Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
James had been vibrating with excitement since I’d told him about the orchard.
Not the fruit. I'd been careful to explain that the apples, peaches, and pears wouldn't be ready until summer and fall, but that what we were going to see were blossoms. He had absorbed this information, thought about it for about four seconds, and decided that flowers that turned into fruit later were actually better than fruit now.
He turned serious and said that learning how to be patient and wait was a good habit to develop.
I needed to send somebody at his pre-school a thank-you card.
"Are the trees big?" he asked, for the third time since we'd left the house.
"Pretty big."
"Big enough to climb?"
"You'd have to ask Miss Millie."
“Okey-doke."
He went quiet for a moment, which usually meant he was building toward something.
The truck hummed along the road, late afternoon light coming through the windows at a low angle, the hills rolling out on either side of us, with a particular glow that only lasted a few weeks before it deepened into summer.
"Dad."
"Yeah, bud."
"What if Miss Millie doesn't like me?"
I glanced at him in the rearview mirror. He was looking out the window with the careful, neutral expression he put on when something actually worried him. "She's going to like you,” I assured him.
"But what if not?"
"Trust me, she will."
"But what if she doesn't?"
"James." I waited until he looked at me in the mirror. "She invited you specifically. You know what that means?"
He shook his head.
"It means she already likes you. You haven't even gotten there yet and she already likes you."
He thought about this. "Because she invited me."
"Because she invited you."
He nodded slowly, reassured, and looked back out the window. About thirty seconds passed.
"And Mr. Renzo’s going to be there, too?"
"Renzo's going to be there."
"I like Mr. Renzo." He said this with the tone of a man confirming a long-held position. "He's funny."
"He thinks he's funny," I said. "There's a difference,” I muttered loud enough for my son to hear.
James giggled.
We came around a curve and the road opened up.
I could already see the top of Renzo's roof through the tree line, which meant we were close, and I had approximately two minutes before the hand-off, and then approximately thirty-five minutes in the truck by myself before I got to Zoe's. I was looking forward to both.
"Dad, are you going to have ice cream with us after dinner?"
"Not tonight, Bud. I'm going to have dessert when I have dinner with Zoe."
James absorbed this. "Why can't Zoe just come pick strawberries with us? And see the blossoms? And then we could all have ice cream."
There it was.
"Because I want to spend some time talking to Zoe by myself."
"Like quiet time?"
I frowned. Was he thinking like ‘time-out’? "A little bit like quiet time."
He was quiet himself for a moment. "Bubba explained quiet time."
I had no idea where this was going. When it came to Bubba, it could be anywhere. "Did he?"
"He said sometimes adults need quiet time with no kids so they can whisper and stuff." James was studying the passing trees with great seriousness. "He said his mommy and daddy told him and Austin and Jill and Cleo that they needed quiet time, and then he saw them kissing in the kitchen."
I kept my eyes on the road. "Is that right."
"Yeah." A pause. "Dad, are you and Zoe going to kiss?"
I opened my mouth.
The gravel of Renzo's driveway crunched under my tires and I have never in my life been more grateful for the existence of a driveway.
Renzo and Millie were already coming out the front door, which was exactly the rescue operation I needed. Millie was small and dark-haired with the kind of energy that would immediately put my son at ease. Renzo was grinning in the way that meant Angelica had definitely told him something.
I got James out of his car seat and he went straight for Millie with confidence.
"Hi," he said. "I want to climb a tree."
Millie crouched down to his level without missing a beat. "I have just the tree for you."
James turned back to me with an expression of complete vindication. "She likes me."
"Told you."
He turned back to Millie. "Dad and Zoe are probably going to kiss tonight. That's why we can't have ice cream with them. They need quiet time."
Millie pressed her lips together.
Renzo made a sound behind her that he disguised as a cough.
"Well," Millie said, very seriously. "That sounds like a very good reason. Shall we go find the strawberries?"
James took her hand immediately and they headed around the side of the house, already deep in conversation about what strawberries looked like when they were ready to pick.
I looked at Renzo.
Renzo looked at me.
"Not a word," I said.
He held up both hands. "I didn't say anything."
"You were about to."
"I was about to say have a good evening." He smiled with every tooth he had. "Go. She's waiting."
I went.
I swung by my house and picked up my order from the Down Home Diner that I’d picked up right before they closed at three o’clock. Now my truck smelled like fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and gravy.
My stomach growled.
I’d called in my order at noon. Little Grandma had been the one to answer, and she'd taken my order without comment and then asked, “Is this for a special occasion?”
I'd said, “A little bit.”
And she'd said, “I'll put in something extra.” I had learned enough about Jasper Creek by now to know that by morning at least four people would know I'd called in a dinner order for two.
I didn't mind, which was really weird. This little town atmosphere was not bothering me in the slightest. Instead I felt welcomed.
Zoe was on her porch when I pulled up. She was in jeans and a soft dark top and flat boots, dressed for comfort just like I had suggested. Maybe I should have said something else, though, because she had looked pretty damn comfortable with herself in those boots and that sweater dress last week.
