Chapter 16
The product stickers were designed and rush-ordered, arriving the day before the first official tour of Carver Maple Farm, performed, much to May’s chagrin, by James.
I was admittedly curious to see how James Carver, a man of few words, would manage a customer-facing task like a tour. Since customers were brought to the sugar shack for part of it, I was able to witness it for myself.
James was a natural—something I had not expected.
I supposed he’d watched his parents run tours his whole childhood.
Not only was he natural, though, he managed to sell a dozen boxes of baked goods, six jars of syrup, and solicited twenty dollars in donations for the elementary school library.
Apparently, Emma Harper had seen him in town and asked if the farm would participate in the competition too.
I decided on the amber maple syrup for the bars, then added a glaze to the top, hoping that would be enough. I wasn’t totally satisfied, but I’d promised product to a couple of town businesses, and this was what we had to work with.
The packaging made me happy. Small brown paper bags with a place for the maple farm sticker and a window just above it with a view to the baked goods within. We closed the bags with a smaller product label sticker. May was in love with the result.
Following my shift at Keller’s on Thursday, I spent an hour at the stables and the rest of the afternoon baking in the sugar shack, then packaging products, which James helped with. Each day, a bit of his reserve seemed to melt away like a steady spring thaw.
I loaded up my car Friday morning to take bags to Rosie at Once Upon an Inn and Juliet at The Velvet Wick.
My car, however, had other plans. Like not starting.
I took in a big, slow breath after trying multiple times. Unlike with the truck, this wasn’t a matter of not knowing the car was manual. It was a matter of driving an old piece of junk.
I dialed Rosie’s twin, Dominic, who’d been my go-to mechanic. He wasn’t one. He was just handy and nice to me because I was Ryan’s little sister. I was too poor to afford a real mechanic.
“Sadie!” he said. “I’m gonna go out on a limb and assume this isn’t a friendly catch-up call.”
“I’m so sorry!”
“Car troubles?” There was smiling sympathy in his voice.
“Dead. Just…so dead. Maybe forever this time.”
“No way. We’ll bring her back to life. Any way you can get her to my place?”
“For sure,” I said, as though I kept a fleet of tow trucks ready at all times.
I considered calling Ryan, only to dismiss the thought for the same reason I’d dismissed it last time: I wasn’t about to tell him to come tow me from Carver property.
I hadn’t heard from him since I’d babysat Mia at the stables.
The silence could have been good, bad, or neutral.
Thankfully, I had plenty of work to keep me from overanalyzing which.
Regardless, I had just one option. The same one as last time: ask James for help.
One quick, humbly executed call to James, and within a few minutes, he was leaning over the open hood of my car. He insisted on checking the battery, which, from all we could tell, was fine—which was welcome news because I’d replaced it four months ago.
He tested a couple other things, then closed the hood. “It’s something beyond the scope of my knowledge, which is pretty limited, but it also means it may not be a quick fix.”
Oh, joy.
He backed the truck up so the hitch was close to the hood of my car. He rummaged around in the truck cab for a minute and emerged with a strap.
“Can you at least teach me how to do this?” I asked. “I hate standing here like a waste of space.”
He smiled. “Of course. Come on over.”
One end of the strap slipped over his truck’s hitch, while the other had to be attached under my bumper.
We crouched down, reaching under it and sliding our hands around, looking for a loop or hook. By some miracle, I found it. Today was all about small wins.
“How do you know how to do this?” I asked as he guided me through the process of attaching the strap.
He stood and brushed off his hands. “Lots of forest visitors have car trouble.”
I felt another flash of jealousy for his experiences. His competence. What good was I in a tricky situation?
“You’ll have to sit in the driver seat of your car,” he said. “You’ll need to brake and steer, but without power, it’ll take a lot more strength to do.”
He gave me a few more pointers about what to do on the ride to Dom’s, promising he’d drive slowly and that a quick honk from me would alert him to any issues.
We arrived at Dom’s without incident, another small win for the day.
James gave him a rundown of the things he’d checked.
“Hm,” Dom said as he tinkered with a few things under the hood. “Could be the fuel pump. I’ve gotta run, but I’ll get to work on it when I get back.”
I stopped myself from asking how much a fuel pump would run me. It was cheaper than buying another car.
James took me through the town to drop off goods to the inn and the candle shop, then we headed back to the farm.
