Chapter 16
Hope Falls Hills wasn’t a neighborhood Poppy could have picked out on a map or even pictured in her mind, but she’d heard the name often on homegrown realty podcasts, in real estate Google ads, and of course, on the streaming juggernaut Home Sweet Vacation Home, which was like the dopamine delivery vehicle for anyone with a weakness for aspirational home porn.
A spinoff of the original Home Sweet Home, it featured impossibly sparkling families in even more impossible houses, the kind with wine cellars, indoor swings, and wet bars built into the main suite closets.
She’d always assumed those were staged, rented for the season by whichever influencer the network was trying to promote.
Apparently some of them were real. Apparently some people in Hope Falls actually lived like that.
She pulled to a stop and idled at the address she’d been given, marveling at the modern Mediterranean mansion with its movie-set stucco and tiled roof.
Before she could even shift into park, a blur of motion burst from the front door.
Tabitha, a human confetti storm at age five, tore across the grass with her loose curls bouncing behind her.
If Poppy blinked, she would have missed the flash of a pink bunny hoodie, a Hello Kitty backpack, iridescent mermaid scale leggings, and a manic smile that looked like it could power an entire grid of the Sierra Nevada.
Deacon strode after his daughter at half the velocity with a kind of athletic grace, like a minor league pitcher warming up between innings.
He stayed just outside the blast radius of his daughter’s enthusiasm and managed to look both weary and amused.
He wore a dark gray Henley and jeans and looked like he’d just stepped out of a Patagonia ad.
Tabitha skidded to a halt beside the car, causing her blonde curls to fall into her face.
She pushed them off, revealing impossibly blue eyes with a kind of all-at-once openness that could be dangerous in adulthood but was angelic for now.
Her voice was pitched at a frequency high enough to shatter glass.
“Miss Poppy! You’re here! You’re really here! You are going to live with us!”
Poppy couldn’t help but be charmed by the tornado in cosplay leggings. She stepped out of the car, and Tabitha launched herself onto her, wrapping her arms tightly around Poppy’s waist as she repeated, “You are going to live with us!”
“I know!”
“In the house behind ours,” Deacon corrected his daughter.
His voice was even deeper than she remembered, but not in the “I’m going to intimidate you,” way, more like, “I just spent three years reading bedtime stories in a whisper.” “Sorry for the ambush,” he said, flashing an apologetic grin.
“She’s been watching for you all afternoon.
Probably would have camped out on the curb if I let her. ”
“No worries.”
“You want me to show you your house?” Tabitha released her hold and began bouncing on the balls of her feet.
“Sure.” Poppy agreed.
“Can I show you my room first? Please?” She folded her fingers together.
Poppy looked up at Deacon, who shrugged in the universal sign of “it’s up to you.”
“I would love that.” Poppy barely got the words out before she was being tugged up the stone path, past manicured topiary and strings of solar fairy lights that gave the place a storybook glow.
The main house was bigger on the inside than it looked from the outside.
The entryway had a custom-tiled staircase wide enough for a marching band, and the ceilings soared high enough to echo.
There was a grand piano in the foyer and a Rottweiler who sat lounging like minor royalty on a Turkish rug.
“Who is that gorgeous puppy?” Poppy asked.
“That’s King Rocco!” Tabitha ran up and collapsed against him.
“Can I say hi?” she asked Deacon.
“Of course.” Deacon made a clicking noise with his mouth and Rocco stood and walked to Poppy.
“He was on place,” Tabitha explained to Poppy. “It’s like timeout but he wasn’t in trouble.”
“Oh my goodness, what a good boy.” Poppy bent down and gave Rocco scritches on his face and behind his ears. He panted and looked like he was smiling up at her. “You are so handsome, yes you are. What a handsome boy.”
Poppy always wanted a dog, but she’d been at her bungalow for ten years, and her landlord wouldn’t allow her to have pets. She’d considered moving several times just so she could have them, but with her long hours, ten to twelve hour days, she just didn’t think it was fair to an animal.
Whenever she needed a fix, she went to her sisters houses and played with their dogs, and most recently, Liam’s house. He rescued an Irish Setter named Lucy. Actually, the dog just showed up on his back deck, so Lucy rescued herself.
“Come on, let’s go see my room!” Tabitha enthused.
