Chapter 2
TWO
Will flinches, jumps, turns; he’s half expecting to see his mother, for all she’s been dead more than a decade now.
The thin, bony hand on his shoulder has a similar weight and grip strength to June’s, but the resemblance fades even as Will’s still turning around—the hand releases him as he moves, whereas June’s grip would have clung, underscoring the unhappy, bitten-lemon expression that always accompanied it.
Will glances from her outfit down to his ancient, mud-spattered boots, his rattiest pair of blue jeans, and a maroon sweater he fished out of a Goodwill bin sometime in his early twenties, feeling oddly underdressed in spite of knowing full well that it’s her clothes that are impractical for the setting.
His gaze catches, as he glances over her again, on her cat-eye glasses, and as he stares at her, the gears begin to turn, and?—
“Oh my God,” Will says, hoping the sense of ringing horror doesn’t show in his voice, “you’re the woman from the billboards.”
“Guilty as charged!” The woman’s voice is so booming and jolly that it seems to suggest she’s heard a joke Will wouldn’t understand at all.
And though her grin is broad, Will finds the friendliness in it a little off-putting.
Somehow, it doesn’t quite fit on her face.
“Catherine Rose! When you need to close, you call me. Great to finally meet you—you are Will, right? I’m not wasting my time talking to some random nobody?
” She laughs, the chuckle seeming genuine, as though she considers this a joke.
“Ah,” Will says, not at all sure how to reply. “I can’t say I’m not a random nobody, but. I’m definitely…Will? Thanks for, uh, the car, and the hotel room, and everything.”
“Oh, no problem at all, happy to do it,” Catherine says, waving an easy hand.
“Honestly, my team handled all that; I can’t say I’ve got the time.
Hope the hotel’s not too awful—once you get about twenty minutes out of Cleveland, it’s all pretty much trash, but I told my assistant to do his best for you. ”
“Oh,” Will says, trying not to let his mouth twist in distaste; it’s not like it should matter to him if this woman insults Glenriver or the surrounding areas, since he isn’t a big fan, either.
“I—I haven’t stopped by the hotel yet. I wanted to…
start here, I guess, and then, uh, deal with that after. ”
“Sure, sure, whatever,” Catherine says, and cracks her knuckles. “Okay! Not that it matters, my firm is so busy that we hardly noticed, but: You’re the one who ignored our communications for a few weeks, right?”
“ Ignored …” Will says, irritated and trying not to show it.
“…might be a strong word? I wasn’t doing it on purpose, I had a bit of a breakthrough at work and wasn’t—super available.
” The more honest version of this would be: For reasons that I’m sure are totally psychologically fine and normal, two days after I learned that my father was dead, I decided to try a totally new avenue of inquiry on one of my experiments and basically didn’t leave the lab for a week and a half, except when my friend Selma dragged me out and shamed me for smelling bad until I showered.
Sorry I missed you! Will decides it’s probably best to keep this to himself.
“Oh, sure,” Catherine says, nodding. “We all know how that is. What line of work are you in? Something high stakes, I assume, if it’s taking over your life like that? Let me guess.” She looks him over, tapping her chin thoughtfully. “Investment banking? Insurance?”
Will grimaces. “Uh. Botany?”
Catherine’s expression visibly dulls. “Ah.” Then, as if being reset to factory default, her smiles winches back up to full brightness, and she says, “Well, Will. How much did my staff tell you about the project we’re helping to spearhead here?”
“Uh,” Will says again. “Not—much? I know it’s something to do with the company that bought out the Shiver a few years ago—” He pauses, and, noticing Catherine’s brow crease in confusion, adds, “Sorry, the Glenriver Shiver; it’s this music festival that runs out here every fall? And?— ”
“I know about the Shiver, Will,” Catherine says, sounding weary of him already and holding up a hand.
“If I look confused, it’s because you were supposed to be fully briefed on all of this, but that’s a matter for me to take up with my team later.
You were supposed to have a call? To go through all the basics?
