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I got here at five in the morning before the course opened, hoping I could get caught up on work before my coworkers and the golfers started arriving. I wanted time to get my head in order, since clearly I did nothing but turn my brain into mush the last two weeks of hiding out, instead of planning what I was going to tell everyone when I got back to work. On the verge of getting a huge promotion I’ve been working toward for months, I don’t have time for a mushy brain.
The revolving door of a golf course pro shop at nine in the morning on a Saturday makes me want to stab something sharp and rusty into the chime when, as soon as Mark is gone, the door opens right back up and someone else walks in.
Oh no.
“Well, well, well, if it isn’t Birdie Bennett, home from her two-week long vacation from… where was it you went again?”
The white mustache on the seventy-year-old, partially balding man standing on the other side of the counter twitches in amusement, even though I don’t think he’s ever fully smiled a day in his life.
“Hawaii,” I mutter, answering his ridiculous question through clenched teeth, since he knows damn well where my vacation was supposed to be and also that I did not go.
He is the only person on this island who knows this information, and he was sworn to secrecy. There was a handshake and money exchanged. I also had to agree to cook him five dinners and seven breakfasts for his silence, the traitor.
“Looking a little pale for fourteen days in a place like that, aren’t ya?”
That damn bushy white mustache twitches again, and when I see Chris open his mouth out the corner of my eye, probably to ask about my pasty skin as well, I put an end to the old man’s fun so I can introduce Chris. His family just moved to Summersweet a few months ago so he hasn’t had the pleasure of Murphy’s company until now.
“Chris, this is Murphy Swallow. Everyone calls him Murphy or Murph. He’s been working here since the dinosaurs roamed the earth, so he knows everything. It makes him very, very old, and he frightens easily, but he’s quite smart, especially about SIG,” I tell Chris as I casually rest my arms on the counter and smile at Murphy.
It doesn’t cause me physical pain, since I got that phone call two weeks ago, so that’s a step in the right direction. Teasing Murphy is always a balm to the soul.
“Feel free to ask him anything at all. Anything you need, Murph is your man. I’ll even give you his cell phone number for emergencies.”
The growl from Murphy under his breath as he glares at me almost makes me, dare I say, happy. Murphy doesn’t like teenagers. Or kids. Or babies. Or really any human beings who talk, breathe, blink, or otherwise annoy him. A widower who moved to Summersweet Island and into the house next door to us when I was in elementary school, Murphy was the neighborhood curmudgeon who wouldn’t toss your balls back over the fence when you accidentally hit them into his yard. He would hoard them like a troll amassing gold coins under a bridge, cackling at us over the fence while holding up his laundry basket filled with our baseballs, kick balls, footballs, and golf balls, as we tossed around a rock because he had all our damn toys.
Even though he literally yelled at everyone to get off his lawn, he was also the type of man who would roll his eyes and then hand you a cookie when he made you cry, as long as you sucked it up and stopped crying. Murphy was like a grandfather to me, if that grandfather was annoyed by everything all the time and liked to give you shit every chance he could.
Murphy Swallow is the reason I have a deep obsession for Pepperidge Farm’s Strawberry Thumbprint cookies and why I never cry when I get hurt. I suck it up. I learned that if you suck it up, you eventually get cookies. It’s a life motto I’ve since shared with my sister and my best friend, and it’s really been working out well for us.
“Did you say his last name is Swallow?” Chris suddenly pipes up, followed by a teenage boy giggle. “That’s what she—”
“Think long and hard about finishing that sentence,” Murphy cuts him off, his eyes narrowing as he stares Chris down from the other side of the counter.
I feel a little bad as I watch Chris experience his first Murphy threat in person, and now he knows the rumors around the island are true, but not bad enough to intervene. I’ve got enough going on with my own life. Chris now has to work with Murphy and needs to learn how not to almost pee your pants every time he looks at you.
