Chapter 16
Meredith’s house is a small cottage-style home about five minutes from Wyatt’s cabin.
It’s painted yellow with white trim and surrounded by the kind of garden that only comes from someone who has patiently cared for it for decades.
Roses climb a trellis by the front door, and flower beds burst with late spring blooms, irises, peonies, and something purple I don’t recognize.
Wyatt is out of the truck before it’s even fully stopped, taking the porch two steps at a time. I follow a little more slowly, not wanting to intrude.
Inside, I find Meredith in a floral armchair in the living room, her left ankle propped on the ottoman. She looks more annoyed than hurt, but her silver hair is slightly disheveled, and there’s dirt on her pants.
“I’m fine,” she’s saying as Wyatt kneels beside her, gently examining her ankle. “It’s just a little twist. I don’t know why you raced all the way down here like the house was on fire.”
“Because you’re eighty-three years old and you fell,” Wyatt says. “And you live alone. Grandma, what were you doing out in the garden by yourself?”
“What I do every Saturday. Weeding. The peonies were getting choked out.”
She spots me hovering in the doorway and smiles. “Eleanor, what a nice surprise. Well, don’t just stand there, dear. Come on in.”
I step into the living room, and it’s exactly what I would expect from Meredith. Cozy and lived-in, with photographs covering nearly every surface and bookshelves lining the walls. A piano sits in one corner, sheet music open on a stand. The whole place smells of old books and lavender.
“I’m sorry for intruding,” I say. “Wyatt and I were hiking when you called.”
“Intruding? Oh, nonsense.” She waves her hand dismissively. “I’m glad you’re here. Maybe you can talk some sense into my grandson. He acts as if I broke my hip, when all I did was roll my ankle.”
“You could have broken your hip. Can you move it?” Wyatt asks, suddenly worried about her hip.
“Of course I can move it.” She demonstrates, wincing slightly. “See? Fine.”
“Your ankle is swelling. We need ice.” He looks at me. “Eleanor, could you—”
“Kitchen,” I say, already moving.
“Through there. Ice in the freezer, dish towels in the drawer by the sink.”
I find the kitchen easily. It’s small and tidy, with the same yellow-painted cabinets and white tile that probably came with the house when it was built. Everything is organized with the precision of someone who’s cooked in the same space for fifty years.
I wrap ice in a clean dish towel and bring it back to the living room, where Wyatt is still crouched beside his grandmother’s chair.
“Here,” I say, handing him the ice pack.
“Thank you.”
He positions it on Meredith’s ankle, and she sighs. “You’re both fussing over me. I’ve had worse injuries gardening.”
“Which is exactly why you shouldn’t be gardening alone anymore,” Wyatt says firmly.
“I’ve been gardening alone for the last few years since your grandfather died, and I managed just fine.”
“You’ve been lucky. This time, you were lucky. You were close to the house. What if you’d been in the back garden? What if you’d fallen and couldn’t get up?”
Her expression softens. “Wyatt, honey, I know you worry, but I’m not ready to be treated like an invalid.”
“I’m not treating you like an invalid,” he says. “I’m treating you like someone I love who scared the heck out of me.”
His voice cracks slightly at the last words.
“How about this?” I say, surprising myself.
Both of them look at me.
“What if someone came and helped with the garden, not to do it for you, but with you? That way you can keep gardening, but there’s somebody here if anything happens.”
Meredith looks at me with interest. “You offering?”
“Well, I could. I was planning to start a garden at the bar anyway. I could use some practice.”
“You know anything about gardening?”
“Well, I did grow some terrible tomatoes when I was seven, and I kept herbs alive in Atlanta for three years.”
Meredith laughs. “Well, that’s more experience than most people have. All right, Eleanor, you’ve got yourself a deal. Saturday mornings, if you’re free.”
Wyatt looks between us, relief washing over his face. “You don’t have to.”
“I want to,” I say, and I realize that I mean it. Not just to help Wyatt, but because I genuinely like Meredith. The idea of spending Saturday mornings in her garden and learning from someone who’s been doing it for so long sounds perfect.
* * *
We stay for about another hour. Wyatt elevates Meredith’s ankle, changes the ice pack a couple of times, and makes her promise to stay off it for the rest of the day. I make tea in her kitchen and bring it out on a tray with shortbread cookies I find in a tin by the stove.
“These are good,” I say, biting into one.
“Family recipe,” Meredith says. “My mother taught me, her mother taught her, and I’ll teach you if you’d like.”
“I’d like that very much.”