So you and I could just walk the property, work through the vision, and wrap things up? ”
Now that she says that, Will does have a vague memory of receiving an invitation to such a call, from someone called: “Uh, Zane? Would have been the person sending those invites?” There had, as Will thinks about it, maybe been a few.
When Catherine nods, Will shrugs apologetically at her.
“Yeah, I may have, uh…been a bit too wrapped up at work to be…super great about getting back to old Zane. Sorry.”
“Ugh,” Catherine says, eyeing him sharply, then glancing at her watch, before she turns on her heel and starts walking toward the far orchard, away from the large, one-story building that houses the farm market.
“He told me it was all set, but— fine , I’ll do it myself.
Let’s walk and talk, though, all right? Time is money. ”
“Only if your definition of money is ‘distance over speed,’” Will mutters to himself, but quietly enough that she won’t hear him. In his experience, it’s not the kind of joke that people tend to enjoy.
He hurries to keep up with Catherine, who despite being shorter than him and in much more punishing shoes, manages to walk quite a bit faster than Will’s natural gait.
Kicking himself for it a little, he wishes Selma was here after all—she would have been if he’d given her any more notice.
She would have wormed her way into his rental, or already have been sitting in the parking lot when he pulled into the farm, leaning against the hood of her stupid flashy car, smirking at him.
He’d been very sure he didn’t want that, but it would be helpful to have her keen eye, her understanding of how to deal with people.
She’d know what to say to this sharp, intimidating woman to get the answers Will needs out of her, and, also, she’d probably have a better sense of what those answers are .
She’d understand implicitly how to ask the sorts of questions Will’s probably supposed to be asking, and her tendency to take over the conversation would leave Will free to freak out in the privacy of his own mind.
Selma, however, is back in Chicago, because Will worked very hard to ensure that this would be the case. So, with no other options, he has no choice but to turn to Catherine and say: “Uh. You were going to brief me?”
“Right, right,” Catherine says, and sighs. “At least it’s pretty simple, so Zane didn’t set us back too much. The Shiver is owned by a company called Nimbletainment. You’ll have heard of them, of course—they’re everywhere .”
Will has not heard of them, but he suspects that the “everywhere” to which Catherine refers simply doesn’t extend to his lab facilities, his apartment, or the small handful of bars and restaurants he and Selma tend to frequent.
It’s not as though he goes much of anywhere else.
Still, for the sake of politeness, he nods, and says, “Sure.”
“Well, obviously the Shiver is wonderful,” Catherine says, in tones that indicate she thinks it’s a plague upon society but wouldn’t want to upset anyone by saying so.
“But Nimbletainment has big plans, big visions for it. The new, improved festival grounds, with the extra space and amenities from this farm—well, Nimbletainment thinks we could put this little town on the map.”
“And the town…wants to be on the map?” Will asks this a little doubtfully; on the map is not a place he, himself, ever wants to be.
When Catherine stares at him blankly, as if the answer is so obvious as to be inherently rhetorical, he adds, “Um, also…sorry, but—you work at Nimbletainment, then? Your billboards weren’t exactly clear on what you…
do? Other than, well, close , I guess.” Whatever that means , Will adds, to himself.
Catherine, however, beams as though Will has paid her a fabulous compliment.
“I do close, that’s true, Will. Thank you so much.
But no, I don’t work at Nimbletainment per se; I’m a consultant, and they’re a client.
” Catherine’s tone changes, to one Will thinks is maybe trying for tactful and hitting a note closer to cloying.
“The truth is, the company has been hoping to make this deal happen for a long time—they really have a vision for this place. But it won’t work without this property, and they found your father, ah, a bit of a challenge to communicate with, over the years.
They brought me in hoping I could get matters resolved.
” She pauses and, this time in tones of modesty that ring utterly and entirely false, adds, “I have a bit of a gift, you know, for working with what you might call…difficult personalities.”
“Ahhh,” Will says, trying to sound amused, and not bitter. “Let me guess: It was all going so well until suddenly, for some mysterious reason no one else could quite understand, he threw a huge fit and blew the whole thing up? My father is—uh, was—famous for that. The old Bill Robertson charm.”