Chapter 14
MR. ALWAYS-DOUBTINGFIRE
Heath
I have to move.
Lavender and I have to pack up and move across the country.
Immediately.
Why?
Because of the woman currently playing around with my daughter in the garden.
“The dragons are growing from the ground!” Cricket cries. “Quick, quick, water them before they breathe fire on us!”
“Take that, dragon!” Lav yells as she dumps an entire kid-size watering can on top of a freshly-planted snapdragon.
“Oh, no, now this one’s sprouting!” Cricket shrieks. “Lavender! You’re out of water! Save me! Saaaave meeeee!”
Lav runs to the hose stretched out from the house, grabs the nozzle, and squeezes, shooting a stream of water straight at Cricket.
My daughter freezes, then drops the hose, guilt written in her big hazel eyes.
Not hard to tell why.
Cricket’s soaked.
But Cricket—the woman who’s invaded my dreams since I carried her out of the fermentation building, with her dark hair streaked with honey highlights, those big doe eyes that I still remember staring at me in terror the first day we met, the lush mouth, the fantastic breasts—the woman whose nipples are suddenly poking out beneath her wet white T-shirt—that woman?
She does exactly what I’ve come to expect from her, and she thrusts her fists in the air, laughing. “Yes! You got it, Lav! You got all of them! We’re saved!”
Giving me one more example of why I have to move.
Plenty of women have come and gone who have played with my daughter here. Doted on her. Showered her with kindness and love. Done her hair and her nails and arts and crafts with her. The way her mom would’ve if she’d lived.
But none of them have played with her like this. Or so thoroughly distracted her from remembering to speak in meows.
And not one has snuck into my dreams.
Naked.
Writhing.
Gasping my name.
Making me bolt awake as I come in my bedsheets.
My libido has awakened after a long, long slumber, and I don’t like it.
Especially when it’s Cricket.
And it’s not one of those dreams where you know it’s someone but they look like someone else.
This is Cricket.
Exactly as she looks here.
But without clothes.
And they always happen five minutes before she knocks on the door to come sit with Lav and Fluffy while I shower.
I hope to fuck she can’t tell I’m washing my sheets every damn day.
This place is chaos as it is, and I have enough on my plate already.
I don’t need to add try out a fling for the first time in almost a decade to my to-do list.
I don’t date.
Period.
My marriage?
That was one more thing that everyone thinks I was fantastic at.
Fuck, maybe I was.
And while I don’t regret it—I’m glad I got to give Ava the best life I could give her—it wasn’t fulfilling on my end.
And here I go, feeling like a dick again for acknowledging my reality.
That Ava and I weren’t actually well-suited for each other.
“Tell me you didn’t find structural damage in the events center,” Mabel says beside me.
I jolt out of my own head and look down at her. “No. It’s fine.”
She lifts a brow. “So what’s with the scowl?”
“I’m not scowling.”
“You’re doing something.”
Pip’s out here with her too, dressed for joining the gardening crew in a way that only Pip can pull off, with a straw sun hat as wide as the porch, dark sunglasses that aren’t much smaller, oversized gardening gloves, short shorts showing off her bony knees and thin-as-a-rail legs, red feathered house shoes, and a red knitted poncho with loose enough stitching that you can almost see as much as she usually shows off in the house.
“Did somebody say they saw an owl?” she says as she struts past us.
“Yes. Heath did. In the owlery,” Mabel replies.
We don’t have an owlery. Even an accidental owlery. I’ve been in every building on the property, and I’d know.
“Bad luck to see owls,” Pip says. “Probably shouldn’t do that big wedding here now.”
Mabel sucks her lips together, clearly amused. “Other option’s selling this place and finding a nice senior home that’ll take me in too.”
Pip lifts a hand, but if she’s trying to flip Mabel off, which I assume she is based on past behavior, we can’t tell.
Her gloves are too big to make out any distinct fingers, and she might have them on backward.
“Aunt Pip, come garden with us,” Lav calls. “We’re growing dragons!”
“The dragons are more consistent than the leprechauns or the studiwafers were,” Mabel muses.
Don’t ask me what a studiwafer is.
It’s something straight out of Lav’s imagination, and every time I asked her if she meant Studebaker, she’d say no and ask if Studebakers were also in the three-legged fish-potato family.
