Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
OLIVIA
“So we have to pick fruit?” Annabelle asked, looking skeptical.
Olivia laughed as they walked through the straw-filled parking lot of Engelbert’s Apple Orchard at the edge of Fairwick Falls.
“We only have to pick apples if you want to. I loved doing this when I was a kid. We would pick apples and take silly pictures. Then we would bring a jug of apple cider home, heat it up, and cozy up on the couch.”
“Yeah, let’s do that,” AB said with an excited smile.
The sun was already golden in the afternoon as a few families walked into the pretty orchard.
She squeezed AB’s hand firmly, as AB had a tendency to run.
It had been a solid week of nannying thus far, with cozy mornings full of pancakes and muffins and afternoons spent doing homework and making up silly games.
Annabelle needed to write about fall for her assignment (one whole sentence!), and Olivia had asked Luca if he was okay if they went to one of Olivia’s favorite hometown spots.
Olivia paid the entrance fee and grabbed a small wicker basket.
“Catch me, ’Livia!” AB said.
“Annabelle,” she said, running after her, though luckily she easily caught up with AB as they dissolved into laughter, chasing each other around the apple trees.
They walked through each row around the small orchard, picking only one apple from each tree. AB had been very concerned they’d make a tree sad if they left any of them out.
She liked her thinking, so they visited every tree so no one would get too lonely or too empty.
They paid for their basket of small apples and sat at a picnic table. Olivia got out a notebook. “Let’s think about what you want to write,” she said, handing AB a pencil.
The joy went out of AB’s eyes. “The lines are too little,” Annabelle whined. She grabbed the pencil with her whole fist, looking annoyed.
“Just do your best,” Olivia said, crunching on a fresh-picked apple warm from the sun.
“I,” AB said slowly, drawing a wobbly letter i. “Luv…”
“Love is spelled L-O-V-E.”
AB sighed and erased it hard, so hard that the paper started to pull.
“V…E… How do you spell apples?” AB said with a quizzical look up at Olivia.
“How do you think?”
AB sighed in existential dread. “That’s a really hard word, ’Livia,” AB said, thunking her head down on the notebook.
Olivia swallowed a laugh. “You know what? It is. That’s fair. How about this? Ah. What does that sound like?”
“A?”
“Great. And then a p. And a p.”
Annabelle drew both p’s backwards, looking like q’s.
Olivia watched closely. “L-E-S. Good job, that’s a great first draft.”
“What’s a draft?” Annabelle asked.
“Like when we practice in dance. We’ll go home and you can write it on your piece of paper. We can work on it together.”
Olivia’s eyes caught on the backwards letters that looked so much like what she’d written on her own homework as a kid.
“Can you write your name?” Olivia asked, innocently enough.
Annabelle wrote out her full name, but her b was backwards. And her e’s were out of order in her name.
Olivia’s intuition tingled.
She’d done the exact same thing as a kid. Gotten her letters too close together or mangled, usually backwards.
For some kids, it was just part of how they learned. For her, it had been ongoing. Unfortunately, the Fairwick Falls Elementary School hadn’t had enough training, and no one had figured out until she was in high school that she was dyslexic.
She’d struggled over every assignment in school, getting Bs and Cs at best. Olivia had been the odd one out in her family. While her brother, mom, and dad all were incredibly book smart, she’d only excelled at dancing.
It was why it was so important that she actually be good at it.
It’s the only thing I have going for me.
“Come on,” she said with a resigned sigh, hoping she was wrong. “Let’s get a quart of cider before we go.”
“Daddy,” AB yelled. Olivia turned to see Luca walking toward them.
Luca waved to Olivia as AB ran toward him through a small archway of apple trees bathed in golden light.
The setting sun was hitting just right, casting an orange glow against their skin.
He walked—no, swaggered in that lazy, sexy way of his.
Each muscle moved within his long-sleeve shirt as he walked, and her eyes traced the movement hungrily
He caught Annabelle with a bright—holy hell he was so handsome—smile and tossed her into the air, making her laugh.
Olivia’s heart wrenched at the sight of the pure love they had for one another. Luca was an amazing dad. He loved Annabelle with his whole heart, and it was obvious that everything he did, he did for her.
Emotion caught in her throat as she thought about the last time she’d talked to her dad. It was a short message on his birthday.
He’d been on a yacht somewhere and told her he’d call her back after speaking to a business partner. Which he’d never done.
