Chapter 5 Noah
NOAH
It was strange sitting around the big table in the kitchen, not just because Avery was there but because Dane, Beck, and I didn’t usually eat together.
In fact, we didn’t do much of anything together.
On a normal day, we’d grunt one-word questions and responses while we went about our business around the house. We’d scrounge up our own food and take it to our rooms on the second floor, except for the times when Evelyn would insist we join her for dinner.
Even then, we didn’t talk much. Evelyn would tell us about Blackwell Hollow — its history and its people — and about the house.
She’d been practical and reserved most of the time, but history had mattered to her, places had mattered, and there had been no place she’d loved more than Blackwell Hollow.
Now we sat around the table with Avery Hart, and I couldn’t help but feel the world tilt a little. Evelyn was gone but here was her niece, a magical creature with hair the color of rich soil in summer who had said “Oh my gravy!” when we’d surprised her in the gazebo.
“There’s a terrace?” Avery asked, her voice soft with surprise as she settled into a seat to my left.
I followed her gaze to the terrace on the other side of the glass doors. The doors had been open on all but the coldest days when Evelyn had been alive, but it had only just started getting warm again, and Dane, Beck, and I hadn’t bothered to open them in the three months since her death.
I realized now that I missed it. Missed having a connection to the earth even from inside.
“Yeah, we can open the doors if you want,” I said.
It was almost summer, and the sun had just sunk behind the mountains that surrounded Blackwell Hollow.
The sky had turned deep violet, and I knew that on the other side of the terrace doors, the gardens were already full of night sounds: crickets and frogs and the rustling of the rabbits that lived around the kitchen garden.
Avery hesitated, then shook her head. “Maybe not yet.”
I wondered if she was thinking about Pembroke’s body. She had been surprisingly calm when we’d found her in the gazebo, but it had to have been traumatic on some level. She was probably still in shock.
She picked up her fork and took a bite of the mac and cheese, then looked at Beck with wide eyes. “This is good.”
He laughed. “I don’t know whether to be flattered or offended that you sound so surprised.”
“It’s just mac and cheese,” Dane said, shoveling food into his mouth.
“It’s amazing mac and cheese,” Avery said. “And Beck made it. For us.”
Dane hesitated, then furrowed his brow like this was new information. I didn’t think it was my imagination that he stopped eating like a starving dog.
“Don’t mind him,” Beck said. “He’s better with numbers than he is with people.”
“Don’t fucking apologize for me,” Dane said, glaring at his bowl.
Avery frowned, then tried to compose her features into a mask of pleasantry. “Are you… an accountant?”
I laughed before Dane could fire off a surly reply. “He’s the house manager. He handles the house account and pays the bills.”
“Among other things,” Dane said.
“What other things?” Avery asked.
“Anything having to do with the house,” he said.
Dane was famously stingy with his words. This was probably the most he’d spoken in one sitting since I’d met him.
I reached for my beer. “He does minor repairs, calls people in when it’s not minor, arranges for maintenance outside the scope of our jobs, that kind of thing.”
“Did you guys grow up together?” Avery asked.
Beck laughed again. “Hardly.”
Avery took a drink of her Coke. “Who came first?”
“Dane,” I said. “Then me, then Beck, when the bakery got to be too much for Evelyn.”
Avery’s lush mouth turned down in a frown. “I can’t believe I didn’t know she was struggling.”
I had the sudden urge to spin plates or juggle oranges or tell Dad jokes, literally anything to keep her from ever frowning again.
“You weren’t in touch?” I asked.
She shook her head. “She wasn’t my aunt by blood. She’d been around for as long as I can remember, but I didn’t really know her. I mean, I did when I was a kid but then my parents got divorced and my mom and I moved away when she got a job offer in the city.”
There was something heavy in her voice, and I sensed that there was more to the story.
Beck set down his fork, his plate clean. “What about your dad?”
She huffed out a wry burst of laughter. “He left long before that.”
More to the story there too.
“You never thought to call Evelyn?” Dane’s voice was cold.
I glared at him. “Not your business, bro.”
“She was alone,” Dane said. “Except for us, she was alone.”
“That’s not Avery’s fault,” Beck said.
Avery took a deep breath and set down her fork.
“No, Dane’s right. I should have called.
Aunt Evelyn always sent me birthday cards with ten dollars, and I always sent a thank-you note.
For a long time I was just a kid. I didn’t really understand everything that had happened between my parents and I was…
” She exhaled. “Well, I was dealing with it as best I could. Then I grew up and got a job and my life as a kid in Blackwell Hollow seemed so far away. But that’s no excuse.
Aunt Evelyn never forgot about me. I should have called, should have visited once I grew up. ”
I wanted to take her hand or give her a hug but that would be weird. We’d only known each other a few hours.
“It’s okay,” I said instead. “I think Evelyn understood. And Dane’s wrong — Evelyn wasn’t alone. She had us, but she also had the whole town. Everyone loved Evelyn, loved the bakery and the house. She had friends who were like family, people who cared about her.”
What I didn’t say was that Evelyn didn’t need anybody else, not the way most people did. She had been a self-contained unit, someone who was more comfortable being alone than in the company of others.
She kept everyone at a distance — even Dane, Beck, and me — but everyone loved her anyway.
Us included.
Avery nodded slowly. “Maybe you can tell me more about her sometime.”
“Anytime.” There was nothing I wanted more than to spend time with Avery Hart, staring into her warm brown eyes and having her all to myself.
Avery sighed and looked at her empty bowl. “That was delicious.” She looked at Beck. “Thank you. For the mac and cheese and the cookies. I guess I’ll need you to show me the bakery at some point too.”
Beck smiled. “We can go tomorrow morning if you’re up for it.”
An irrational flash of jealousy surged through my chest as I realized Beck was into her too.
At least we didn’t have to worry about Dane, who was drinking his beer and looking past Avery, out the terrace doors where the grounds were lit by the landscape lighting I’d installed shortly after I’d taken the job as groundskeeper.
“You plan to sell it?” Dane asked without looking at Avery.
“The bakery?” Avery asked.
“The bakery… the house…”
I didn’t know Dane much better now than I had when I’d moved into the house two years earlier, but I sensed he’d be as bummed as Beck and I if Avery sold.
Avery hesitated. “Yeah. I kind of have to, I think. I have a life in the city, a job… This time off is unpaid. Although…”
Dane raised his dark eyebrows in question.
“Sheriff Crowe told me not to leave town without talking to her, so I guess I’m stuck here for at least a little while,” Avery said.
“She told me the same thing,” I said. “Not that I’d leave.”
I’d never lived anywhere but here, first on the family farm, and then, after my mom died, in town.
“Same.” Beck looked at Dane, the question unspoken but obvious.
Dane hesitated, then nodded. “Said she needed me here in case she had more questions.”
I was starting to get the picture. “Does that mean…?”
“We’re suspects,” Avery said. “All of us.”