Even after she drew me a picture, I still don’t quite get it.
“The dragons convinced her she needed to hide in the gift shop for two hours yesterday,” I tell Mabel.
And that’s the other thing.
The true reason I think Lavender and I might actually need to move.
For real.
Because Lav has a habit of sneaking into random buildings here to hide.
“Missed that detail,” Mabel says.
“I hear you had your hands full with a popcorn incident.”
We both look at the Notorious P-I-P.
Mabel cracks a warm smile. “For all that she gives me heartburn, I can’t wait to be her someday.”
“Look, Mabel—” I start, then stop because I don’t know how to continue.
She looks at me, and I feel like I’m another one of the women here.
Someone she’s taken under her wing while they get their footing back. Giving as much space and support as they need.
Rarely asking for things for herself.
And here I am, about to drop the bomb when she deserves for this to be as easy as I can make it on her.
“Don’t apologize,” she says quietly. “I get it. We’ll miss you, but I get it.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose.
She knows what I’m thinking.
We’re friends.
But more than that, she’s watched residents come and go here for far longer than I’ve been here.
She recognizes the signs when they’re ready to move on.
Not that I’m ready.
I’m not.
I like it here.
Being here is easy. There’s always someone to watch Lav for me if I need them to, someone who knows my daughter and her unique peculiarities, and then the only thing I have to deal with is the guilt that I can’t do it all by myself and the pressing need to pay them back for it.
I’ll have that no matter where I go.
“I won’t leave you high and dry with anything you need to do to get ready for this wedding.”
“We’ll make it work even if you do.”
The idea that I’d leave them in a lurch makes me twitch. “And I don’t want to move Lav in the middle of a school year, but she has friends here—and her birthday—she wants a party, so I’ll have to figure out that too.”
She smiles softly. “I appreciate that. Lav has the best birthday parties.”
“And I’ll look for a handyman replacement for me around here.”
“Cricket’s pretty good.”
“Not funny.”
“No, she is. I think her nervous system is finally coming out of hyperdrive. She’s had fewer accidents so far this week.”
I make my jaw relax.
Don’t want to talk about Cricket.
“The fermentation room—”
“Don’t even try to blame that on Cricket.”
“No. Wasn’t her fault. I know. But—that could’ve been Lav.”
Mabel sighs. “Or Pip.”
I don’t tell her my last reason.
My in-laws.
Ava’s parents.
When they dropped their lawsuit last year, I formally notified them through my attorney that they were no longer allowed to be part of Lavender’s life.
But a friend in town told me they thought they’d seen my in-laws in town.
I can ignore voicemails and emails asking to see Lav, but they still know where we live.
And where we live is hazardous, which does give them ammunition if they decide to try to take her from me again.
Those voicemails and emails that I’m ignoring have an underlying threat to them still.
A we’re not done.
A we’ll try this again when you fuck up.
Mabel’s watching Lav with Cricket and Pip. “How’s Fluffy?”
“She got stuck less in the cat door yesterday.”
“Cricket found Pip and Lav’s secret trading spot. We’ve been taking turns replacing the food Pip leaves there for magical rocks and sticks that turn into food when cats eat them.”
That does it.
That makes my throat clog.
These women—they’re family.
And Cricket—she’s filling in holes that I didn’t realize I had.
Embracing my daughter exactly as she is and understanding how her brain works and helping make my life easier by being right there.
But this winery is dangerous for a kid who likes to explore and push boundaries. And she’s reaching an age where she’s more capable of getting into trouble.
“You get those videos taken off GrippaBeav yet? The ones of Cricket?” I ask.
Because that’s been on my mind too.
Mabel shakes her head, lips tight. “Their legal department takes forever to get back to every email, and I think it’s being run by AI too.”
I grunt.
She does too.
Fucking sucks that someone’s making money off of one of our residents when we’re on the brink of going broke.
“Ginny’s been pitching a business proposal to hand-picked investors so we can start wine operations again,” Mabel says.
“And if that doesn’t work, we’ll find a vineyard manager so we can break the contract with Winona and start selling the grapes for a profit next year.
