Page 94

TJ smirked. “If you go.”

“When we go.” I chucked another rag at him. “I’ve got a two-seamer with your name on it, Crowley.”

“Bet.”

“All right, all right.” Eliza beeped the horn and stuck her head out the window. “Let’s go, mister. You need a new shirt.”

My eye started twitching. “I did bring some decent clothes from back home, Eliza.”

“Okay, but what’s ‘decent’ to you?” She rested her chin on her forearm. “Is it a button-up?”

“Yes.” I squinched my eyes shut but the left one kept twitching away.

“What color?”

Twitch. “Navy-ish?”

“A dark color in the dead of summer?” She shook her head. “White would be better.”

Twitch. White would also stain super easily, but people like her probably didn’t worry about stains since they could just up and buy a replacement whenever they needed to. “Okay,” I mumbled.

“Come on, it’ll be fun.” She brightened. “I’ll treat us to ice cream after I replace the watch too.”

Twitch. Twitch. Twitch. “I thought we were getting a new battery, not a new watch.” I banged my fist on its face until it blinked back to life.

See? Works just fine.

My phone buzzed, and my stomach dropped when I saw who texted me.

Ben: Got a sec?

Ben: Need to talk to you about something.

“Reed?” Eliza called from the driver’s side. “Come on.”

I sent Ben a quick message back saying I’d call him later and then walked around the Jeep and opened the passenger-side door. “I can treat us to ice cream.”

It’s not like I can’t afford a couple of freaking cones.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Eliza

“No legacy is so rich as honesty.”

—William Shakespeare, All’s Well That Ends Well

Sunday morning came quickly, and our driveway filled with cars for the Founder’s Day Tea. I sighed and leaned my forehead against one of my bedroom windows as I watched the guests parade down the driveway to our backyard.

Reed was officially late and hadn’t texted me all morning.

What if he didn’t come? Maybe I overdid it with the shirt and watch battery? But he did seem to like the shirt and he had smiled—sort of—at his watch with a new battery…

Then again, judging from the over-the-top outfits strolling down the driveway and around back, maybe it wasn’t enough? Since when had a tea party turned into a derby race?

I didn’t remember everyone and everything being so superficial when Grandma and Grandpa had been here to help host it. The townspeople of Fairfield had looked one another in the eye and called each other by their first names, not their last. They’d asked questions about the “family” and not chitchatted about their high-paying jobs. I missed that kind of Fairfield.

But then a familiar old truck pulled up.