Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
GAGE
A few weeks later, the weather had gotten noticeably colder, and I was finally beginning to realize what leaf peeping meant. The fresh air invigorated me on my walk to the farmhouse to find Webb.
“Morning, Gage. What’s up?” Webb slid his mug of coffee onto the table in the farmhouse kitchen, took a seat across from me, and snagged a piece of pumpkin bread from the platter between us.
His thick, dark hair was coated liberally with fake cobwebs from the Halloween decorations he’d been putting up, and tiny bits of purple glitter dust sparkled in his beard.
Drew, who sat at the head of the table between us with his walking boot propped on a chair, shot me an amused look that I returned.
“Okay, I know you’re busy prepping for the haunted hayrides this weekend, but I wanted to give you guys kind of a progress report so you’d know what you’re spending your money on—”
“Hey.” Webb held up a hand and gave me a serious look—or as serious as he could muster when he glinted under the overhead light like the love child of Paul Bunyan and a fairy princess. “There’s no rush, Gage. You’re doing amazing. Everything you’ve done already has been great.”
“Agreed,” Drew echoed.
“And if you need to slow down so you can work on Pipsy or another side project—”
I smiled. “I don’t, I promise. But speaking of side projects, I present…” I turned around the tablet in my hands. “The Pond App. Figured that name fit since there’s already a Pond Orchard and a Pond Meadow and whatnot, but we can change it if you like.”
Drew’s green eyes crinkled. “Love it.”
“M’kay, so, disclaimer. I have a ton left to do. Like, a ton. The scheduling part of the app is running way behind. I’m waiting for a couple callbacks from your payroll company so I can integrate that whole aspect. And I still need to find a workaround for your cider press controls,” I told Drew.
He waved this away. “It’s way too late to worry about it for this year. It’s all good, man.”
“Okay. But the good news is, the expense tracking section is working. And the irrigation section controls work, too—I’ve tested them extensively.
And I set it up so that you can control all the lights in the house and the barn, though I’m thinking I should lock a lot of those features down, or else Aiden might turn on all the lights in the middle of the night just to see what would happen. ”
Which was understandable, really. I’d had the same “what would happen if I…” brain when I was his age.
Webb frowned a little. “Don’t worry about that part. Aiden doesn’t have a phone. He’s too young.”
“Well.” I licked my lips. “That’s the side project I was referring to. Because… what if he did? No, hear me out. What if he had a phone where the only app was the Pond App?”
Webb shook his head. “I don’t follow.”
“The other night after Aiden came home, you half joked that you wished you could have a GPS tracker on him, remember? But you’d also want to be able to monitor his communication with, um, people outside the Sunday family.
So…” I drew an old phone from my pocket and set it on the table between us.
Drew leaned in to get a better look. “I bought this secondhand, and I’d like to give it to Aiden.
It has a data plan but not a phone number, so he can’t call anyone and no one outside the family can call him, but using the Pond App, he can text anyone in the family…
and any of the employees, I guess, though I could lock that down, too, if you want.
The real improvement is that I also added a GPS tracking feature to the app, so anyone who has access to the app will know where everyone else is located within a few feet.
Basically, it has all the functionality you’d want him to have from a regular phone and nothing you wouldn’t want him to have. ”
Webb looked at the phone and then back at me. He blinked slowly.
I tried not to be disappointed. “I mean, you don’t have to give it to him. No harm, no foul. You’re the dad. I haven’t mentioned it to him or—”
“I can’t believe you did this,” Webb said hoarsely. “I can’t believe you thought of it.”
“Oh. Well.” I shrugged, a little embarrassed and a lot relieved.
I’d wanted to help, to feel like I was contributing to the family in a meaningful way.
“It’s not revolutionary or anything. There are lots of phones for kids you can buy that come set up like this.
But I thought it would be cool that it integrated to the app.
One-stop shopping, kinda. Here, I have it on my phone so you can see how it works. ”
I opened my phone and sent a quick message to Aiden’s phone through the app. The notification popped up on his screen.
“Aiden is going to be the happiest kid in the Hollow when he sees this,” Drew said with a laugh.
Webb nodded. “I don’t know how to thank you.”
“Oh, no, seriously, it’s—”
“It’s a big deal to me. That you went out of your way to do this for me, for Aiden, when it’s not what I hired you to do? It’s pretty huge.”
