"If my legs agree."
"Stretch."
"Still garden advice?"
"Still common sense."
She picked up her tote. "You're very committed to sense."
"Somebody has to be."
Daphne looked at me then, really looked, and the joke faded from her face.
For one reckless second, I thought she might say something that would make the room even smaller.
Instead, the workbench lit with another message.
Fletcher's name glowed on the screen.
Daphne's gaze flicked toward it, then away. "I should go."
I turned the phone facedown. "You're signed out."
She nodded. "Then I'll see you tomorrow, Zane."
"Tomorrow, Daphne."
She walked out into the hard noon light, and I stayed in the shed doorway with the damp rag still in my hand.
At the gate, Birdie lifted her basket. "Bring those shoes back tomorrow. I want to see if they make it three days."
Daphne laughed. "They're very brave."
"They're very doomed," Birdie said.
Daphne waved to Gus, stepped around whatever Tyler was doing with the compost lid, and disappeared past the P-Patch sign in her once-white sneakers.
The workbench lit again.
I didn't look down.
I watched the gate long after Daphne was gone, then turned toward the far fence, where my land ran down to Beargrass Lake and my brother wanted what I'd already told him he couldn't have.
Daphne had twelve hours left on her sheet.
Fletcher wouldn't stop pushing.
I stood there with the damp rag in my hand, wanting a woman I had no business wanting and feeling the place where I'd touched her cheek like it was still warm against my thumb.
Chapter Three
The bean trellis looked innocent until Zane handed me a roll of twine and said, “Don’t let it win.”
I stood in the narrow path between two raised beds, wearing my least-white sneakers, black shorts, and a green tank top I’d chosen because it made me look like a woman who understood summer. Sweat already gathered behind my knees. Dirt had found the inside of one shoe. A bee kept circling the purple flowers near the gate like it had a court order too.
“It’s string,” I said.
“It’s string with ambition.”
