Page 36 of Windward Hearts

“Oh!” He grinned. “I finally thought of a movie.”

“And you…” She gestured at him. “You thought you should stand in the middle of my flowers to tell me about it?”

He glanced down at his feet in confirmation. “I am standing on zero flowers, thank you very much. Also, I know I’m not allowed inside on book club nights! I was respecting your boundaries!”

This whole thing was so silly, and Eleanor’s heart was still racing. She could no longer determine for certain if this was reasonable or absurd. She decided just to ride along with whatever her brother had going on. An important lesson in big sisterhood was sometimes just picking your battles.

“Okay, okay.” She blew out a breath. As her pulse slowed, she even laughed a little about it. “Tell me what you thought of that was so urgent that you had to race over here right away.”

“Well,” he said, with the air of someone who was really ramping themselves up for a big reveal. It charmed Eleanor, how seriously her brother was taking their little bet. Somehow, in the years that they’d spent living in different parts of the country, she’d forgotten how competitive he could get over the littlest thing. Games of Uno in their childhood had often devolved into all-out war between the two. “I was sitting at home. Since Winnie is here for book club, I was by myself and thought I’d watch a movie.”

Eleanor smiled at the reference to Winnie. Shane and his girlfriend didn’t live together, but they did spend nearly every evening together. She wouldn’t be surprised if they moved onto the next step in their relationship rather soon.

“I flicked on the television,” Shane continued grandly, “and…” He paused dramatically. “Shrek was playing.”

Eleanor opened her mouth, but Shane raised a hand.

“Now, I know what you’re going to say. ‘Is Shrek a classic?’ And while it is something of an unorthodox classic, I would argue that it is sufficiently beloved to enough children as to count it as a children’s classic. Not to mention that it is an extremely enjoyable film. So. I reject your rejection of it as a classic.”

Eleanor waited for his grand conclusion.

“I wasn’t going to say it wasn’t a classic,” she said.

“You weren’t?” Hope lit his gaze.

“I was not.” Eleanor had seen Shrek enough times with Jeremy to have faith in its power as a film that entranced children. For years, it had been her son’s pick whenever he was home sick for school, an event that was always marked by getting to watch a movie on the couch. She could probably recite half the movie from rote, even all these years later.

“I was,” she continued, “going to tell you that it’s actually based on a book.”

The series of expressions that crossed her brother’s face was downright comical. He looked shocked, then dismayed, then distrustful.

“No, it isn’t,” he accused… but he didn’t sound convinced.

She nodded grimly. “Indeed, it is. A picture book. It was written maybe fifteen or so years before the movie came out?”

“No!” he exclaimed, his tone suggesting that he was in denial. “No, that simply cannot be right.”

“I’m afraid so,” she said. “I looked it up after Jeremy made me watch it five hundred thousand times. The movie is better, I’ll grant you that, but that wasn’t the bet.”

“Why?” Shane asked, looking up at the sky as though the clouds could offer him answers. “Why do I never google this before I come over to ask you about it?”

“Well, that part is honestly a good question,” she said. “Maybe you’re just a huge luddite?”

Shane, who was a highly accomplished computer programmer, made a face at the implication that it was his lack of facility with technology that had led him to this moment.

Because she couldn’t resist needling him a little further, Eleanor added, “Say, how many of these rounds are we going to do before we decide I’m the winner, huh?”

He pulled a face in her direction, then began to retreat from her window, carefully making sure that he didn’t step on her newly planted flowers on the way back.

“Never!” he cried when he was out of the garden bed. “I will prevail!”

She gave him a double thumbs up and a look that she hoped conveyed her doubt. Judging by the way he stuck his tongue out at her, she was successful.

Eleanor was laughing as she closed the window and returned to her previous task of laying out snacks for book club. She didn’t think that she would ever stop being pleased that her brother had decided to stay in Magnolia Shore permanently. It felt great to be able to drop by for a little chat, rather than trying to coordinate phone calls across time zones. It also helped that Shane had a much healthier work-life balance than he’d possessed when he lived in San Francisco, where he had apparently spent nearly every waking moment in the office.

During the time she’d spent in the kitchen, Eleanor had heard several of the book club members come into the shop. When she got back to the small event space they used for their meetings, she saw that Hope, Winnie, and Diana were sharing a conversation.

“Hey, everybody,” she said as she laid down the plate of cookies alongside the snacks that the others had brought. “Guess who just scared about ten years off my life?”