She felt a guttural, primal pull toward the two of them as Luca walked with Annabelle upside down over his shoulder giggling, a bright smile on his face.
“Funny seeing you here,” he said with a happy smile. It warmed her down to her toes, that rare moment of joy on his face.
“Come here for all your apple cider needs?” Olivia asked, grinning flirtatiously.
He slid AB from his shoulder and swung her down, a mess of giggles and swinging pigtails until she landed on her feet.
“I missed the apple picking?” Luca said with disappointment as he looked at the to-go basket Olivia had bought. His bottom lip pushed out just a little.
So. Fucking. Cute. And he doesn’t even know it.
She wanted to toss the basket over her shoulder so they could do it all over again.
“I can let you guys do your thing if you want to go again together.” Olivia started packing up her things into her purse.
“You’re going to leave? We don’t get cider?” AB said, looking hurt, as she leaned against Olivia’s arm.
Olivia smiled as she picked a leaf out of AB’s hair. “I don’t want to interrupt your time with your dad.”
Luca offered a hand to steady Olivia as she climbed out of the picnic table. Completely unnecessary, as she regularly spun on one toe, but she took it anyway.
“Come on, my treat,” he said with a smile.
AB whooped and Olivia concentrated on the feeling of his hand against hers, lingering on it, and finally dropped it once she was standing.
“’Livia used to come here as a kid.” AB said, swinging her dad’s hand.
“Yeah?” he said, arching an eyebrow at Olivia.
They started walking to the cider stand as yellow leaves tumbled by. She nodded. “How about you?”
“Not a lot of apple picking in my childhood,” he said with a quiet smile.
AB weaseled her way in between them to grab both of their hands.
Olivia swung her and AB’s arms. “My favorite cider was technically from this place in Massachusetts. But a couple years ago, they got involved with a mafia smuggling ring, apparently?”
Luca laughed in surprise. “A smuggling ring for apple cider? That’s nuts.”
Olivia laughed with him. “Right? It was a whole thing with the FBI. It was wild. So now.” She shrugged. “I just try to buy local.”
They looked through the jugs of flavored apple cider. Luca picked one and looked at the back of it for the ingredients.
She didn’t want him to think she wouldn’t have checked. “They don’t use any emulsifiers like wheat, but I would double-check, obviously, and send you the ingredients if we had bought anything. I know it’s in the craziest things.”
“I know,” he said quietly, glancing at her as he finished reading the ingredients. His eyes held hers with a kindness and warmth that took her breath away. “I trust you.”
She might as well have been a literal fucking peacock for how much she wanted to preen at that.
“I’m gonna go play,” AB said as she ran to a small playground where the photo-op cutouts were.
“Stay where I can see you,” Luca said, at the same time Olivia called, “Stay close.”
“Sorry,” Olivia said, closing her eyes and grimacing.
Don’t step on the parent’s toes, dummy. Number one rule of childcare.
“No, it’s fine,” Luca said, his tender stare warming every vein in her body.
His lips tended to twitch when he looked at her, as if he was fighting off a smile.
She loved it.
Luca’s eyes followed AB like a hawk to the playground. “She probably needs to hear it twice. She’s a little stubborn.”
“No,” Olivia said with sarcastic dismay.
He laughed and grabbed a second jug of the same original flavor. “She gets that from both her mom and me, I’m afraid.”
“You don’t talk about her a lot.” Olivia didn’t want to pry, but she was curious about the woman who created such a cool kid, and who Luca obviously had loved so much.
He shrugged. “It usually makes people feel uncomfortable.” They watched as AB went down slides and climbed on the equipment.
“You can talk to me anytime you want,” she said, with an encouraging smile. “Talking about my grandparents with my mom helped her a lot when they passed, I think.”
Luca stared at AB and quickly nodded at Olivia. “Marcy was special. We were friends as kids in school. After high school, we sort of fell into dating. She was a tattoo artist,” he said, holding up his arm. A small tattoo that said ‘For Our Future’ ran along the inside of his bicep.
Olivia nodded, understanding why he was probably covered in ink then. “I see you took advantage of the friends and family discount,” she said with a smile.
He laughed. “Perks of being engaged to a great artist.” They wandered over to the playground fence and leaned on it.
“You were never married?”
“When we got pregnant, I wanted to do the right thing. I loved her, and she loved me. It had been a slow slide from childhood. I wanted to start life off the right way with her. We were saving for a wedding and...” He shook his head, trailing off. “Then a drunk driver changed it all.”
