Chapter 37
Chapter Thirty-Seven
CHARLIE
Alice has moves, and those moves are going to be the death of me.
I was expecting more awkwardness from her big plan. Maybe some nice cringeworthy winks or forced giggles. Instead, she’s perfected the art of Weaponized Cuteness, and I might never be the same.
We walk around the hedgerow after we leave the park, and she knows how to keep a good thing going. Touching me every now and then because she likes making me suffer—though not as much as I like suffering.
Her touch always happens the same way, in light grazes that make me want to stop everything and graze her right back. Faint licks of touch that tease me and taunt me and tie me in knots. Then we round the corner by a gothic-style cottage, and she grabs my arm with both hands, gasping about the gingerbread trim, and I have to grip our folded picnic blanket for dear life.
I almost pounce. Forget our plan, forget her pursuing me or fooling the Victorian—I almost give up and roll out every move I’ve got. Set fire to my reputation right there on the sidewalk, no regrets.
But I don’t.
It takes everything I have not to growl and pull her close. Everything.
You’re killing me, Carrots. It’s going to be a fun death, but you’re killing me .
I wish this wasn’t fake, that it wasn’t some big scheme to fool the Victorian—but I love it anyway. I just have to figure out how to survive it. How to enjoy all those touches without letting them tear me apart.
Tour guide.
Be a tour guide.
I need to focus on something else, a nice distraction that isn’t the adorable redhead beside me. She asks a question about the next house, a sprawling white colonial with black shutters that has a sign out front, and I throw myself into it. Channeling my inner historian so I don’t go full rake instead.
Standing up a little straighter, I nod to the house in question, the most infamous building in the hedgerow besides Muriel’s haunted bed-and-breakfast. “This is the Lilac House, home of the fabled Lilac Society.”
Alice’s eyes widen with delight. My girl loves a history tour.
“The Lilac Society was founded in 1905, and they’re still in charge of historic preservation in Ponderosa Falls,” I continue, but I’m mostly just reading the sign out front.
Before I can keep going, someone interjects from the lawn. “They were originally called the Lilac Ladies, and they’re responsible for planting the lilac bushes we still enjoy to this day. They hand-watered them using pails they carried back and forth to the creek.”
Henrietta .
I’ve been a tour guide for five seconds, and I’ve already got competition. I’m not sure how I didn’t notice her. Two large flower beds flank the walkway and front porch of the Lilac House, and Henrietta’s knee-deep in the flower bed on the right, pulling up weeds like they’re her mortal enemies.
She shares a few more facts with Alice—no sign-reading necessary—and I really should’ve seen this coming. Henrietta is the current board president of the Lilac Society, and her ancestors have been members since the dawn of time. But I refuse to be outdone.
Standing up even straighter, I channel a new inner historian, a better historian. Eat your heart out, Henrietta.
“They’re also responsible for planting the ash trees at the park, which they also hand-watered.”
I hesitate. Alice is hanging on every word—I’ve got Carrots eating out of the palm of my hand—but I’m officially out of sign material. So I go rogue.
“While the society was originally ladies only, they did eventually allow men to join. As long as they promised not to mess anything up.”
Henrietta barks out a laugh from her flower bed. “You’re not wrong.”
“Actually,” a sweeter voice pipes up from the other flower bed— Dottie ? “Men were allowed to join pretty early on, even in the hand-watering days. The only one who’s ever been a problem was Bobby Simon last year. When he petitioned to use the Lilac House for his annual Super Bowl party. Like a darn fool.”
Interrupted and outdone—twice. Who knew tour-guide life was this cutthroat?
Beside me, Alice is delighted by the whole thing—the history, the War of the Tour Guides, all of it. She tries to keep herself together, but a giggle escapes. And that truly magical sound is going to haunt me until the day I die.
All that joy on her face does something to me. It feels like a challenge. Old instincts hum under my skin, and I’m desperate to pull her closer, to see if I can help that happiness of hers multiply.
But I give her a friendly shoulder nudge instead. Because I’m a gentleman…most of the time.
Alice pauses for some neighborly small talk, and I don’t know why that hits me as hard as it does. Why seeing her chat with Dottie and Henrietta makes my heart pull tight in my chest. No out-of-towner has ever fit in here quite like Alice. It’s as if this town was made for her, and I don’t want to think about how empty it’s going to feel when she’s gone.
After a few minutes, I nudge her past the Lilac House before those Old Birds can say too much. Just in case their next historic fact is about me and that time I tried to egg this place only to get egged by Dottie instead. Or when I wanted to spray-paint the side of the building, and Henrietta tackled me like a linebacker.
