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“You didn’t burn all the furniture in this house we made, uh, memories on,” he said smugly. “This beautiful antique desk, for instance, or the banquette in the kitchen, or…”
He trailed off, probably in response to the murder in her eyes. “Yep, I’m going. Gonna go see if my dad needs help with anything.”
As he left, he squeezed by her much more closely than he needed to, and her knees almost buckled at the brush of his arm.
She threw the pen she’d taken from him at the door he closed behind him.
Blue, Age 14
It was his fucking birthday again. He looked around as he thought this, in case his mother somehow magically heard him cursing in his brain. But he should be allowed, like, one f-bomb. Because it was his birthday and as always, everyone was too busy opening Carrigan’s for the season to notice. Except Esther, who had made him a card and stuck a candle in a piece of Rosenstein’s coffee cake for breakfast, which was actually kind of sweet. She was the person he hated least who lived here.
He checked for his mom again. He didn’t hate her, necessarily, but she kept them all here living in the middle of nowhere, so he hated her choices.
He’d spent his entire birthday outside in the cold carrying heavy trees to the cars of whiny locals. Kids he hated at school whose parents looked down onhisparents for working for Cass, but then kissed Cass’s ass.
“Oh, Cass darling, I’m so glad you’re back from your travels. I just don’t know how the farm runs without you!” they would say, and she would smile that smug, awful smile like she had a secret, when the secret was that his parents did all the work of running the farm. All while Cass swanned around the world, collecting lost people and telling them they’d always have a place at Carrigan’s.
So generous. He rolled his eyes. Such a perfect birthday. No one had even thanked him.
“Oh, Levi,” Cass had said first thing this morning when he’d stumbled downstairs. He waited for “happy birthday,” or “good morning,” but instead she said, “Remember that the coffee and pastries are for guests, dear.”
He bared his teeth at her, taking a huge bite of the cinnamon roll in his hand and grinning before he turned to go help his dad.
Other things she had said to him today:
“Make sure you don’t drop that tree.”
“Don’t scratch that car, Levi. What are you thinking?!”
And, when he’d been standing with Miriam and Hannah, she’d looked past him to say, “Miri, Nan, do you want to break for lunch?” Then she’d turned to him and said, “Don’t you have work to do?”
Now he was hiding in his parents’ apartment off the kitchen, reading a copy ofGourmetmagazine while stuffing hunks of French bread dipped in thousand island dressing into his mouth. If he waited until everyone went to bed, he could sneak into the kitchen for an actual meal.
Hannah knocked on the door of the large closet he used as a bedroom so he didn’t have to share with the twins.
“Get your jacket,” she said, gesturing for him to come with her. “Wait, what are you eating?!”
He ignored this. “Where are we going?”
“It’s a birthday surprise. Your parents said it was okay. Come on.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be finishing up whatever Cass needs and then celebrating opening day?” he snarked, grabbing his leather jacket. His prized possession.
“I opened the farm, and now I’m going to celebrate my best friend’s birthday. Come ON, Miriam is already waiting outside.”
Miriam wasn’t usually there for opening day, because it was in the middle of the school semester, but she’d ended up here this year, because it fell on a weekend.
“What if I don’t want to?” he sulked. “What if I want to hide?”
“It’s a Shenanigan, Blue,” she said, her hands on her hips.
He sighed, taking her hand and letting himself be pulled to his feet. “Fiiiiiine. I’m never forgiving you for forcing me to have fun. You’re dead to me for invoking Shenanigans when all I wanted for my birthday was to be left alone.”
“Shut up, Blue,” she said, dragging him outside to the Carrigan’s shuttle, which was being driven by one of the seasonal workers instead of his dad like usual. Cass couldn’t even give him time off to take his oldest son out for his birthday.
They stopped between Advent and Lake Placid, at the winery that had opened a few months ago. He’d been asking to go eat there since, because he knew shitty little Advent could never maintain a place with great food for very long. Other tourist destinations in the Adirondacks got Michelin-starred chefs.
All they got was a dive bar with mediocre fried pickles.
