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Chapter1
Gemma
Mm. That smell.
Newly fallen maple and oak leaves. Grass that won’t need to be cut again before the snow flies. I swear, I can smell a distant flock of Canadian Geese migrating south for the winter.
If thisexactautumn smell could be packed into a candle, I’d buy a thousand of them.
It’s the smell of fall in the New England suburbs.
Early October will forever remind me of golden-yellow school buses, metallic star stickers, and sparkly new pencil cases.
Ambition, awards, and straight A’s.
This evening, as I grip the railing of the Manning’s deck and look out across the string of fenced-in backyards, I feel the same excitement I used to feel as a kid.
Only tonight, my ambition is not aimed at anything related to being a student.
I’m here because of business.
When Carly joins me out on the deck, a glass of wine in one hand and her faded Boston University sweatshirt hanging loose over one shoulder, she frowns and gazes down on the string of yards splayed out before us. “I can’t believe they took it down.”
I know she’s referring to the clothesline we had strung up between my bedroom, two houses down, and hers. We had a little bucket attached, and used to pass each other notes, books, and candy bars.
“And I can’t believe it took them this long,” I counter. “That thing was rotting, thanks to twenty years worth of sun, rain, snow, ice, and bird poop.”
She utters a nostalgic sigh, like the fact that our old lifeline is now in a trash barrel somewhere is big news that we both should feel sad about.
I’m too giddy for nostalgia right now. “Okay, when do you think I should approach him?”
“Who? Dad?”
“Yes, your dad! Hello… The reason I’m here.” I definitely didn’t make the two hour drive out to Carly’s parents house merely to enjoy her mother’s famous pot roast, or reminisce about childhood, as pleasant as both those things are.
My work to-do list is a mile long, and I don’t take time off on a whim these days. The only reason I took an entire week night off is because of what’s at stake.
Funding.
Lots of it.
Carly twists, leans her back against the rail, and looks at the clapboard siding of her parent’s house and then at me. “Remember that time in fourth grade when I needed help with my science report, and I flashed you an S.O.S signal? And then I filled the bucket with my terrible, chicken-scratch notes…”
“And I stayed up all night writing your reportThe Fascinating Lives of Earthworms. Yeah.”
“I still don’t know how you managed that. And you got me an A. I still owe you for that, by the way.” She sips her wine. “You don’t have to be nervous about this, you know.”
“I really want to nail the pitch.”
“And you will. You’ve been practicing for weeks.”
“Months.”
“If I know you, you have every word memorized by now.”
“I’ve been playing the whole thing in my head like some song, except there’s no catchy chorus. Only profit margins and interest rates.”
She flashes a quick smile and tucks a strand of blond hair behind her ear. “You are such a dork. Getting butterflies in your stomach about profit margins.”
