Chapter 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Winnie checked the written list in her hand against the mental checklist in her head, jotting three more items down on the paper.
There really was an awful lot of stuff she needed for this historical society event.
Then, muttering to herself as she clicked off each item, she made certain that everything was present and accounted for.
It wasn’t easy. Her front hallway looked like one of those overstuffed storage units from that television show where they busted open units that had been abandoned by their owners.
The historian in Winnie loved that show.
She loved seeing that kind of wild things people shoved away and then avoided, what things they decided were important enough to keep for a while but not forever.
She found, however, that she liked it a whole lot more on television than she did in her own home. Fortunately, there was only an hour left before Cadence, Tyler, Diana, and Anthony came over to help her transport everything to the town square, where they would set up for the event.
“This idea felt a lot more fun when I didn’t have to think about the stuff,” she told a stack of folded-up tables. Even disassembled, they made it almost impossible to move back and forth across her house.
Despite her comment, not to mention the fact that she’d started talking to inanimate objects, Winnie was excited for the carnival.
Everyone in her department had shown enthusiasm for the idea, and most of them had offered suggestions.
Historians loved talking about their period of interest, after all.
Even her friends had gotten excited after the conversation at book club. It was another point for Shane’s advice. Opening up with her friends had given them reason to care about both her and her project.
And thank goodness. Winnie’s little car would have needed about forty-seven trips to and from the town square to carry everything.
Thank goodness Tyler Meadows, Cadence’s husband with whom she’d separated and reconciled earlier in the year, worked as an electrician and had a truck he was willing to donate to the cause.
Also, he’d been willing to fix the cornhole boards. Thank double goodness. They’d been haunting Winnie. They seemed so simple to fix and yet, the solution had remained elusive.
Winnie had just sat down after doing one very last check of her checklist when she was startled by a knock at her door. She glanced at her watch, surprised. Her friends-slash-assistants weren’t due for a little while longer.
And indeed, they weren’t at her door. Instead, it was Shane.
“You’re wearing the sweater!” he exclaimed in lieu of greeting.
On instinct, she looked down at herself, although she didn’t really need to do so.
She had been thinking about the sweater all day and had caught herself stroking its soft weave more than once.
It really was the most pleasant fabric. It was too generous of a gift too, but now that she’d worn it, she knew she would never have given it back, not in a million years.
“I seriously, seriously love it,” she said. “I know I said thank you, but imagine that I said it about four hundred more times and you’ll get halfway to how much I love it.”
He grinned. “Well, it looks seriously, seriously great on you,” he said, mimicking her wording. “I was wondering… do you have a minute to talk?”
Winnie absolutely wanted to talk to Shane… but she cast a rueful glance behind her at the massive piles of stuff.
“I’m kind of in the midst of something at the moment,” she said with regret.
He followed her glance, his eyebrows shooting up his forehead.
“Oh. Yeah. Wow, that’s a lot of stuff.” He paused, frowning. “There was not nearly this much stuff when I was here last.”
She chuckled. “It’s not mine,” she said. “It’s for the carnival event. I’m getting ready to move stuff over there. I have to organize all this into loads for cars and Tyler Meadows’ truck.”
“I can help,” he offered.
She hadn’t wanted to ask, since he’d helped her in so many ways and with so many things already. But if he was offering.
“If you can help, I can talk while we organize,” she suggested.
“Perfect. Put me to work.”
They started with the big stuff, all the things that wouldn’t fit in any vehicle besides Tyler’s pickup truck.
Once all the tables were out on Winnie’s porch, the hallway was a great deal clearer and her front closet was accessible again.
This was important, as it was also full of stuff for the event.
“So,” Shane said when they had a break in between maneuvering the big things and could just shift the stacks of boxes outside. “I wanted to ask you… well, the other night, I had a really great time.”
“Me too,” she said. She found even his stammering to be adorable. She really was a disaster when it came to any interpersonal relationships, let alone the ones with someone she had recently kissed.
“And, um.” He gave her a shy smile. “Well, I was hoping that we could date. You know, for real. Like a date where we both know it’s a date before we leave our houses.”
Winnie hesitated, biting her lip.
“I do want that,” she assured him, lest he mistake her silence. “I’m just a little worried about getting more emotionally involved, if you’re heading back to California soon.”
