Chapter 9 #2
“Yeah,” Diana said, nibbling at her lip while Anthony squeezed her hand. Eloise had pulled some sort of tactile toy out of her back pocket, and she was now occupied in making sure that all the little bumps were squished. It clearly took her some effort, but Diana shook off her worry.
“Anyway,” she said, “we should find a time to go to Riverstone Kitchen. It’s relatively new, but the chef, Jared Novak, used to work in these really fancy kitchens. I think he was in both New York and Boston, so I’m talking like fancy fancy. And his food is to die for.”
“That sounds really great,” Shane said, his eyes darting to Winnie, who had reached the front of the line, where she was ordering a coffee and a bear claw. He bit back a grin as he watched her be presented with a pastry that was basically the same size as her head.
“Yay,” Diana said warmly. She dug in her purse for a moment and pulled out her phone, apparently searching for her calendar app. “Okay, so this Saturday I have plans with Cadence and June,” she said absently. “But the following one is free.”
Shane winced when Diana said this just as Winnie walked nearby to wait for her coffee order. He could tell that she’d heard Diana’s plans. He hoped she didn’t take the news that there was a girls’ night happening without her as further confirmation that she wasn’t wanted.
“I have no plans for basically the entire time I’m in town,” he said. “So whatever you guys want to do is good with me.”
“Super,” Diana said. “We’ll coordinate with Eleanor and talk to Miriam about hanging out with Eloise for the evening and get back to you, if that’s okay?”
“Of course,” he reassured her.
Eloise was tugging on her father’s sleeve with rapidly diminishing patience at this point, so Shane bade the three of them farewell. Once Diana, Eloise, and Anthony had gotten their food and drink and left, Shane looked back toward Winnie.
She was engrossed in something in her computer, scarcely glancing up even for sips of coffee or bites of the enormous pastry, which she was well on her way to demolishing.
He considered leaving her be, since she was clearly occupied, but then he thought about her admission of doubt about her friendships, and decided that erring on the side of encouragement was better.
He scooped up his cup of coffee and headed in her direction.
“Hey, Winnie,” he said. “Can I join you? Feel free to tell me to go away if you’re too busy for a chat.”
She jolted, clearly surprised to see him standing there, and Shane smiled. He got like that too, sometimes, when he was coding, got so caught up in the work that the rest of the world ceased to exist.
Or, at least, he had gotten like that sometimes, back when his job wasn’t the albatross hanging around his neck.
But Winnie didn’t seem at all sorry for the interruption, at least not judging from the way she closed her computer and leaned back in the chair, gesturing for him to take the place across from her without hesitation.
“Please,” she said. “It’s not like I’m getting anywhere, anyway. Maybe a break will do me good.”
He scrunched his nose. “You feeling stuck?”
She sighed. “Yeah. You know how that is, I guess.”
He feigned shock. “Me? Never! I’ve never been stuck a day in my life. I would certainly never come to a coffee shop to read a self-help book about getting un-stuck because of how stuck I was. Nope. Couldn’t be me.”
“Oh, right,” she said, failing at hiding her laughter. She was really cute when she let down her guard like this, Shane noticed. “My mistake.”
“I will forgive you just this one,” he teased, just to make her laugh again. “Anyway, what are you working on?”
Winnie made a face and let out a little growl… which was also fairly adorable.
“So, I don’t know if I mentioned this, but I work at the historical society.
I really like it, but this year, my boss put me in charge of coming up with ‘innovative’ new fundraising events.
” She put finger quotes around the word—adorable—and, seriously, Shane was going to stop noticing her cuteness any moment now.
“Innovation is hard,” he said in commiseration. “Every time that I hear a client tell me they want something ‘innovative,’ I start to break out in stress hives. Sorry, was that not helpful?” he added with a laugh when she gave him an appalled expression. “My bad.”
“That was extremely not helpful!” she exclaimed, but he was relieved to see that she was smiling. “If that book of yours suggests that your next career move should be inspirational speaking… it is wrong.”
“That wasn’t on my shortlist, but good idea,” he said. “Okay, okay, let me see if I can help at least a little. What’s the objective with these new events? Sometimes talking stuff through can help.”
“Well,” she said, “the general idea is that the old events are a little too stuffy. Textbook, you know? And since we aren’t exactly a huge town—”
“You don’t say,” he interjected. She paused to make another face.
“—we tend to get the same donors year after year,” she continued pointedly.
“That’s probably true for bigger cities too, since local history is a bit niche by definition, but here, it’s even more obvious.
And it’s the same old, same old, year after year.
I get why donors find it boring. Even I kind of find the fundraising parties boring, and I never find local history boring.
So it’s the same thing, attended by the same people, most of whom are…
how do I put this delicately? Not exactly in the first bloom of youth? ” she tried.
“Got it.” He nodded his understanding.