Damn, I needed to stop thinking about that outfit.
She grinned at me and waved, and now I was obsessing about a whole different version of Zoe.
She came down the steps before I got to the door. Old habit now. I waited for her at the bottom.
“Are you ready?”
She nodded.
I helped her into the cab of my truck, and she sniffed. “You brought dinner,” she accused.
“Guilty as charged.”
She looked into the backseat and saw the bags for Down Home Diner. “Did Little Grandma set you up?”
I nodded.
“By this time tomorrow, half the town will know you bought take-out for me.”
“And that doesn’t bother me in the slightest.”
The overlook was twenty minutes out of town on a road that wound up into the hills and then flattened out at a pull-off that faced southwest. I'd found it three weeks ago driving the perimeter of the Sadowski property.
It was the kind of accidental discovery that a place like this handed you if you paid attention.
At this hour, with the sun dropping behind the ridge, the Smoky Mountains went purple and gold in layers, each ridge a slightly different shade, going back as far as you could see.
We sat on the tailgate with a blanket over our laps that I’d brought from home. We kept our plates balanced on our laps, and I had a thermos of sweet tea for us.
"How's James?" she asked.
"Attempting to climb an apple tree as we speak, I'd guess."
She smiled at that. "Millie's orchard. And strawberries?"
"And strawberries." I looked at the mountains. "He told Millie and Renzo that we were probably going to kiss tonight. By way of explaining why we couldn't have ice cream with them."
Zoe put down her fork. Then she picked it back up. "James said that?"
"In a very matter-of-fact tone."
"To Renzo."
"And Millie."
“How did he come to that conclusion?” Then before I could answer, her expression brightened. “Bubba Lancaster,” she guessed.
“You got it.”
“I love that kid, but he’s a menace.” I watched her laugh and felt the now-familiar pull of wanting.
We finished eating, sharing easy back-and-forth conversation, me sharing Ford Larson's latest smartass exploits on the jobsite, and her telling me more about the cheerleaders who helped in the back.
I found her to be a food thief when it came to anything that was a carbohydrate, so I just handed over my cornbread before she even tried to swipe it. She brought up James’ assessment of the sculpture. Apparently, that was still impressing her.
“That’s all Marie. She had an eye for beauty.”
“I’m not buying it. The way you described building something… comparing it to poetry? I think you definitely have an eye for beauty.” Then she paused and her eyes turned wicked. “After all, shouldn’t Angelica be your girlfriend?”
I snorted.
“I’d hate to think what she’d say if she knew about that.”
“Oh, she knows. I told her. She thinks it’s wonderful. She’s willing to fight me for you, just so she can get James,” I teased.
“You told her?” I both could and couldn’t believe it.
“You bet your ass I told her. It was the funniest thing in the world. I love the way your boy thinks. I want to bottle his logic. What do you think he’s going to be when he grows up?”
“A philosopher or a football player. I have no earthly idea,” I admitted. “He is totally his own person, that’s for sure.”
We started to pack up as the sun began to sink. I looked at her. “We have one more stop before I take you home.”
She raised an eyebrow. "Where?"
"You'll see."
She saw it when we turned in off the highway—the big white screen against the darkening sky, the rows of cars already pulling in.
The marquee read STAR WARS: EPISODE IV, A NEW HOPE—ONE NIGHT ONLY in the blocky letters that drive-ins had used since before either of us were born.
Zoe went very still.
Then she said, quietly, "Adam."
"I heard they were doing a classic series this spring."
"I haven't been to this drive-in since I was fifteen years old.
" She was looking at the screen, at the first stars coming out above it, at the whole improbable beautiful thing of it.
"His name was Alvin, and I thought he was a dream. It turned out he was an octopus, and I had to climb out my window to get away from him.”
I glanced over at her to see if she was joking, and saw that she wasn’t. “Are you okay being here?”
“With you? Yes. As long as we can buy all the popcorn and candy they have.”
I found a spot, pulled in, and parked. They were showing previews, so we had plenty of time to go to the snack bar and load up on things that were bad for us. We wandered back to the car just as the last preview was finishing.
“Hurry up,” Zoe called out.
We hustled to my truck, and she opened up the door to the backseat. I raised my eyebrow.
“Well, we need to be able to cuddle,” she explained. “We can’t do that with the console between us.”
“What happens if I turn out to have eight arms?”
“I’ve been with you in this backseat before. I trust you with my life.”
God, she humbled me.
I hooked up the speaker, then got in on the other side, and put my arm around her and she snuggled close.
Then there it was, that first low note, those first three seconds of silence before the orchestra swelled, before the words began to crawl up the screen in that yellow cascade that had been making people lean forward in their seats for over fifty years.
She settled in even closer against my side like she'd been doing it a long time, and the music filled the cab of my truck, and the stars came out over the mountains one by one, and above us on that giant white screen, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, a small rebel ship raced across the darkness with everything on the line.
It felt, I thought, like exactly the right place to be.