Except we didn’t.
“Where are you going?” I asked as James turned the wrong way.
“We’re going to have a quick lesson.”
“Lesson?” I repeated. “On what?”
He brought the car to a stop on the side of the road, pulled up on the hand-brake, and looked at me. “Stick shift.”
I put up my hands. “Whoa, whoa, whoa.”
“You said you wanted to learn, right?”
“Yeah, but…”
He raised his brows. “How do you plan to get around while your car’s being worked on?”
I was quiet.
“I can pick you up every day,” he offered.
“What? No way.”
He shrugged. “I don’t mind.”
“I do.”
“Then you’d better learn to drive manual. You can borrow this truck until your car’s fixed.”
I pressed my lips together, annoyed that both of the options he was presenting inconvenienced him.
“What if I can’t learn?” I asked.
“You can. You just have to get the hang of it.”
I looked out at the street. The Ednas—our resident town gossips—were crossing up ahead, deep in conversation.
“Can we at least go somewhere where I won’t kill anyone accidentally?”
He laughed softly and took off the hand-brake. “Sure.”
He drove us out of town, and my heart skipped when he took the turnoff toward Makeout Ridge.
Obviously, he wasn’t taking me to the Ridge, but the last time I’d been on this road had been years ago when a guy named Patrick had driven me there.
I wondered how many times James had come here. Had this been where he’d kissed Lily?
The offhand thought sent a shot of something through my chest. Something like jealousy.
I shoved it aside, but it reminded me of James’s words. I envy you.
“Did you really mean what you said the other day—about envying me?” I asked.
He glanced at me, then returned his eyes to the road. He readjusted his grip on the steering wheel. “Yeah.”
It was as unfathomable to me now as it had been then. “Why?”
It was quiet.
“You’ve seen beautiful things,” I said. “Learned valuable skills. Gone new places and met new people. I’ve had the same job, the same car, the same everything since before you left. My life is like a never-ending rerun of the same episode—only, I get older. What’s there to envy about that?”
He was quiet as we passed the turn to Makeout Ridge, giving me a quick glimpse of the view over the town and the hills surrounding it.
It was pretty spectacular any time of year, but never more so than now, with the kaleidoscope of colorful leaves on still-full trees.
In a few weeks, it would look almost unrecognizable, a tangle of bare branches.
“You’re part of a family and community who loves and appreciates you, Sadie. You live in the best town in the world—and you belong in it.”
I stared at his profile in silence.
I didn’t know what I’d expected him to respond, but it certainly hadn’t been that.
When James had left Autumn Ridge, word had been that he’d backpacked around the country for a while. After a few months, word had faded, and nobody had seemed to know where he was. Or maybe they’d just stopped caring.
I’d assumed he’d left with a good riddance, happy to move on to bigger and better things.
That wasn’t what it sounded like.
He pulled the car to the side of the road, which was deserted. I wasn’t sure I’d ever even been on this stretch before.
He parked and turned off the car. “Ready?”
I took in a big breath. “Maybe you should be asking yourself that question.”
“Have a little faith in yourself, Sadie.” He opened his door.
We switched spots, and I glanced at the three pedals warily. I only had two feet. “Is there a reason you brought us up in the hills? Wouldn’t somewhere flat be better?”
“This road is pretty flat. Just enough variation to require some shifting. But first, you need to know how a manual transmission works.” He talked me through the clutch function first, then the different gears before even having me turn on the car.
Once the engine was running, he had me depress the clutch and put my hand on the gear shift. Resting his hand over mine, he guided me through the motions to get to the different gears.
I forced myself to listen to his words instead of fixating on the feel of his hand on mine, which seemed to be sending my heartrate, rather than the car, into different gears.
“How do I know when to switch?” I asked once it was back in neutral and his hand was gone.
He looked at me for a second. “There’s a guide I can teach you, but I think it’s more helpful to do it by heart. You’ve got to listen to the engine. You’ll learn to recognize when it needs to shift up or down based on the sound.”
“Or,” I said, “you could just give me the guide.”
The corner of his mouth lifted. “Not yet. You ready to try the first couple of gears? Don’t worry if you accidentally kill the engine or something. You’ll get it. Just go slow. As slow as you need.”
I took in a big breath and pressed in the clutch.
The next two minutes were like reaching the end of an abruptly ending rollercoaster. Over and over and over.