“That’s why we’re keeping you,” Drew said matter-of-factly. “Oh, I mean, you can go off to Boston and all, but you’re coming back for regular visits. And I’m sending you care packages like Knox’s dad used to do for him. Prepare for it.”
I grinned. I loved these guys so much. “Will these packages contain… pumpkin bread? Or, say, those apple muffins you make with the orange juice?”
“In bulk,” Drew assured me with a wink. Then he took a piece of pumpkin bread—my third piece of the morning—and put it on the napkin in front of me.
It was nice to be understood.
Knox came whistling through the back door and headed directly to the coffeepot.
“Webb, were you aware that there’s a terrifying horde of zombie scarecrows congregating on the front lawn with their arms outstretched toward the house?
Because if you decided to invite your friends over, you should have really let the rest of us—” He broke off when he saw all three of us staring at him. “What?”
“You’re… you’re whistling,” Drew accused.
“So? There a law against that now?” Knox scowled. “Jeez. It’s a pleasant day. The tourists are gone during the week now, and I don’t have to smile at all the flatlanders buying vats of maple syrup. Perkins Limited just remitted payment on a huge invoice. I feel whistly, okay?”
I stuffed my mouth with pumpkin bread so I wouldn’t be tempted to give him a besotted smile. We’d been hiding our relationship from the other Sundays for weeks, and you’d think it would have gotten easier. Become second nature.
But no.
Every time the man looked at me, my stomach tripped over itself, my heart danced in a funny syncopated rhythm, and I felt the desperate urge to find a new adjective to describe the particular green shade of his eyes.
“What’s this?” Knox stood between Webb and Drew and glanced down at my tablet. His gorgeous eyes lifted to mine curiously.
“This is an early version of the Pond App,” Webb answered proudly. “Gage’s app for the orchard. It has a GPS thing we can use to keep tabs on Aiden.”
Knox’s beard split with a quicksilver smile that was a tinier but equally thrilling version of the happy-go-lucky smile I would never get tired of. “Awesome. Is this what you’ve been spending all your free time on, Goodman?”
I blushed. The man knew as well as I did that I definitely hadn’t been putting in very long hours on the app since I now had a different hobby that consumed most of my evenings. And mornings. And lunchtimes, too, when Webb and the others went to Jack’s restaurant.
“I’m dedicated,” I agreed.
“I told him we’re keeping him permanently,” Drew said lightly. “Whether he likes it or not.”
“Really?” Knox sipped his coffee. “I feel like there are laws against keeping prisoners, but okay.”
“I meant metaphorically,” Drew said loftily. “I wouldn’t condemn the man to sharing the barn apartment with your grumpy self for the rest of his life.”
“Oh, I dunno,” I piped up. “Knox isn’t so bad as a roommate. You might say I’m used to having him around.” And in my bed. “And I don’t even mind his lectures.” Since they always ended in sex. “His bark is worse than his bite.” Not that I minded the bites.
Knox shot me a look no one else could see that said he’d be pleased to show me just how bad his bite could be, and I had to stop myself from shivering at the idea.
“It so happens that I have news, too,” Knox said smugly. “I just got off the phone with Jason. You remember Jason?”
“Yeah.” I nodded. “Of course.”
Jason had said he’d call me to set up an interview last week, but he hadn’t. And I knew I was supposed to be proactive about calling him and following up, but…
Well, I’d been really busy working on the communication app for Aiden.
And helping Aiden finish up his school project, which had not only earned him an A, it had gotten me an invite from Mr. Williams to teach the kids in his class how to build some simple robots.
And I’d been working weekends at the orchard, which was still doing a serious business with hayrides, and a haunted hay bale maze, and cider donuts, even though Webb said peak foliage time was just about done.
And setting up a website for the Averill Union Christmas fundraiser, because Em was a teenaged Napoleon in a lacrosse sweatshirt who’d twisted my arm with her pretty smile and bright green eyes.
Plus, it seemed like I still had a lot left to do for the Pond App, so it was kind of pointless to go all out to get a job now when I really wouldn’t be able to start until after the first of the year… Right?
And then there was Knox.
Knox, who occasionally threw paperclips across the desk at me when I got distracted and daydreamy, because he was thirty-nine going on three and had never been told you could poke an eye out with those things.
Knox, who had not only reinstated friendly erection checks, but had volunteered to help me “take care” of any erections he happened to spot because, he’d informed me, he was a “true friend.”