your bedroom door.”
“I look forward to your correspondence. But that’s not quite it.” Exhaling, he says, “It’s my new business. Soon-to-be business. And I promised I’d explain everything, so I will. But if you think it’s dumb, don’t tell me.”
“Me? Think something you do is dumb?”
Penn hits me with a blank stare.
I raise both hands. “Clean slate, remember? I’ll withhold judgment. Promise. It can’t be any worse than the chili stand.”
He points at me. “Hey, the chili stand was a work of genius.”
“You’re kidding, right?” I cackle. “That thing was absurd. Nobody wants to eat meat soup on the go. Especially out of a Dixie Cup. With a plastic spoon.”
Penn puts a hand to his chest. “I, for one, love meat soup on the go.”
“That’s why you, ‘for one,’ were your one and only customer.”
There’s a warmth to his stare as he smirks and shakes his head.
“But I do respect your entrepreneurial gusto,” I add.
His eyes shine with pride. “Yeah?”
I nod. “Yeah.”
Penn attempted to launch many businesses when we were growing up, none of them remotely genius. There was the near-permanent food stand with seasonal offerings: lemonade, Popsicles, candy apples, and the aforementioned meat soup. In middle school, he tried to brand himself as a “non-dog walker,” which he explained to those who didn’t understand (everyone) as a person hired to walk everyothertype of pet. As if there might be a big gap in the market for gerbils who need exercise or something. We never let him live down the day he carried around a turtle in a basket.
I brush a finger across the card. “What kind of business is it?”
“A help hotline. Of sorts.”
“Oh,” I say, surprised.
Penn bites his lip, and it’s obvious that while he desperately wants to talk about it, he’s bracing for a joke. Waiting for me to make light of it—of him. And I get it. That’s always been our thing. But I don’t want to do that this time.
“A help hotline,” I say, folding my legs beneath me. “I love it. Perfect name, too.”
Unmasked delight washes over his face. “Really?”
“Yeah. Tell me everything.”
Penn sits back, stretching out his legs. “Okay. Well, working at the bar, you hear a lot of people’s stories. Problems, mostly. Some have easy fixes. A guy works twelve hours a day and can’t check on his mom. A woman needs someone to take care of her groceries, or her prescriptions, because she’s drowning after her husband passed.” He lifts a shoulder. “Plenty of different services could fit the bill, but people live in Lakeville because they feel like they belong here. They don’t want a stranger driving their son to the dentist. They want help from someone they trust, but maybe they don’t know who to ask. Or how. That’s where I come in to help, or to point them to the right person for the job.”
He looks at me then, eyes round and hopeful, and something unlocks in my chest. Penn’s eleven again, standing on a street corner, trying to belong here, too.
“So, Earl,” I prompt. “He’s a client?”
“My first one. His granddaughter, Katie, came into Curly’s last spring and said she was worried about her grandpa—that he’d lost his light. I hadn’t planned to start until next year, once I’d officially launched, but a few weeks later, I was arranging flowers for Earl.” He tips me a look, his brow arched. “Katie is the woman you saw this morning.”
Every outlandish word I uttered earlier comes roaring back to haunt me. I feel silly for all the conclusions I jumped to this morning—and all week. Although, in fairness, a hot girl carrying an overnight bag has a logical connotation.
As I cover my face with both hands, Penn laughs and explains, “She was dropping off her résumé. Earl knows I’m busy, and she needs extra cash, so he suggested we get in touch. Katie’s in nursing school, which would be so helpful. Especially for Cindy. She always has questions about her prescriptions.”
Penn’s bizarre knowledge of Mrs. Baker’s groceries. All the strange phone calls. That wasn’t him being intrusive or suspect. That was him taking care of people—just like he looked after his nanna.
I loved Penn’s grandma. She had a raging crush on Alex Trebek and a leopard-print robe and a loud, throaty laugh that only Penn could tease out of her.
