Chapter 28 ZACHERY WITNESSES THE REAL DEAL
Chapter 28
Z ACHERY W ITNESSES THE R EAL D EAL
Kelsey has those meet-cutes down. A knock into popcorn. An exploding suitcase.
Eventually one of them is going to stick.
Jack filled us in on the places to eat nearby. I take Kelsey to one of them, a homespun café with checkered tablecloths and only four items on the menu.
We assess the other customers, almost entirely couples over fifty.
“Where’s the young people?” Kelsey whispers. “The families with kids? The hot young Jack look-alikes?”
I shrug. “They must go somewhere else.”
We stop into a supermarket and a sporting goods store to see who else we might find, but young single men are noticeably absent.
“There needs to be a sign-up sheet in the center of town,” Kelsey says. “City girls in search of small-town husbands.”
I chuckle. “Wouldn’t that be something.”
But with no luck on our first day, we retire to our rooms. We’re farther apart this time, with no bathroom connecting us. I lie in bed, thinking about how close Kelsey is, and yet how impossibly far.
I’m not sure how much more of this I can take.
I wake the next morning to a sound I can’t quite identify. It’s regular, spaced apart by about twenty seconds. Whack, thud, scrape. Whack, thud, scrape.
The side window tells me nothing, only an empty yard to the tree line.
I move to the back window. There it is again. Whack, thud, scrape.
I shift the curtains. Behind the house, a young man who resembles Jack, but isn’t Jack, cuts firewood on the stump of a tree.
He lifts the axe, then whack , it comes down, and thud , the fat log separates and falls. He adjusts the new piece with a scrape across the stump and does it again.
He’s the right age for Kelsey, late twenties, strong and self-assured. He wears gray shorts, a white T-shirt, and a ball cap. Casual, but normal. I’m guessing she’ll assess his outfit at about $120, mostly due to the tennis shoes.
I step back. She’ll probably burst in any second to brainstorm a meet-cute.
I wait, watching the man.
No Kelsey.
A half hour passes, so I quickly shower and dress and head downstairs.
She’s not there, either.
Has she already met him?
There’s a basket of pastries on the table. Coffee is brewed and ready in the pot, but it looks to have been set up automatically. There’s no evidence that Kelsey has been down.
I step up to the sink to look out the back window. He’s out there, an impressive pile of neatly stacked firewood growing at his feet.
This is too much to deal with before coffee. I find a mug and pour a cup. I take it straight black, needing the jolt.
Maybe I’ll text her. She could be sleeping late. It’s not like her, but we did a lot of driving yesterday.
I realize the whack, thunks have stopped. I return to the window. The man must notice me there, because he waves and points to the back door.
He must want in. I head there and open it.
“You must be the guy staying in the house,” he says, stomping his shoes before coming in. “Sorry to bother you, but I wanted to fill up the downstairs wood rack.”
“Won’t it be a little warm for a fire?”
He chuckles. “It will, I guess. But heck, I don’t know what they’re going to do at a summer Christmas tea. We have all these traditions, but they’re set up for winter.” He takes off his cap, runs the back of his hand over his forehead, then sticks it on again. “Mom is running the show.”
“Do what you need to do,” I tell him. I’ll text Kelsey now, so she won’t show up downstairs in something she wouldn’t want her future husband to see.
“I’m Randy,” he says, extending a hand. “You met my brother, Jack, yesterday.”
“I see the resemblance. I’m Zachery.”
Randy tilts his head. “You look like—”
And here we go. The recognition. I steel myself to be outed as the man who does objectionable things to old women during bingo.
“—this guy I played ball with at UW. A dead ringer. You have family up here?”
I’m momentarily taken aback. “Nope. Just a sister in LA.”
“Dead ringer. It’s uncanny.” He heads for the back door. “I’m going to bring a load through.”
“You need a hand?”
“Oh, no. If my mama catches me letting a paying guest haul firewood, she’ll skin me alive.”
“We don’t want to upset Mom.”
The screen door slams as he heads back through.
I sit down with my coffee at the round table in the center of the kitchen. I didn’t realize our house would be the center of so much activity.
