Savor It

Chapter 5. Sage

“You walked into his house in your robe?!” is the first thing Wren says when I open my front door. She pushes past me and heads for my kitchen, pink box tucked beneath her arm.

“I had clothes on under it, Wren.”

“It wasn’t the cow print one, was it?”

“What’s wrong with my cow print one?!”

Her mouth flattens into a line. “Nothing.” And then she passes me a scone, and I forget what I was about to be upset over. Lemon glaze melts on my tongue, hints of Earl Grey and pops of berry—floral, bright, decadent. I could weep. A moan slips out of me instead.

“Who’s helping your mom out if you’re here?” I ask when I eventually swallow. “And who told you? It’s been, like, four hours.”

“Sam’s working. He’s trying to earn gas money, anyway.” She nibbles off a corner of her own scone and stares out the window over the sink. “And Silas was already waiting at the bakery when I opened today. Said he’d been up all morning and proceeded to tell me why. Said the renter’s a consultant of some kind but wouldn’t say what? Said he seems fishy.”

I roll my eyes. “Silas would,” I reply. “But I don’t know. I didn’t ask.”

She turns on me with a frown that morphs into something conspiratorial. “He also said you stayed after to talk to him?”

“I stayed to get Legs out of their laundry room,” I laugh. “And, once again, I didn’t ask.”

She flaps a hand at me in disappointment. “Aside from their description skills, your brothers are all shamefully better gossipers than you. It’s the thing I miss most about being married to one.”

I have a hard time imagining Ellis gossiping intentionally, but don’t say as much. He is, however, excellent with recall. We both know that what Wren is referring to is less about juicy news and more utilitarian for Ellis. Silas and Micah are altogether another story. We’re lucky Micah’s off playing baseball in California. He’d undoubtedly already have the whole town looped in. Probably would have some elaborate backstory made up about the guy to embellish things, too.

“So, what’s he look like?” She tips her head toward the Andersens’ place.

Hot in a way that made me feel unsettled. Scruffy, unkempt, dark hair. Strong nose and sharp jaw, eyes that also looked dark from a distance but are actually more green up close. One side of his brow lifts more than the other when he talks, like he couldn’t possibly waste the energy on a full expression. His looks sent a zap of surprise coursing through me, but his voice had been a shock, too. Deep and smoky and full of grit—a velvety thrill rolling down my spine.

“I don’t know. Tall.” I shrug.

Her posture falls in frustration. “Do better, Sage.”

“Very tall? Taller than Ellis, I think, but maybe not as tall as Micah?”

She perks up. “Micah’s a freak, so that’s fine. Ellis is six three so that is still, like, tall tall.”

“Yes. He’s tall tall.”

She somersaults her palms over one another for me to continue.

“Do you not even care to know the man’s name, you dollymop?” I ask with mock outrage.

She stabs a finger at me. “That’s your one allowance for the day, Sage Astoria Byrd. I’m trying to decide if he has the potential to be your summer flame. And Silas told me his full name. Fisher Lange.”

There’s something vaguely familiar about it when she says it that way, alongside his surname like that. But I can’t call up anything specific in my mind, and I suppose it’s just because they’re not entirely unfamiliar words, when they’re separated.

“Fine.” I think about what details I can share without sounding too eager. “He had two tiny little hoop earrings. Broad but not bulky… brunette. Longish hair.” He’d raked some behind an ear when he was looking out at his daughter on the porch, self-conscious in a way that’d been oddly endearing.

Her eyes round into saucers. “Oh my god. Like a hot pirate?”

“First of all, I never said he was hot. Second of all, don’t you dare.”

“Isn’t that, like, your very exact dream man?”

My head falls back, and my shoulders droop. “You promised you’d stop using that information against me.” I shove half a scone into my mouth when she fully squeals. I’ll never live down the night when, immediately post-breakup, I’d guzzled a box of wine and babbled about all my relationship woes. How I hadn’t had an orgasm for over eighteen months with Ian and how I’d since fallen down a blissful (if not overly specific) rabbit hole of pirate smut and fan fiction.

She bounces back to the window giddily. “Fine, fine. But oooh, this is exciting! Do you have binoculars?”

“Jeehus, ’En.” I groan around the mouthful, crumbs scattering. “What happened to you worrying he was a weirdo?”

I jump when her hands slap against the counter. “You canNOT be serious!” she yelps.

I swallow the pastry with force. “What is it?!”

“Serena Lindhagen just pulled down his driveway!”

“You’re kidding me.” I laugh incredulously. “That was quick!” I peer out the window, and sure enough, Serena adjusts the straps on the pretty blue dress I complimented her on last week, right before she grabs a pink box off the hood of her sedan and marches up the Andersen porch steps.

“She brought him my cheese danishes!” Wren says, scandalized like Serena’s actually stripped naked and jumped him.

I briefly consider feigning ambivalence, but… screw it. I grab my binoculars from my miscellaneous junk drawer instead.

“You’re better at reading lips,” I say, passing them off to her. She suctions them to her eyes with shocking ferocity.

