Chapter Ten
MARC
Glamma’s dining room looked like a place where people confessed sins and signed treaties. Knowing this house, both had probably happened here.
I stood at one of the large windows, watching moonlight fracture across the rippling water of the lake. Usually, I found it soothing. Tonight, the irritation buzzing under my skin had other plans.
My phone vibrated in my pocket.
WYATT
WTF is up with this goat? He keeps escaping from the barn.
I dragged a hand down the back of my neck.
I’d asked Wyatt to babysit newly named Chaos—which said something about the state of my life—but the animal had proven to be aggressively opposed to being contained.
I’d found him in the fields, in my kitchen, and once, sitting on the hood of my car like he owned it.
MARC
I’ll be home soon. Hopefully. Glamma’s in one of her moods. I told you he was a Houdini.
WYATT
Maybe he just wants to be free, dude. Deep stuff.
MARC
In the pantry is a shelf of snacks for him. If he doesn’t listen, put on cartoons for him in the guest bedroom downstairs. He seems to enjoy them.
WYATT
Goats contain layers. And this one seems to have a lot of them.
I pocketed my phone.
There were times I’d seriously thought about asking if a nearby farm wanted the goat, but each time, I remembered the dirty, matted, starving goat I first saw. And even though he did what he wanted, he’d warmed up to me and even when he escaped, he always seemed to come back.
Behind me, candlelight flickered across the long dining room table where the four elderly women who collectively ran this town sat armed with clipboards, cards, and the particular energy of people who have nothing to lose.
Glamma sat at the head, as was cosmically appropriate.
Goldie and Gladys flanked to her right and left, respectively, while Martha sat on Gladys’s other side—all of them like generals dressed up for the occasion.
Delaney stood near the sideboard, pretending to be deeply interested in the watercolor that hung there. We’d both needed a minute after that last round. For composure. For distance. For the ability to remain impartial.
I wasn’t sure why her need for composure had started to matter to me.
Or why anything mattered more than keeping the animal yoga event from devolving into a public disaster, but my brain had been … less than helpful lately. Fixating on details. Or more specifically on her.
Delaney’s hair was down tonight. Black, wavy, purple ends catching the low light. She wore a soft-looking, pink cardigan over a T-shirt, and apparently, I was cataloging her wardrobe now. Great. I had a new hobby … noticing small things about Delaney Hart.
I adjusted my glasses and looked back at the lake.
Glamma clapped once, and it boomed throughout the room. “Alright. It’s time for the next event of the evening.”
She said event with the gravity of a WWE ring announcer.
Delaney’s eyes narrowed. “Please tell me it’s not another compatibility test.”
“Oh no, it’s something much better,” Goldie assured her, pressing both hands to her chest as if she were trying to contain her excitement.
My spine locked up immediately.
“This will be fun!” Martha shimmied in her seat. An actual shimmy.
I didn’t think Martha knew what the word fun really meant. “Fun,” I repeated, “is a relative term.”
Coco trotted between the chairs, paused at my feet, and gazed up at me with an expression of profound disappointment.
I stared back. “Why are you judging me?”
Delaney snorted. “Because she has eyes.”
Glamma fanned out a new stack of cards like she was about to do a magic trick. “We’re playing a game.”
Delaney finally turned around. “What kind of game?”
“One that lets us see how well you two know each other.”
“No,” I said immediately.
“Oh, yes,” Glamma replied, using the same tone she used to use on the old mayor when she was telling him to stop being stupid at the town hall meetings.
I scoffed. “We barely know each other. We can’t even stand to be in the same room together without arguing for long.”
Delaney nodded in agreement.
“We’ll separate the two of you to start,” Gladys said, pushing through our futile efforts to not participate. “You’ll each answer questions about the other, and then we’ll reveal your responses.”
Delaney’s face shifted from suspicious to horror in a matter of seconds. Her gaze cut to mine. “Are you—” She glanced at the cards, then at Glamma. “Are you seriously having us play the Newlywed Game?”
“We are not newlyweds,” I said, the words coming out strangled.
“We are not anything,” Delaney finished. Her cheeks reddened, and fire blazed in her eyes.
“No one said you were.” Gladys pointed her pen at us, giving us a look that suggested we were the ones being ridiculous.
Martha tipped her head as though in deep thought. “Although, statistically, with the percentage of single people in this town—”
“Stop,” Delaney demanded, her voice shrill.
