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Bree’s head reappeared. “I told you. Your grandmother’s people were Vermont farmers.”
“Then why don’t we study Vermont farmers?” he retorted. “Why is one part of me more important than the other?”
Bree held her ground. “Not more important. But significant.” She ducked behind the counter again.
Despite their squabbling, Lucy detected a change in their relationship. They looked each other in the eye and talked more frequently, even though their conversation was often adversarial. She’d also noticed changes in Bree. She stood straighter, smoked less, and spoke with more confidence. It was as if the therapeutic powers of her honey were giving her strength.
So far that day, Lucy had tried to convince Temple to stop exercising five hours a day and consider Lucy’s “Good Enough” approach, but not surprisingly, Temple wasn’t buying it. Lucy had more success with the bread she’d baked in Bree’s kitchen. Now she was helping Bree finish painting four old Adirondack chairs in Easter egg colors of periwinkle, light blue, peach, and nursery yellow. They would offer a comfortable place to relax in the shade of the old oak that sheltered the farm stand. Bree also hoped their cheerful colors would attract the attention of drivers passing by.
Maybe the chairs were working because she heard a car stop behind her. She turned and saw a dark gray SUV with Illinois plates. Her heart gave a little leap. As far as she knew, this was the first time Panda had stopped here on any of the sorti
es he’d made into town since he’d loosened the reins on Temple. Now he got out and ambled toward her. “So this is where you’ve been spending your time.” He nodded at Toby. “Hey, Toby. Lucy make any more bread today?”
Toby had begun to feel at ease with Panda. Last week they’d even gone out on the kayaks together. “Whole wheat. But it’s still good.”
“I know. I like the heels.”
“Me, too.”
“Done.” With one final slam of the hammer, Bree rose from behind the counter. “Oh, sorry,” she said as she spotted Panda. “I was making so much noise I didn’t hear a car. Can I help you?”
Lucy stepped forward. “Bree, this is Patrick Shade, aka Panda. Panda, Bree West.”
“West?” The smile on Panda’s face faded. He grew unnaturally still. He gave a brusque nod and, without another word, got in his car and drove off.
Chapter Eighteen
THE SUV DISAPPEARED FROM SIGHT. Bree quickly turned back to the shelves that lined the farm stand and began rehanging the bumblebee Christmas ornaments on the tree branch display she’d erected above her pots of lip balm, beeswax candles, and flower-shaped soaps. She hung them crookedly, not trying to balance the arrangement.
As Toby went off to get a drink, Lucy tried to figure out what had just happened. “Do you and Panda know each other?”
The branch display began to tilt precariously. Bree grabbed two of the ornaments and moved them. “I’ve never met him.”
“But you know him?”
Bree shifted another ornament. “No.”
Lucy didn’t believe her. “You’d think by now you could trust me a little.”
Bree moved the soap basket a few inches to the left. Her shoulders lifted as she took a deep breath. “I used to live in his house.”
Lucy was stunned. “The Remington place?”
Bree fumbled in her pocket for her cigarettes. “Sabrina Remington West. My full name.”
“Why didn’t you ever mention this?”
Bree gazed toward the trees in the general direction of her old house. She was quiet for so long that Lucy didn’t think she was going to answer. Finally she said, “I don’t like talking about it or even thinking about it, which is crazy, because I think about it all the time.”
“Why’s that?”
Bree shoved her hands deeper into the pockets. “I have a lot of memories attached to the house. Complicated ones.”
Lucy understood complicated memories.
“I spent every summer there when I was growing up,” Bree said. “I stopped coming when I was around eighteen, but the rest of my family used it for years until my father died and Mother went into a nursing home. Finally it got too expensive to maintain, so my brothers put it on the market.”
“And Panda bought it.”