“Okay,” she begins. “He just looks confused. Looks like just your basic introductions happening. He’s now doing that mannish, back-of-the-neck-scratch thing they do when they’re uncomfortable. Now the compulsive hand-through-the-hair thing.… Another awkward pause. A thank-you. And now Serena’s turning to leave.”

“Already? Interesting.”

Wren glares at me icily for what feels like a full minute before she backhands me across the arm. “Ouch! What was that for?!”

“He is stupid good-looking, you ninny.” She shoves the binoculars away and gives me an exasperated look. “That should be you over there acting like a frillybroom or whatever that ridiculous word was. Very sit-able nose.”

I take my binoculars back. “She brought him and his daughter some baked goods, Wren,” I say through a laugh. “She didn’t proposition the man. And Jesus, good for her if she did!” I’m certainly not judging her for it.

“She’s his niece, not his daughter.”

“I—wait, what?”

Her eyes soften. “The girl. Silas told me she’s his niece. Fisher’s her guardian. I guess her mom died a while back.”

Sadness drops like a stone through my chest. I knew he’d been embarrassed, but that explains why he seemed more than that. More… despondent. Like hitching a smile felt heavy, attached to some invisible anchor. Explains why his relief had been so palpable, too. Grief is exhausting.

“That reminds me,” I rasp. “She—his niece, Indy, also starts summer school next week. I may have suggested that Sam would take her and show her around.”

Wren nods heartily. “Absolutely. He’s a good kid. You know he won’t mind.”

“I know,” I reply quietly. That plumb line of sorrow vibrates in me still, like hearing about theirs strummed on a chord of my own.

“So I was thinking,” Wren hedges, holding up a hand before she starts counting off with her fingers. “He’s here for the whole summer. The mystery building. He’s a chef.… He’s definitely got to have something to do with it, right?”

“He’s a chef?”

She sighs through her nose. “Once again, your sleuthing skills leave much to be desired. Your brothers got all this information.” She lifts her arms, palms facing the ceiling. “So? Athena had to be right, yeah? It’s got to be a restaurant, like she thought, and he has to have something to do with it.”

“I guess we’ll see.”

She lets out an uneasy sound. “You know people won’t be thrilled.”

I snort. “But why? We need more than just Walter’s diner, Wren. People leave and don’t come back. August is great, but if this place keeps aging out of its citizens, not even the festival is going to be enough financially.” I don’t need to remind her that we are otherwise limited on tourism and that things like restaurants or breweries are the perfect draw—a great way to infuse money into our local economy.

“I agree with you, babe. But it’s Walter’s last year before retirement, and I’m just stating the facts,” she says. “You know everyone wants him to get one more good tourist season before he retires.”

“This is the third year in a row he’s said it was his last, Wren,” I say. “And he still won’t say which nephew or niece gets to run the place when he goes. In other words, he’s bluffing again.”

“I’m not arguing with you. I think it’s great,” she says with a laugh. “Maybe with something else coming in, he’d have to actually mean it this time.”

I cut my eyes across the meadow, curiosity sprouting like the dahlias I’m determined to grow this year. “I guess we’ll see,” I say again.

Ordinarily, I’d consider myself the ideal neighbor. I typically keep to myself, for the most part, and I make sure the property around my place stays tidy. No junk piles, no collections of weird gnomes or random sculptures cluttering up the lawn. But I’m also happy to check in on things when needed. I’m always obliged to help out the renters when the Andersens are away, and I’m forever available for a cup of sugar, while I’m not so overly friendly that they’d feel obligated to make small talk anytime we orbit one another. I’d sooner stay hidden and would go out of my way to avoid making anyone else uncomfortable. Plus, I do give a solid effort toward not perpetuating the small-town stereotypes. Therefore, ordinarily, I do not make it a habit to spy. I certainly don’t bring out binoculars to do so in the first place, let alone anytime curiosity strikes.

But, not long after Serena Lindhagen leaves Fisher’s place (and after Wren has left mine), I spot Bea Marshall—gorgeous redheaded hairstylist and skilled extractor-slash-purveyor of secrets—sashay up my neighbor’s steps, too. She manages to make it inside the house, but leaves less than ten minutes later, a smug look on her face and a mildly confused expression on Fisher’s.

Later that same night, I wake up when my plate slips off my lap and clatters to the floor, apparently having dozed off on the couch during my (very sad, girl-meal charcuterie board (adult Lunchable)) dinner. When I carry it over to the sink and start rinsing, a light catches my eye in the distance. I look up to see that it’s the motion-activated light from the Andersens’ garage, just as it shines down on the unmistakable silhouette of a teenage girl—sneaking out.

After that, it feels like I can’t stop spying. Legoless frequently mewls his annoyance at me over the following days, and Sable bounces around at my side even more than usual, both of them agitated by the same frenetic energy, I’m sure. And agitated is precisely the right way to describe this. I am without a doubt intrigued by what they’re doing here, but I’m equally as irritated with my inability to let it go and mind my own damn business.

