Chapter 32
CHAPTER 32
LIAM
“ Y ou’re going to have to fix that.”
I turn around and find my dad standing in the lobby behind me.
My shoulders slump. “You heard that?”
He nods. “Yeah. I did. And it’s not Olive’s fault,” he says. “Your sister is headstrong. Stubborn. You know that about her. I just had no idea she would ever want to do this.” He goes still.
I face him. “That’s because you never asked her,” I say as nicely as I can.
Dad gives me a slight wince. “I have a knack for that.”
“In your defense, neither one of us spoke up.”
Something about that realization anchors at the back of my mind.
The city council members have started to filter out, and as solid as Lacey’s presentation was, based on the chatter, it sounds like people are loving the idea, but no one is stepping forward to get involved.
“Do you think she can do this?” Dad asks.
I pause. The words, not without me , are right there, on the tip of my tongue, but there’s no way I’m saying them out loud .
“I don’t know. I think she romanticizes things. And she’s not the most reliable person.” I sigh. “She’s going to need a lot of help to pull it off.”
“The plan was pretty solid, though,” he says.
I think back to Lacey, standing up at the podium, talking in a way I’ve never heard her talk before. Maybe she had something to prove tonight. Maybe she’s tired of everyone making assumptions about her. I can’t fault her for that.
“Yeah. Yeah, it was.”
“She had some great ideas for expansion.”
Several were ideas I’d floated years ago, but yeah, they were great.
“We could give her some time to try and get the money together.” Dad seems to be verbally processing their options.
“But if you drag your feet, my buyer will walk.” Travis enters the conversation—he apparently made a phone call in the lobby and stuck around to eavesdrop. “He’s not a sentimental guy. He’s a money guy. So if you’re planning to drag this out while Lacey and Olive start some grassroots campaign to save the Christmas tree farm, tell me now so we can move on.”
The way he says it irks the crap out of me. So condescending. I can’t believe I was ever friends with this guy. Hindsight sucks, showing someone’s true colors in vibrant, vivid colors that you didn’t see at the time.
“I’ll talk to Jo and let you know,” my dad says, probably not appreciating Travis’s tone either.
“Tomorrow,” Travis says. It comes out like an order.
My dad straightens. “Son, we own the farm. You work for us. I said I’ll let you know.”
Travis’s inflated stance gets knocked down a peg, and I have to turn away to hide a smile.
“Great, I’ll, uh, be in touch,” Travis stutters, backing up.
Dad raises his eyebrows at him, and then nods.
After Travis leaves, Dad looks at me and blows out a breath .
“You were friends with that guy?”
I chuckle. “Yeah, I don’t know why.”
He makes a face, scratching at his chin. “We’re counting on the sale.”
“Retirement. I know.”
A thought hits me. “Could you sell her a portion and keep a portion?” I ask.
“And walk away?” He gives me an are you kidding look, and I get it. He ran this place for years. If he owns half of it and he’s worried about Lacey, he’s never going to be free of it. He’s always going to want to have his hands in the pot. And my mom? Forget it. She’s going to find it hard enough to leave.
“Not just that though,” Dad says. “I’ve got real concerns about Lacey taking on something this big all by herself. She’d have employees, but as great as ours are, I can tell you from experience, it’s not the same.”
I sigh. It’s true. Lacey seems capable, smart and stronger than she looks. But even if she doesn’t get bored, even if she decides to stick around—she’s going to need help. And silent partners aren’t going to roll up their sleeves and trim the boughs. Not like this business requires.
I hear footsteps before I see Lacey and my mom. When they reach us, they stop.
Lacey frowns. “Where’s Olive?”
Dad shifts, avoiding my eyes. “She left.”
“That’s weird. She was so pumped before we got here.” She pulls out her phone and clicks it open. “Oh, she texted. Migraine.”
Dad looks at me, and my muscles tense.
Lacey shoots off what I assume is an I hope you feel better soon text and tucks her phone away. “So . . .”
“Let’s go to Joe’s and get a pizza,” Dad says.
I’m supposed to be eating pizza with Olive. I’m supposed to be finding new ways to kiss her and memorizing every curve of her face. But I’m sure I’m the last person she wants to see right now, and besides, what would I say? I’m sorry is hardly enough.
Still, I pull out my phone and text her:
Liam
I’m sorry. I’m an idiot. Can I call you?
Three dots appear, then disappear.
“You ready?” Dad asks.
I sigh, slide my phone into my pocket, and nod. “Yeah.”
Once we’re seated in a booth at Joe’s and have ordered our food, Lacey studies all of us, eyes bouncing from our dad, to our mom, to me and back again. “So, what did you guys think?”
“A little warning would’ve been nice,” I say.
“So you could talk me out of it?” she says. “Not a chance.” She raises an eyebrow. “You know you would’ve.”
I don’t respond. Because she’s right.
She pulls three flyers out of her bag and hands one to each of us.
“Olive’s design,” Mom says softly, and I wonder if she feels betrayed too. “I should’ve known you girls would cook up some way to keep Pine Creek.” She glances at Lacey, her eyes welling with tears. “Sweetie, I just don’t know if it’s going to work.”
Lacey’s expression holds. “I can do this, you guys.”
“Only if you get the money,” I say.
She pulls a paper from her bag and turns it around so we can see the numbers, the calculations of what she already has and what she still needs to raise.
It’s impressive. And staggering.
She’s not as flighty as I thought. Not by a long shot.
“You have this much already?” Mom asks.
She nods.
“Who helped you with this?” Dad asks.
