“No shit. So… you’re good, then?”
“Yeah.” I hesitated. “Or I will be. Eventually. Once I wrap my head around some things.”
“Uh-huh. And you’ll process your feelings by… chopping a block of wood into tiny splinters?”
“In the time-honored tradition of our ancestors, Knox.” I rolled my eyes. “You know, the one that doesn’t involve freakin’…apple tithesand bugle blowing.”
He laughed. “Is the chopping working yet?”
I thought about it for a moment. “Kinda, yeah. I do feel better.” It might have had as much to do with my brother’s presence as it did with the wood chopping, but I wasn’t going to tell him so. He’d only getmoreannoying.
“And how’sLukefeeling about things?” Knox prompted.
I sighed. If I knew Luke—which I didn’t… but was kinda starting to—he was probably at home, alone, wearing a sweater vest and thinking cheerful thoughts… and feeling unliked—again—for something that wasn’t his fault.
God, I was such an asshole.
Knox lifted an eyebrow at me like he knew what I was thinking and agreed.
I grimaced. “Fuck. I should, ah… probably go apologize, huh?” I said fake-reluctantly, like I hadn’t been waiting for an excuse to go find Luke and make sure he was okay.
As afriend. Clearly.
“Oh yeah,” Knox advised. “Bring gifts.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
LUKE
Haveyou ever tried to attach a plastic tarp to a slate roof five feet over your head while a stiff, cold Vermont wind whips your hair into your eyes and turns your fingers to icicles?
No?
As I lay sprawled on the roof of said portico, blinking up at the afternoon sun, I wanted very badly to say that I hadn’t tried that either… and that the wind hadn’t then gotten underneath the tarp, creating an inadvertent parasailing situation, which had then caused me to kick the ladder down to the ground and left me stranded twelve feet above the ground…
But that would be a lie.
“What the freak was I thinking?” I asked the puffy clouds drifting overhead.
The answer was that I hadn’t been thinking. Not even a little.
I’d been hungover and hurt and desperate to get something done—tofixsomething, even if it was just putting a tarp on the roof—to make myself feel better.
Clearly, I had been wildly successful.
“Nothing says empowerment like being stranded on your own roof,” I muttered, thinking of the phone I’d left safely in the camper to charge.
I peered over the edge of the roof at the giant snowbank where the ladder had landed and pondered whether the snow would break my fall… or just break me.
It was tempting to jump because I really did not want anyone to find me up there—no, seriously, parents, other than the missing child, the drunken bugle blowing… oh, and that one hilarious time I threw a hissy fit and got stranded on my own portico, I’m the best role model ever!—but if one of my students heard Mr. Williams had jumped off a roof and decided to try it, I’d never forgive myself.
So, instead, I resigned myself to being stuck until Murray came on sheep duty and decided I’d try to enjoy it.
Positive thinking for the win.
I leaned back against the roof, looked up at the sky, and started humming a tune when a deep, conversational voice from way too close below me yelled up.
“‘Sweet Caroline’? You know, I’m beginning to associate that song with terrible decisions.”