Glamma waved a hand. “It’s not for romance. It’s partnership bonding. You’re building a successful event, you need to know how the other one works.”
“That’s what spreadsheets and practice run-throughs are for,” I muttered.
“And email,” Delaney added.
“And a healthy professional distance,” I offered.
The four women observed us like we were mildly entertaining.
Coco barked once.
“I agree, my sweets.” Glamma scooped her up and kissed her head.
“I need to formally object to this,” Delaney said.
“Objection noted,” Goldie said, already standing, clipboard tucked under one arm. “And denied.”
“You can’t just—”
“I lit candles,” Glamma said serenely. “And set the intention for a successful yoga partnership. You can’t just leave now.”
Delaney stared at her. “That is not legally binding.”
“Spiritually it is,” Goldie said.
“I don’t—”
“Spiritually,” Goldie repeated, slower, as though Delaney hadn’t understood the word.
“I know all about setting intentions,” Delaney grumbled and focused on me. Her expression said: If you laugh, they will never find your body.
I controlled my face completely, except for one corner of my mouth that had, apparently, decided to act independently. I pressed it back down.
Her eyes narrowed to slits.
Right. Serious. Serious event. Serious partnership. Serious—
Gladys touched my arm. “Right this way, Doc.”
“Where are we—” I began, but she was already steering me toward the small sitting room off of the dining room.
The sitting room had been arranged for maximum psychological discomfort—two chairs angled toward one like an interrogation setup. Martha carried in a plate of buttery croissants and placed it on the side table with great ceremony. “I need the carbs.”
Gladys sat across from me, clipboard poised. Martha perched on the chair next to her.
Martha tapped her pen against her clipboard. “Above all, you must answer honestly.”
“I always answer honestly.”
Gladys’s brows lifted. “Oh, honey.” She wrote on her clipboard before I said a word.
They moved fast. Questions tumbling over each other, not giving me time to be strategic.
“What does Delaney drink when upset?”
“How does she behave when she’s overwhelmed?”
“What does she pretend doesn’t bother her?”
“What would she choose first for an event she’s planning? The hardest part or the easiest?”
“What’s her favorite color?”
I answered them. Efficiently. Factually.
Too factually.
At some point, I realized I didn’t have to think.
The answers were just there, waiting. Like the fact that she always touched her necklace when she was agitated.
Or that she stirred her coffee like she was trying to summon a portal when she was angry.
Or that her purple aesthetic, while totally her, was not technically her favorite color.
I knew a lot of things about Delaney Hart. I had apparently been collecting them without realizing it, the way you collect receipts you never plan to need and find them all at once at the bottom of a junk drawer.
Gladys’s pen scratched out my responses.
“This is a lot of detail,” Martha said at one point, sounding gleeful.
“It’s incidental observations,” I replied.
“Is it now?” Gladys didn’t look up from her clipboard.
“Final question.” Martha leaned forward. “What does Delaney need when she’s emotionally hurting?”
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.
The question sat there.
I searched through my memories. Of the summers we’d spent in each other’s orbit.
The times she had come back to visit her aunt over the years.
The look on her face when her parents hadn’t shown up for our big presentations—how I’d asked directly because I noticed and didn’t understand why it was the wrong thing to do.
“She needs someone to stay,” I said. My voice came out quieter than I’d intended. “Long enough that she stops waiting for them to leave.”
Silence.
Martha’s expression softened into something almost maternal.
Gladys’s pen stopped moving.
I stared at the carpet and deeply wished for a trapdoor to open up.
Fuck it all.
I knew I couldn’t completely blame my younger self. That version of me was still trying to understand social cues. Trying to figure out why I sometimes pissed people off, made them sad, or just didn’t want to talk to me.
“Interesting choice of words,” Gladys said gently.
“It's a logical assessment,” I insisted.
“Sure,” Martha said, in a tone that meant the opposite.
I shoved my glasses up the bridge of my nose. We were here because of an event we needed to plan. One whose timetable had been sped up. An event that could make or break whether or not the animal shelter got the money it needed to stay open.
Tonight should have been about planning.
About logistics.
Not about feelings.
From the dining room Goldie’s laugh rang out, followed by Delaney’s voice—severe, defensive—then a sound that was unmistakably Delaney sputtering. I couldn’t make out the words.
But I could picture the scenario. Delaney cornered. Delaney resisting. Delaney trying to not let anyone see she cared.