“Olive’s friend, Phoebe,” Lacey says. “It was actually their idea, to form a collective. We were talking one day, and we just sort of landed on it.”
“When was that?” I ask.
She shrugs. “I don’t know, a week or so ago?” She looks at me, and I see the moment it clicks. She leans closer. “I made her promise not to tell you.”
My eyes dart to my parents, who are on the outside of our inside conversation, and I’d like to keep it that way.
Lacey doesn’t get the hint. “Liam, she told me to come and talk to you guys. I didn’t want to. I wanted you to see the whole presentation so you’d know how serious I am.”
She did make me see her in a different light. I’m just not sure she convinced me she can handle a task this big. Not that it matters—I’m not the one selling the farm.
She turns to me. “I was hoping you might be more willing to help if you knew you didn’t have to give up everything in order to do this. You could invest in the farm, still do game design, maybe work remotely a little more so you could come check on things?”
I close my eyes and draw in a breath. “That’s not how my job works.” I look at her. “Look, it took me a really long time to make it clear how I felt about owning the farm. And back then, you were the only one who understood. Now it seems like you’re the only one who doesn’t.”
Her face falls. “Because I see you out there, Liam. I see the look on your face. You’re so much happier.”
I frown.
She points at me. “See? That face. That has disappeared lately when you’re working with Manny.”
There’s no way she can know that, and yet, there’s truth in it that I don’t want to consider.
“And if we did this together, you and me, we’d be a great team. We have different strengths. ”
I scoff and look away. “How did this turn into another pitch for me to jump on board?” And was this the plan all along?
Our mom puts a hand on my arm, her way of diffusing things. “Lacey, why didn’t you just come talk to us about this? Why go to all the trouble of getting on the city council’s agenda and making this whole public presentation?”
My sister takes a few seconds to think on this. “Because, I think . . .” She looks at my parents, who are both quietly waiting for an explanation. Because seriously, what was she thinking?
“I think I needed to show you that I’m not a total screwup,” she says.
Our parents start to protest with encouraging words contradicting that thought, but she silences them with an upheld hand.
“I know I jump around a lot. I know my life choices up until this point haven’t been the most mainstream.” Lacey glances at me, then back to Mom and Dad. “Let’s face it, I ride around the country in a van. It’s not something you love bragging about to your friends.”
My parents shift in their seats, because Lacey is telling them exactly how they feel. And everyone at the table knows it’s the truth.
She sits forward a bit. “But what you don’t get is that it’s not because I don’t have any ambition. I do. And I’ve figured out a way to see the world and make money doing it. It might not be your way, but it works.” Her gaze falls to her folded hands on the table, and I can see her trying not to fidget.
A thought hits me. For as many years as I wanted to be out of my parents’ spotlight, Lacey has been trying to get into it.
We both dealt with that in different ways. I rebelled, changed my major without telling them, never explained why I didn’t want this life. And Lacey, it seems, quietly learned how to plant and harvest and soak up every aspect of the farm. She weeded the plants and learned how to run the shop. She got to know our staff the way our mom always did, so they looked at her like a friend.
And when none of that caught our dad’s eye, she left. Went on the road. Made her own way. Carved her own path.
This realization makes me admire the heck out of her, even if I do think living in a van is weird.
I wish I were half as brave as she is. I fell into a job that was supposed to be my dream, and I haven’t seriously considered leaving once.
Until now.
“Look, I know I need investors to make a go of this. Yes, I’m your kid, and this could be just a handoff, but that’s not fair to you. You’ve worked too hard and too long to not reap the benefits of what you’ve put into Pine Creek. I know what the farm is worth, and I’m putting my own money into this.”
She looks right at our dad. “I’m serious about this.”
And to our mom, “And now that my presentation is done, I’m going to take the idea to social media and see what happens. I don’t have a lot of friends, but I have a lot of followers. Someone could be a gazillionaire and want to invest. We have no idea.”
“That sounds dangerous,” Mom says. “What if it’s drug money?”
Lacey rolls her eyes, and I smirk at her. It’s such a Mom thing to say.
“We do have a problem, though,” my dad says.
I grit my teeth. “Travis.”
“Yep. We signed a contract with him. He’s got someone coming out to look at the property next week,” Dad says. “And he said the buyer isn’t going to wait around.”
Lacey’s gaze drops. She’s begging them to believe in her, but they’re understandably cautious. “Let me try. Let me at least try.” She’s so earnest in her pleading, even I’m moved.
“Of course. Of course, we’ll let you try,” Mom says. “And let us look it over on our end.” She looks at my dad. “We need to talk through our options.”
Lacey concedes. What choice does she have, really? There is so much to consider here.
The waitress returns with our pizza, something I’m pretty sure none of us wants anymore, and after she sets it down she scans the table and smiles. “Y’all are the tree farm people, right?”
“We are,” Mom says. “Pine Creek.”
The waitress smiles. “I read about you guys in the paper. ‘The Last, Best Christmas.’” She says this wistfully, the way Olive said it when Clark interviewed her. He’d liked her tagline so much he’d used it for the title of his article. “My husband and I bring our kids every year. We just love it.” She smiles. “Some of our favorite Christmas memories were made there.”
“It’s a pretty special place,” Mom says.
She smiles. “I hope whoever buys it keeps all of your traditions.”
Dad looks at me, and I raise my eyebrows and shrug.
“Enjoy your pizza.” She walks off, leaving us sitting there, trying to mentally navigate everything that’s happened in the last hour.
And all I can think about is Olive.