“Maybe I do need cable,” I repeatedly mutter to myself before I inevitably find more reasons to hover around my window. “Maybe this is like my reality TV.”

Maybe you need to get another hobby, my dog’s expression conveys.

Or get laid, the cat’s mildly disgusted glare suggests.

Instead, I spend even more time in my garden than usual, or over by the redwoods that partially line the fence between our properties, “weeding.” Which consists of me aimlessly plucking at the ground on my hands and knees while I steal glances and strain to overhear any conversations.

Basically: I’m a caricature of myself. Small-town girl enraptured by handsome stranger and his plight. It’s pathetic, really, and I make exactly zero attempts to rein it in.

All I can determine through my fledgling investigations is that there’s a distinct sense of melancholy between Fisher and Indy. They’re never in the same area of the house, and when they are, one of them disappears almost immediately. Whenever Fisher wanders onto the porch, he studies his hands like the solution for something might magically appear there. Each time Indy stomps out, she clings to the railing and searches out in the distance.

Two days after the first visitors stop by, I catch sight of O’Doyle’s truck creeping down the drive. An amazed laugh bubbles out of me as I practically skip over to grab the binoculars again. I know we’re a fairly direct bunch in this town, but the poor man has already been forced through more than his fair share of awkward exchanges in the few days he’s been here, and this is just plain ridiculous.

It’s also (shamefully) entertaining.

I quickly find O’Doyle’s pinched face through the lenses, even more wasplike than normal as she rounds the front of her car and makes her way to the door. Indy opens it for her, and O’Doyle shoves past, but within a minute, Fisher’s showing her out again, his expression smoothed into something downright sardonic. O’Doyle, however, is red-faced and sputtering.

“Aunt Sage?”

“Gah!” I bark out a startled sound and toss the binoculars away with a thud just as Sam and Ellis duck into my kitchen.

“I have a doorbell, you know. Even your mother uses it,” I inform Sam while I try to catch my breath, though it’s clear from his derpy grin he doesn’t buy the stern tone for a second. He traipses over to me and traps me in his long, coltish limbs.

“It’s nice to see you, too, Auntie.”

I pat him on his knobby back before he breaks away. Looking up at the kid’s face is a bit like looking into a mirror. Same square jaw and big gray eyes, even has my freckles. He, however, inherited his dad’s dark hair and his mother’s curls rather than my wet-sand-colored waves.

“What are you guys doing here?” I ask Ellis, then flinch when Sable leaps onto Sam before he deftly starts marching her through a waltz with her paws on his shoulders.

“Mom told me you pimped me out to your neighbor,” Sam says.

“She told him he needed to come introduce himself to the girl and show her around,” Ellis clarifies.

“She’s your age, Samuel, and cute to boot,” I say.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m on my way. Just wanted to say hi first.” He tries to shove off Sable in vain, and she nails him with a sloppy kiss across the length of his face. “Ugh, and to drop off those from Mom.” He points to a basket on the table.

I scoff when I see about ten of her infamous scones.

“Wait! How the hell does she expect me to eat all these?!” I call after Sam, who’s hurrying for the door with Sable hot on his heels. “It’s not even Sunday!” Which means she went out of her way to make them.

“No idea!” He skids through the exit before he peeks his head back in—at the cost of one more slobbery lick from my ill-mannered dog. “All I know is I was specifically told not to take any back!” And with that, he leaves.

Sable’s whine echoes my own thoughts. Wren knows I can’t stand wasting food, most especially pastries, and that I’ll find someone to give the rest to. It’s as good as shoving me over to the neighbors’.

Ellis plops himself down at my kitchen table. “Here, you help me eat these.” I urge the basket toward him.

His face creases into a frown. “You know I don’t eat those anymore.”

I whistle out a long sigh. Ellis deals in absolutes. Dad’s death was caused by a heart attack, which was caused by a fire in our barn, so Ellis became a firefighter. Our parents were gone by the time he was eighteen, so he became the one who took care of us. He took on the financial burden for us all and then didn’t bat an eye when he also became a father to Sam in the same year.

Sometimes I think that he decided Wren was his forever when she became his first real friend in kindergarten. But now… Now, enjoying Wren’s scones is no longer something he’ll allow himself to do, because he no longer shares a life with her. It makes no sense to me, but in his labyrinthine mind, it’s all purely logical.

“And what are you here for, then?” I ask lightly.

“Bud’s due. Figured you could take me home after I’m done, if Sam’s still got the Jeep.”

Bud. His ex-wife’s beloved dream horse that they couldn’t hold on to when they divorced, who now lives with me, but gets ridden frequently by Wren and has his hooves trimmed and shod every four to six weeks by Ellis. I once thought having him here in a safe, neutral zone would somehow bring them back together, but it’s been four years, and they’ve only grown more comfortable with their space, it seems.

My eyes drift back to the scones, and I decide that I won’t be giving in and taking them to Fisher’s. No more spying or inserting myself into other people’s affairs, either. Ellis has unwittingly brought me a reminder that my feelings always get too tangled up in the end.