Chapter 11 #2
“Wait, why wouldn’t he have learned that from Bill?” Casey demands, his voice suddenly sharp, but Meredith suddenly seems very occupied with a tune Will could swear she wasn’t whistling a second ago, and doesn’t reply.
Regardless, Will makes a note to build a quick survey form about preferences, allergies, long-held asinine grudges against specific brands, etcetera.
The Gunderson ethos of optimism and community spirit is all well and good, but they grew realists out at Robertson Family Farms, so Will knows the data will start rolling in eventually.
It’s mostly a question of being ready when it does.
While they’re working out the details and who will handle what, Will’s phone buzzes; he only half glances at it, occupied with building a spreadsheet on Casey’s borrowed laptop, his own being back at the hotel.
However, when he notices the name is Catherine Rose , he freezes like a panicked animal and silences the call, flipping the phone face down.
The voicemail she leaves him, when Will finally checks it that night, is breezy: “Hey, Will! Catherine Rose. Heard about the bridge situation; I called your hotel and they said you’d let them know, so I figure you got stuck in town.
At least you have somewhere to stay, right?
Anyway, obviously this puts a bit of a damper on our proposed timeline, since we won’t be able to get over to you for you to sign, but!
I figured it’s been a couple of days, and a verbal contract’s generally binding, so I wanted to touch base and see if you’re ready to make yourself a very rich man.
Get that nest egg together for your next…
uhm…science project. Anyway, here when you’re ready to close! Let me know.”
Over the next several days, as Will settles into a new routine, her voicemails get less breezy.
In the mornings, Will gets up early, helps Casey load the truck with produce and eggs, and goes to Mike’s, where he delivers some of the load and has breakfast. He likes watching Glenriver wake up, especially from the seat he’d always coveted as a child; something about it soothes him, settles him.
He needs soothing and settling, because around the time he finishes breakfast, Catherine Rose usually hits him with her first call of the day.
This one tends towards being bright and chipper, as though she’s hosting one of those local morning shows, and has to make content out of cheerfulness and air.
Something along the lines of, “Hi, Will! Me, Catherine! Another bright, beautiful day to call me back and let me know you’re ready to commit to your future, can’t wait to hear from you! ”
Habitually, he ignores this call, and heads down the road to Gunderson’s.
The rest of the food is dropped off there, to be held in the grocery store’s more ample fridges and freezers and be distributed on a schedule and rotation for which Will is maintaining the logistics.
He spends most of the morning dealing with that, and then around noon Mere sends him back to the farm with lunch for himself and for Casey.
On the drive back, Will generally receives his second Catherine Rose call of the day, this one always a little less cheerful, like she’s really jonesing for another cup of coffee, or maybe lunch: “Will! Catherine. What could you possibly be doing, trapped in that tiny little town, that’s so urgent you can’t be calling me back?
I know you’re not trapped under a log without cell service, because you did manage to get in touch with the hotel we booked for you, right?
Anyway. Don’t forget this is a limited time offer!
Deadline getting closer every minute! Call me back. ”
Usually, at this point in the day, Will tracks down Casey to pass along the lunch Meredith sent for him.
And then, one way or another, they tend to end up passing the afternoon together, whether Will means for them to or not.
They’re figuring out clearing the tree from the road the first few days, and after that, things just…
come up. One afternoon, there’s something wrong with the cider press, and Casey needs another pair of hands; they’re interrupted doing that by Betsy Lundgren, who lives a few miles away, and has a storm damage issue she hasn’t been able to resolve by herself.
While they’re there, three of her pigs get loose, and Will and Casey spend the bulk of the afternoon struggling to catch them in the mud, howling at first with frustration and rage but, eventually, with laughter.
By the time they get home, they’re both mud-covered and badly in need of a shower, but when they get there, a few other locals are waiting for them—well, for Casey, anyway—hoping to ask for help or advice.