We don’t get far. Alice and I only make it a few houses down before she’s ready to cause a little hedgerow trouble of her own. Casting one last glance at the Old Birds, she drops her voice to a whisper. “Have you thought about how we’re going to do it yet? How we should infiltrate the Old Birds?”
I haven’t.
If anything, I’ve avoided thinking about it. The idea of unmasking the Victorian still doesn’t sit right with me. Involving the Old Birds only makes it worse. My relationship with them is complicated, that feathered trio is complicated, and my mood dims.
When I shake my head, Alice has a few ideas of her own. She pitches them as we continue our walk. Then, out of nowhere, it happens. Finally.
Alice turns her head toward the long row of lilac bushes beside her, the ones that frame the entire street. Pausing, she inhales that rich floral scent—and freezes with a jolt. Slowly, she glances up at me, and I’ve been waiting for this moment all day. That woman has finally remembered our list.
“Number five.” She sighs happily. “Stop and smell the lilacs.”
I grin, drawing an imaginary checkmark in the air like I’m marking that item off our to-do list. “I’m just glad they bloomed while you were still in town.”
She stops to inhale that scent a few more times as we continue our tour of the hedgerow. There’s so much to see, and we even pass a few town slogan signs along the way. I’m not sure how many we have scattered around town, how many unofficial slogans we’ve adopted over the years. Dottie’s favorite— Ponderosa Falls: a great place to fall in love —is downtown by the courthouse where we issue marriage licenses. I showed that one to Alice a few days ago, but there are plenty of others.
That girl enjoys every slogan, following those signs like a trail. She notices the historic landmarks too, all the scattered pieces of history. But then she spots something else in the distance—the only landmark I wish she hadn’t.
We’re on the edge of the neighborhood, the very last street, when she sees the tiny bungalow on the other side of the intersection. All eight hundred abandoned square feet. It isn’t technically in the hedgerow. It’s right outside, forever looking in.
“Does anyone still live there?” she asks.
“Not anymore.”
It looks so much smaller with Alice standing beside me, so much more run down, and I pause, not sure what else I want to say. Except I’m in a strange mood, a self-destructive mood. So I keep going.
Alice already has plenty of proof I’m not her type, that she’s too good for me. Why not give her a little more?
“That’s where I grew up. We lived there until my parents split.”
I can see Alice trying to do the house-math in her head. Trying to figure out how a family of five could fit in anything that small. The answer is poorly. We fit in that small house poorly .
I never thought twice about it until I was a teenager, when friends from school or girls I wanted to impress started wrinkling their noses at where I lived. I never knew how to deal with that, their comments or glances—all I could really do was distract them. There are a million bad ways to make people forget where you came from, and I perfected every single one.
But when Alice glances at me, there’s no judgement in her eyes. “You were so close to the hedgerow. Did you like growing up there?”
It’s such a good question, one that doesn’t hurt my feelings or make me feel self-conscious. “Yeah,” I say honestly. “I did.”
Maybe it looks small, but I always loved living here and being part of my family. My dad traveled a lot for work, but the rest of us were so close. When you get to live with your favorite people, the size of the house doesn’t matter so much.
“We had some really good times,” I admit. “Christmases were incredible. Being so close to the hedgerow with all their decorations and light displays.”
When I glance over, Alice has the most adorable smile on her face. A quiet, knowing smile. “Is that why you like making Christmas ornaments?”
I chuckle.
I’m surprised she remembered that. It warms me up a little knowing she paid that much attention in my art shed. That she held on to that question and still wants an answer.
“I like knowing my work is part of a holiday that brings so many people joy. That my ornaments are hanging up in their homes and seeing them on their tree might bring extra joy.”
I hesitate. I know I should stop, but I don’t. “And if things are rough, I like knowing my ornament might be the one thing that does bring them joy.”
We had a few years like that, especially near the end. Where the happiest things in that house at Christmastime were the ornaments on the tree. I don’t mention that to Alice, but I think she can tell. She reaches for my arm, giving it a gentle squeeze, and she isn’t playing any games this time. She’s just comforting me.
I glance away. As I lead her back toward the hedgerow, we don’t say much. If Alice spots the town slogan sign on the corner, right across the street from my old house, I can’t tell.
But I see it, and I feel that slogan deep in my soul. I just wish she felt it too.
Ponderosa Falls
You’re already here. You might as well stay.