We sit in her living room drinking tea and eating cookies, and she tells stories about teaching elementary school for forty years, about her late husband Frank, who built the arbor in the back garden with his own hands, about Wyatt as a boy catching frogs in the creek and tracking mud through the house and reading poetry under the oak tree in the backyard.
“He was always a sensitive soul,” she says, looking at him with affection. “Even as a little boy. Frank used to worry it would make life hard for him, but I told him the world needs sensitive souls, needs people who feel things deeply.”
Wyatt’s ears are slightly red. “Grandma.”
“I’m just stating the facts, dear. You’ve always been tenderhearted. It’s not a weakness.”
I watch him squirm under her assessment because she’s right. He is tenderhearted. He feels things deeply, and instead of seeing that as a weakness, she sees it as a strength.
“Did Frank ever meet Laney?” I ask.
I immediately regret it because Wyatt tenses up.
Meredith nods. “He did. She was a nice enough girl, but not right for my Wyatt. Frank saw it before I did, actually. Told me she was afraid of feelings.”
“Grandma,” Wyatt says, a warning in his voice.
“Wyatt, it’s true. She wanted everything neat and tidy and predictable, and you, my dear, dear boy, have never been any of those things.” She takes a sip of her tea. “But Eleanor here, well, Eleanor’s afraid, but not afraid of messy things. I can tell.”
I laugh. “And how can you tell?”
“Because you’re still here. You’ve been in Copper Creek for over two months, right? And you haven’t run yet. Most people who come here from the city, well, they run. Can’t handle the quiet, the slowness of it all. But you’re still here.”
“Yeah,” I say quietly. “I’m starting to think I might just stay.”
Wyatt’s head snaps up, his blue eyes finding mine.
“Well, good,” Meredith says, “because this town could use someone like you, and my grandson definitely could.”
* * *
By the time we leave, it’s late afternoon. Meredith’s ankle is properly wrapped and elevated on pillows, and she has instructions to call if she needs anything. Wyatt has also called two of her friends from church, who promise to check on her tomorrow.
We climb into his truck, and the silence feels different than it did on the drive here, heavier, full of things unsaid.
“Thank you,” Wyatt finally says as he starts the engine, “for coming, for helping, for offering to help with the garden.”
“You don’t need to thank me.”
“Well, I do, because you didn’t have to do any of that. He stops and grips the steering wheel tighter. “It means a lot.”
We drive in silence for a few moments, winding down the narrow roads back toward town, and then he pulls over, not at The Rusty Spur, but at a small overlook I haven’t noticed before. It’s a pull-off with a view of the valley below, Copper Creek spread out like a postcard.
He turns off the engine and turns to face me.
“Earlier,” he says, “at the waterfall, before my grandma called…”
“I know.”
“I wanted to kiss you,” he says. “I really, really wanted to kiss you. And I wanted you to kiss me. But we said we’d wait until October, until you’re sure.”
I take a breath, gathering up my courage. “Well, what if I told you I’m starting to feel sure?”
His eyes search mine. “Starting to feel sure?”
“I’m not ready to make promises about October yet,” I say. “I still have so many questions, so many things I need to figure out. But Wyatt…” I reach over and take his hand. “I meant what I said to your grandmother about staying. I’m starting to think I might actually do it.”
“Starting to think isn’t the same thing as knowing.”
“I know. But it’s more than I’ve had before.
It’s more than I ever thought I’d have.” I squeeze his hand.
“A couple of months ago, I couldn’t wait to leave this place.
I thought I was coming to stay for one night, maybe just a few hours.
Now I’m thinking about planting a garden, learning to make shortbread cookies, and spending Saturday mornings with your grandmother. That has to count for something.”
A slow smile spreads across his face. “It counts for a lot, actually.”
“Maybe I won’t wait until October to make the decision. Maybe we can just keep doing what we’re doing, you know, getting to know each other, keep building whatever this is. And if the decision comes to me sooner, all the better.”
The truth is, if I went back to Atlanta, what would be waiting for me there? The failure of my mother’s business. An ex-fiance. An apartment I can no longer afford.
“And if October comes and you decide to leave?”
The question hangs between us, heavy with possibility and fear.
“Then we’ll deal with it,” I say.
He leans across the center console and cups my face with one hand, his thumb brushing across my cheekbone as it always does, the way that makes my breath hitch in my throat.
“Eleanor Whitfield,” he says softly, “you are the most complicated, frustrating, surprising woman I’ve ever met.”
“Is that a compliment?” I ask, smiling.
“It’s the truth.”