And after that there’s always something to do, every afternoon, and a number of the mornings besides.
It’s not that Glenriver doesn’t have a mayor and a local government meant to handle emergencies, but, well.
It’s the same mayor that had been seated when Will was a child, and he’d been old even then, and the city council hasn’t had much of a shake-up in the last few decades, either.
They’re a perfectly useful governing body if you’re looking to get potential money for a potential bridge potentially approved in some potential future business quarter, but for in-the-moment crisis management, they’re not what Will would call super helpful.
Casey, on the other hand, is what Will would call super helpful.
He’s so helpful, on such a broad swath of topics, that Will can hardly begin to catalogue them all.
He watches in amazement as Casey handles damaged sump pumps and blown-out fences and flooded basements and broken windows, an old woman’s car stuck deep in the persistent mud.
Will helps, silencing Catherine Rose’s late-afternoon-to-evening calls (painfully brief, always, as though she’s been reconsidering her lunch message and determined the issue was volume of words—“Will! Catherine! Please return! Thanks!”).
Or, at least, Will tries to help. Generally, whoever has called for Casey figures out pretty quickly that Will’s the person managing the grocery situation, and the entire rest of the visit for him becomes either about accepting a donation of food from their freezer, which is lovely, or about explaining to them that he can’t possibly be bribed into giving them special grocery treatment, which is annoying.
It doesn’t seem to bother Casey, though—not just doing the work without Will’s help, but doing the work at all.
He whistles his way through most of it, unbothered by the jobs that get him dirty, undeterred by the tasks that leave him pouring with sweat.
Will has, perhaps, taken to observing some of these tasks a little more closely than is appropriate, although not exactly on purpose.
It’s just…difficult, isn’t it, to look away from a man with Casey’s devastatingly muscled body while he’s giving that body a workout.
Will keeps finding himself drifting away in a haze while he watches Casey do things like tossing around heavy pieces of storm debris as though they weigh nothing.
Worse, he’s almost always, when he catches himself at it, in the middle of some horrible thought like, Wish I was that sack of leaves and branches he just threw over his shoulder , or God, he should leave the logs for the beavers to sort out and toss me around instead.
One afternoon, Will happens to catch sight of Casey out the window of the bakery while he’s covering Daphne’s break.
Casey’s in the parking lot, wearing work jeans and a thin, dirty white tank top, one of his ever-present flannels tied around his waist. He appears to be in the early stages of replacing the section of fence that was damaged by lightning strike, and regretting his previous thoroughness in driving the fenceposts down.
As he struggles, attempting to yank the damaged wood from the ground, visibly grunting and cursing even though Will can’t hear him from in here, Will loses track of what he’s supposed to be doing; the bakery’s empty, anyway, and doesn’t, for the moment, feel important.
Casey’s muscles flex and strain as he attempts to pull the post from the earth, one of his calloused hands wedged in each of the empty fencepost slots, and Will watches the growing sweat stain on his tank top with a hunger that surprises even him, lost to the flow of time.
This is unfortunate because, after several minutes, Daphne returns, and clears her throat.
At this point, the flow of time not only resumes, but viciously punishes Will for trying to pause it by dropping him right into one of the most embarrassing moments of his life, which seems about right.
It’s not even that Daphne says anything; she doesn’t.
But her face speaks wildly entertained volumes that make Will want to live the rest of his life in an underground cave, safe from the dangerous eyes of other people.
Regardless of the work he’s doing, or who he’s doing it for, Casey will never accept payment; he’ll barely, Will notices with increasing concern and no small amount of desperately buried attraction, accept thanks .
He smiles and laughs with everyone, always remembering their pets’ names and where the last time they saw one another was and, if they’re regulars at the market, their favorite kind of apple.
It’s honestly remarkable. Will’s known some of these people since literally the day he was born, and he doesn’t have half the rapport with them that Casey does, even if there’s an odd, off note thrumming through it sometimes that Will can’t quite identify.