“Basically, I’d like to figure out a way to make it a little more ‘all ages.’ But that’s tough, because kids like things that are active, and older folks… less so. But if we get kids, then we get parents, who might stick around for longer…” She sighed. “It’s a mess.”
“So, you’re looking to get a donor base that’s a bit more diverse, age-wise,” he summarized.
“Yes, for sure,” she agreed. “And it feels a little mercenary to say, but obviously the first point of fundraising is that we need money. Our main moneymaker aside from that is our tours, and those are donation-based, so it’s not a lot and it varies highly by season, what with tourists and everything. ”
“That makes sense,” he said encouragingly. “I know Eleanor is thinking about planning for tourism ebbs and flows for the bookstore.”
“Exactly!” she agreed. “But that’s tourists. They’re not likely to be donors. So, my secondary goal is to build some community. Make the local history something that’s really in the hands of the locals, you know? Get people involved.”
Shane noticed the way Winnie lit up when she talked about building community, and it made him think back to the inverse reaction she’d had when she’d talked about feeling disconnected from the other book club members.
He wanted to ask more, but…
But there was a difference between friendly, supportive interest and prying. He didn’t want to cross over that line.
“That sounds like a really good goal,” he said. “Okay, okay. What if you… build a model train that’s like, a full replica of an old-timey train. And then everyone can ride in it. Old people will like the part where they get to, you know, sit, and kids love trains.”
Winnie pressed her lips together, hiding a laugh. “Well, that would be a great idea… if we were looking to spend a bazillion dollars instead of, you know, raise money.”
“Right.” Shane tapped the table thoughtfully. He didn’t have any truly innovative ideas, but he did have a few thoughts on how he could make Winnie laugh, and his own experience had taught him that sometimes a work problem could feel a lot less heavy if you had a good attitude about it.
“New idea,” he said, pointing both index fingers at her. “Get all the old donors to go through their grandmother’s stuff, or whatever, and then have a dress-up day. Kids. Current donors. Boom.”
“I don’t want to be a naysayer,” she said, “but this plan relies on our current donors having historical artifacts just lying around and then wanting to put them in the hands of kids? I mean, I like kids, but their hands tend to be… not so clean?”
“Yeah, okay, I see the flaw there,” he agreed. “Right. So, I didn’t want to give you my best idea first, but now seems like the right time for it.”
“I’m all ears,” she said, popping a bite of bear claw into her mouth.
He spread his hands in front of him like he was showing off a banner.
“Time machine,” he said seriously.
Winnie almost choked on her bite of pastry as she laughed heartily at that.
“Hear me out,” he said through his own laughter. “What’s the better way to experience history than by visiting? It’s fun for the whole family, Winnie!”
“You’re right,” she said, reaching up to wipe a tear of mirth from her eye. “There are no holes in that plan at all. You solved it.”
Their laughter continued for a few moments longer before gently fading away into a companionable silence. Without a word, Winnie offered Shane a piece of the bear claw. He took a bite, which was, of course, perfect. When he finished chewing, he gave her a rueful smile.
“Sadly, I am but a humble computer programmer, so unless you’re looking for a more efficient way to build a dataset dashboard in Python, you’re out of luck.”
“I don’t even know what half those words mean,” Winnie said, eyes wide. “And frankly, I don’t want to. But thank you.”
“I didn’t solve any of your problems,” he protested. “In fact, I distinctly remember you commenting on my lack of helpfulness.”
“You listened,” she said as though it was the simplest thing in the world. “That helps.”
He was surprised by how good this little compliment felt. It made him feel almost… bashful.
“Well, good,” he said. “I’m glad…” He scrambled for something else to say to cover up how uncomfortable he felt. “I was also glad to see that you got your car back,” he seized upon, gesturing toward the windows.
She blinked, evidently faintly surprised by the shift in the conversation, but her smile came back easily.
“Oh, yeah,” she said. “It was just the car battery, like we suspected. I mean, it was totally dead. No jumper cables were ever going to make it work again, but it was an easy replacement.” She rapped her knuckles on the table.
“You know, knock on wood and all that, since car troubles are usually such a pain.”
“Well, good,” he said. “That’s… good.”
He would have liked to stay longer, but Winnie’s phone rang. She looked down at the device and grimaced.
“Ooh, boy,” she said. “This is one of our… more challenging contractors with the historical society. I’d better head out and take this.”
“Oh, yeah, of course,” he said, quickly moving his coffee out of the way as she scrambled to shove her possessions into her bag. “Good luck. With the call and with the fundraising ideas. I’ll see you again soon, I hope?”
He watched as Winnie headed toward the door, shooting him a quick smile and a wave over her shoulder even as she answered the phone.
As the door swung shut behind her, he noted how very much he did hope that he would get to see her again. Soon. Yeah. He hoped that it would be soon.