Randy comes through with a stack of firewood in his arms, aiming for the swinging door between the kitchen and the front room.
I forgot to text Kelsey. I better do that or she might come down to investigate all the noise.
But then there’s an “Oof” and a crash, and logs start to fall.
“Oh, my gosh! Are you okay?”
I stand up. It’s her. She came in through the swinging door at the same moment Randy tried to go out.
He fumbles for a moment to keep from losing the entire stack of wood. Kelsey reaches down to pick up a piece, but the swinging door makes its return and smacks her on the butt.
“Oh!” she cries and stumbles forward into Randy a second time.
More firewood falls.
I rush forward to help.
“I’ve made a real mess of things!” Kelsey cries, trying again to pick up a log.
But Randy laughs. “It’s all right. Careful with your feet.”
Kelsey glances down at her bare toes, then realizes how she’s dressed. Her hands go up to her hair, all over the place in a messy bun.
This makes the gray sweater she’s been wearing slide open, revealing the dancing bears on the front of her pajama top, plus several inches of her belly.
“Oh, my gosh,” she says. “I’m ... Oh, gosh.”
I slowly back to the far corner of the kitchen to let this play out. Maybe they’ll forget I’m here.
Randy shifts the logs he’s still holding to one arm and extends a hand. “I’m Randy, Jack’s brother.”
Kelsey takes it for a quick shake, then pulls her gray sweater around her. I catch her glancing at his hands. There’s no wedding ring. I already looked.
“I’m Kelsey.” Her gaze finds me. “I’m here with Zach. Not with-with Zach. We’re just traveling together. We work together.”
Randy glances back at me. “Interesting. Is it a work trip? Don’t see a lot of business travelers in Glass.”
“No. Yes. Well, a little of both, I guess.” She’s flustered.
I sip my coffee, trying not to smile. I’m curious to see how she’s going to get out of this one.
“A little of both is a good thing. Will you be here long?”
“Yes. We’ll want to check out the event at the tree farm. It looks fun. It’s why I came here. To Glass.” She fusses with her hair again, this time holding the sweater closed with the other hand.
“That’s great. We’ve never done it before, but the whole town is getting involved.”
“Why this year, then?” Kelsey asks.
“We’ve had a tough couple of years with the family farm,” Randy says. “It’s no secret. Not as much call for it, especially with the national forest permits to cut down your own. We’re trying to pivot.”
Kelsey’s eyes go round, like cartoon characters when they realize something huge has just gone down. “So you’re saying the town is having a festival to save your family’s Christmas tree farm? Like, right now? While I’m here?”
Randy chuckles. “That’s about the heart of it. I’m going to run this load to the main room. I’ll be back in a few.” He kneels to gather the fallen logs.
When he passes through the swinging door, Kelsey looks at me and mouths, Oh, my God .
She hurries over and takes my coffee cup, grimacing at the lack of cream or sugar. Or caramel drizzle. She passes it back. “I can’t even believe this.”
“You couldn’t put this in a script. Nobody would buy the pitch.”
“Hallmark would.”
“They’ve already done it. Five hundred times.”
She punches my arm. “Hush. It’s obviously meant to be.”
I can’t argue with that.
Randy comes through the kitchen, giving us a nod before heading out the back door.
Kelsey watches him from the kitchen window. “I mean, his family owning a Christmas tree farm , and the festival to save it is enough, but you know what’s really got me going here?”
I sip from my cup, not wanting to hear the answer. This introduction is far more painful than the last.
She goes on. “I didn’t even have to fake that meet-cute.”
I set down my coffee. “Really? That looked like a classic move.”
“You think I would have come down here looking like this if I knew my future husband was about to crash into me while lugging firewood he cut with his own hands?” Her voice drops to a whisper as Randy passes through the kitchen again.
“So, it was a genuine meet-cute, then.” The coffee sits in my belly as heavy as one of Randy’s perfectly cut logs.
She can’t take her eyes off the man as he pops through the swinging doors.
“I can feel it, Zachery,” she says. “Everything I planned for has led me right here from the moment I sat down across from that fortune teller.”
And the worst thing about it is I think she might be right.