“That must have been hard.”
He nodded. “She loved AB so much. Was so excited to do mom stuff. She loved Annabelle so completely in every moment. She was so present and she never missed a moment when she was alive. Unlike me.”
Oliva shook her head with a frown. “Luca, you’re doing amazing. Anyone can see you’re a great dad. You’ve uprooted your whole life to make sure she gets what she needs.”
Luca sighed, looking hopeful, like maybe she’d relieved some of the unnecessary pressure he put on himself.
“That’s why I have to get everything settled with the shop.
In case something happens to me, I want to make sure AB is taken care of, and we get to have as many good memories as soon as possible.
I want her to love her childhood, love school. ”
They watched as AB went down slides and climbed on the equipment.
I should tell him about the spelling thing.
But would that be overstepping?
But if she could save just one kid from her same fate in school…
“We were working on homework,” Olivia said tentatively.
No, keep your mouth shut. You don’t even know what you’re talking about.
“Did she do okay?” Luca said, walking up to the register with the jugs of cider.
Olivia reached for her wallet. “Let me—”
He waved her away. “My treat. What about her homework?”
Olivia sighed. “AB wrote some letters backwards. P’s and b’s. She also mixed up the order of some letters.”
“Isn’t that normal for kids?” He shrugged, handing her the jug he’d bought her.
She smiled as she took the cool plastic and held it against her. “It can be. I’m not an expert or anything, but I, um… I did the same thing for a long time, and it was missed. I’m dyslexic. I hated reading and hated school. I didn’t figure it out until it was too late.”
His brows furrowed as he looked at AB on the playground. “AB might be dyslexic?”
“Maybe talk to her teacher. It may not hurt to keep an eye on it. ”
“Was college better for you?” he said as they wandered to the fence on the playground.
There were piles of early leaves that had fallen, and Olivia enjoyed the crunch of a few as she walked through.
“No college.” She shrugged. “School was so painful, I couldn’t wait to not be in a classroom. I finished out high school and my apprenticeship in ballet school. Then, went straight to dancing professionally.”
He nodded, looking impressed her. “At eighteen? Impressive.”
Ah, there was that dopamine rush she craved.
“Seventeen, technically”—she shrugged and flipped her hair—“but who’s counting?” She smiled at herself.
“Thanks,” he said suddenly, stopping. “For this”—he gestured to the orchard surrounding them—“and for letting me know about the school thing.”
“Just don’t want her to have the experience I had, you know?” She shrugged. “She’s too sweet of a kid.”
He stared down at her with such warmth that goosebumps ran down her arms, like she’d been dipped in a hot bath. The cologne he wore drifted toward her on the breeze, and she forced herself to look him in the eye.
A heat grew there, and she was doing everything in her power not to stare at his lips.
AB ran to them, kicking up wood chips as she went.
“Are we gonna drink cider now?” She slammed into Olivia’s legs, and Olivia wrapped an arm around her, hugging her.
She crouched to meet AB at eye level. “I can’t, sweetie. I have to go back to work. I have a Zoom with a coach who gets to tell me all the ways I’m wrong in an hour.”
“Sounds like fun?” Luca said, grimacing.
“It’ll be good for me,” Olivia said with a resigned sigh. She was eager to get better, but the process would be a little painful. “Hey, kiddo, I’ll see you tomorrow morning, bright and early.”
AB cheesed up at her with hope in her eyes. “Can I have four pigtails tomorrow?”
“Annabelle,” Luca said with a sigh. “Olivia is not your personal hair stylist.”
“How about,” Olivia said, “if we both wear pigtails, then there will be four.” She gave Annabelle a challenging look.
“Deal.” AB nodded.
They high-fived, low-fived, and twirled like a ballerina for their signature handshake.
She looked up to catch Luca’s eyes. He looked confused, gulped without saying anything, as if trying to figure something out.
Had she done something wrong?
He waved silently to her and she mirrored him.
Olivia walked to the car and was already missing them as she heard AB giggle with her dad.
She’d only seen them a little over a week. But she’d been feeling even more lonely than usual when she was alone these days.
She’d forgotten what it felt like to be surrounded by people who genuinely cared about you and who made you happy. She’d never really found a home in all the years she’d been away.
The afternoon sun turned into an evening orange, painting each leaf she walked through the apple orchard. She grazed a steady tree trunk with her hand, savoring the grounded feeling of being here..
If only I could find a home like my hometown.