“Right, sorry.” Poppy apologized for getting sidetracked and gave Rocco a kiss on the forehead before returning her attention to the tour.
They continued on, Tabitha proudly guided Poppy around her room complete with a loft playhouse bed, a slide to get down, an indoor swing, and a rainbow and butterfly mural painted on one wall.
Poppy was appropriately impressed by Tabitha’s Barbie and Paw Patrol collections, extensive princess costume wardrobe, and bookshelves filled with over two hundred classics she was excited to revisit and new stories she’d not even heard of.
When they went back downstairs, the girls found Deacon in the kitchen, which looked like a chef’s wet dream.
Gleaming steel commercial-grade appliances, a fridge that was larger than Poppy’s childhood bedroom and waterfall marble that stretched as far as the eye could see.
Beyond that was a massive living space with what had to be 40-foot ceilings arranged around a monolithic stone fireplace with built-ins on both sides.
Poppy was a sucker for built-ins. The house that she’d bought was a run-down fixer-upper, and it didn’t have any history or charm, but she was hoping to add some in.
She tried not to gawk but failed. “Wow,” was all she could muster. “That is…really something.”
“Tabitha calls it the Princess Castle. She’s convinced there’s a secret passage behind the shelves.” Deacon gestured to the glass doors, which led to the backyard. “The ADU is out back. I’m sure you’re ready to get settled.”
They stepped outside onto a flagstone patio strung with lanterns. There was a pool that sparkled in the sun, and beyond it, a path led to a guest house, a miniature, self-contained cottage that looked out onto a slope of pines.
Tabitha skipped ahead, bouncing up the steps and throwing open the door theatrically. “Ta-da!”
The guest house was compact but thoughtfully designed, and most importantly, free.
One of the draws of taking the nanny position was that room and board were included.
A tiny kitchen, with new stainless-steel appliances, marble countertops, and white shaker cabinets already stocked with coffee, tea, and a basket of fruit, sat in the far right corner.
A sunlit living room with a cozy blue velvet loveseat and a wall of bookshelves was directly to the left.
Opposite the kitchen sat the bedroom, which housed a window seat, a king-sized bed, and a small writing desk by the window.
It felt like the inside of a snow globe, or maybe the set of an indie movie about a writer who drinks too much tea and falls in love with her neighbor.
Or maybe she’d just been reading too many small-town romances lately.
“This is beautiful. It looks even better than the pictures. It’s like a reverse catfish,” Poppy teased.
“Good, I’m glad.” Deacon walked to the door, and Tabitha, who had already grown bored of the house tour, skipped out and was picking flowers in the garden.
He followed his daughter outside, and Poppy stepped out onto the patio area.
“If you need anything, don’t hesitate to ask.
And I don’t know what your plans are, but we’re having spaghetti tonight, you’re welcome to join. ”
“Thanks, but I’ve got a lot of studying to do.” It was true that she did have studying, but also ever since finding out AJ was in town, she’d felt on edge, and it had made her exhausted.
He smiled, clearly not taking any offense to her declining the invitation. “Alright. Well, see ya tomorrow.”
Deacon and Tabitha walked back up the path and disappeared behind the sliding back doors, leaving Poppy blinking beneath the late afternoon sun.
She lingered just a moment on the flagstone patio, toes curled over the edge as she watched the perfect little family through the window.
Tabitha twirled on the kitchen tile as Deacon pulled pasta from a box, and Rocco nosed around for dropped treasures.
It was a scene so wholesome and self-contained she felt like a voyeur just existing on the same property.
It was also, inconveniently, exactly the sort of scenario she’d spent her whole childhood yearning after.
The feeling she’d always tried to hide scraped at her from the inside.
It was a secret torment that she couldn’t run from, the hollowed-out ache of not being enough that had always been a part of her as much as her sense of sight or smell.
She didn’t think she was born with it, like her other senses.
She was fairly certain it had been put there by a father who never claimed her, loved her, or knew her.
Thinking about it had the same effect as getting gremlins wet after midnight, it grew and multiplied.
So she did all she could to extinguish it like she would a fire, suffocating it and robbing it of oxygen.
She closed her eyes, forced her mind to go blank and then physically shook her arms out before heading back to her car to collect her belongings.