Shane nodded like he had anticipated this.
“I know that my immediate future is really up in the air,” he acknowledged. “But I just really want to get to know you better, Win. I want to get to know you more. Because everything I’ve seen so far… I like all of it.”
Winnie felt certain that she had to be even brighter pink than her sweater at this point. It wasn’t just the flattery that made her flush either. It was that he said it like he really meant it.
“It’s not just that,” she confessed. “That might not even be my most pressing concern. I just…” He waited while she fiddled with the pendant she wore. “I guess I’m worried that some people in town might be, uh, skeptical. Given my overall reputation. About being not so friendly and everything.”
Shane gave her an indulgent look. “And by ‘some people in town,’ I assume you mean my sister.”
“Yeah, I definitely mean your sist—oh my gosh, your sister!”
Shane looked baffled at Winnie’s sudden yelp, but he looked over his shoulder to where Eleanor’s car was pulling into the driveway. Eleanor hadn’t seen her brother yet, but she was about to.
“Well,” he said reasonably, “she was going to find out eventually, and it’s not like we’re doing something—Winnie! What are you doing?”
It was his turn to suddenly yelp as Winnie grabbed him by the arms and tried to shove him into her hall closet.
“Just hide,” she said, knowing that she was being ridiculous and yet apparently unable to stop herself. “I—sorry. I’m sorry. Just. Please just hide.”
“Winnie, this closet is full of—are these blow-up soldiers?”
She was too busy shoving him inside to confirm that, yes, they were.
She hadn’t been able to get volunteers for the Civil War display, so there were inflatable mannequins wearing the uniforms. Blowing them up in advance had probably been a mistake, but also probably a smaller mistake than shoving Shane into a closet, but here she was.
Winnie clicked the door shut just as Eleanor came around the corner of the house from where she’d parked on Winnie’s driveway.
“Eleanor! Hey!” Winnie said, trying to sound casual and surprised. She sounded neither casual nor surprised. She sounded extremely weird.
Eleanor’s raised brows, so like those of her brother from just a minute ago, made Winnie feel as though she was about to shake apart with nerves.
“Hi, Winnie,” she said with exaggerated calm, as though she was hoping to reach one regular mood between them.
Winnie put her hands on her hips, then dropped them to her sides.
“What are you doing here?” she asked brightly.
Eleanor was looking around her like she expected someone to jump out and yell that she was being punked.
“Um, I wanted to run some potential future book club titles by you. I know it’s my turn to pick, but I’m stuck between a few, and I saw your car was here…”
She trailed off. Winnie was still trying to figure out what to do with her hands.
She’d never been a good liar, but she’d never really had much opportunity to practice the skill.
“Do you want to come inside?” Winnie asked, a beat too late in the conversation. “Like, all the way in? To the kitchen? Past all this stuff?”
“Are you okay?” Eleanor demanded. “I feel like I’m about to find out this is a hostage situation.”
Winnie’s laugh was extraordinarily awkward.
“Okay, I’m not sure what’s happening here, but if you need me, I am here for you,” Eleanor said kindly, still clearly completely baffled. “I will ask you about the books later though, because you’ve clearly got a lot going on at the moment.”
She gestured at all the stuff in the hallway, but Winnie was pretty sure that her weirdness was more of the issue.
“I like your sweater, though,” Eleanor said in a heroic effort to bring the level of normalcy back into acceptable range. “Did you get it at Diana’s shop?”
“Oh,” Winnie said, blinking down at the sweater. “I… think so.”
“You didn’t buy it yourself?”
Winnie inwardly chastised herself, because Eleanor wasn’t looking quite so confused anymore. She was looking downright suspicious, as if this detail had been the one to convince her that Winnie’s caginess was about more than just the riot of things in her hallway.
“Hm, no. But, by the way, did you see all this stuff for the event?”
Winnie’s attempts at deflection were just as bad as her efforts at lying.
“Was it a gift?” Eleanor asked, undeterred.
“Um, yeah. So, I’ve got all the tables out front. You saw those. And then there’s going to be stuff that goes on the tables. Different stuff. Historical stuff.”
Stop saying ‘stuff,’ she mentally scolded herself.