If it makes any difference at all that we’re doing everything we can to fix what’s broken and put us in a more financially secure position, then I thought you should know. ”
“Take it Pip doesn’t know either?”
Pip’s adamant that the winery never reopen or be profitable on its own.
It’s a cosmic fuck-you to her dead husband.
Plus it gives the women here a significant bit more privacy than they’d have with staff running the operations.
“Specifically? No. But deep in her heart? She knows it’s necessary, and she loves our community. She’ll approve it. She’ll have to.” She pulls her glasses off and wipes them on her shirt. “If we can find an investor. We’ve struck out twice now.”
“Ginny think about asking her future brother-in-law?” I ask.
“She mentioned he’s involved in some new rum operation in southern California and that that’s taking a good bit of his time and money right now.”
You have to look closely to see the way Mabel’s cheeks go slightly pink, but I’ve known her long enough to catch the way her voice wavers too.
She’s not fully pulling off cool and collected when it comes to her favorite actor and the fact that she’s basically two degrees of separation from him.
Still two because she’s avoided him whenever Ginny’s sister has brought him here. She’s never actually met him herself. Says she doesn’t like to meet her idols.
Won’t be able to avoid it at the wedding though.
“Daddy, come see the dragons,” Lavender calls to me.
“I’m not in my fire-resistant suit,” I call back.
“It’s okay. We de-fired them. Come look!”
I shove my hands in my pockets. “Don’t tell anyone my plans yet,” I say to her. “I don’t know how long it’ll take to find the right place.”
“Yours to tell when you’re ready. I don’t gossip.”
I nod in thanks, then stroll the rest of the way to the gardens, lying to myself that it won’t break my daughter’s heart when I get us set up to move somewhere normal.
Somewhere that I’m not exposing my daughter to what my in-laws call the worst of the worst of humanity, which was their description of the guests here in the last email I got from them.
We managed to avoid them finding out about Pip’s near-nudist status during the lawsuit—that would’ve added fuel to their case—but if they ever decide to try something again, I’m sure they’ll dig deeper.
Also, the buildings weren’t falling down then either.
But the gardens—yeah.
The gardens are looking good.
Cricket’s cleared out most of the weeds since she started tackling this project, leaving behind anemic plants in need of some TLC, and uncovering a stone pathway that winds through the plants.
The trellis is coming along—I rescued the wood on a solo mission and started work on it in the barn, which is structurally sound.
In need of a new roof soon so it stays that way, but for today, it’s structurally sound.
When it’s time to paint the trellis, Cricket’s already told me she wants to do it.
Pest control company’s working on de-mousing the fermentation building and the barn.
My treat.
So she doesn’t have to climb me again.
So I don’t have to enjoy having her cling to my body again.
“Did the dragons bring any friends?” I ask Lavender as I take in her handiwork in the garden too.
Six new snapdragon plants are now in a small square of mud in one corner of the garden.
“I picked them out.” Lavender proudly points at the wilted yellow-flowered plants. “I picked the dragons.
“You picked the best dragons,” Cricket says.
Because I’m a goddamn adult, I make myself make eye contact with her. “You go to the farmer’s market with her?”
She wrinkles her nose and pulls her head back. “Me? Leave the property? Why would I do that? Dori and Ginny took her.”
“I got to pretend to be Fluffy on a leash,” Lav says. “I walked on all fours and drank water out of a bowl with my tongue and everything.”
I smile and rub her soft hair, warm from the sun. “Did you meow at everyone?”
Difficult as it was to understand her sometimes when she’d only make cat noises, it’s always hard to see her come to the end of a phase.
To watch her grow up and contemplate that she won’t be with me forever.
The idea that she’ll still meow now and again—that makes me happy.
She grins. “Yep! And I groomed myself. Like this.” She licks her hand, which is covered in dirt, then sticks her tongue out a few times, trying to wipe it off, but only getting more mud in her mouth.
“The gremlins!” Cricket cries. “Lavender, the gremlins are in your mouth! Quick, quick, wash them off!”
She dashes for the hose and adjusts the nozzle so it’s a gentle spray instead of the hard stream while Lavender follows her, sticking her tongue under the spray.
My throat clogs.
My eyes burn.
This is home.
But it’s not safe.
And that breaks my fucking heart.