Chapter 27 #2
“Fine!” She yanked the paper from her pocket, closed the distance between them, and slapped it into his hand.
“Fine!” she yelled again. “You want proof? There. Look at that. It’s going to tell you that I have a big fucking loan out on this whole place, and that if I don’t pay it in thirty days, they’re going to start foreclosure.
How’s that for perfect, Zander? Perfect Penny Becker is about to lose the family farm.
” Penny swiped at her cheeks angrily. “You want to know the best part? They don’t know.
My mom and Mimi. They don’t know I put their house at risk, the life they built for all of us.
They don’t know that I let Henry talk me into some stupid idea that didn’t amount to anything but ballooning interest rates and a mess I can’t dig myself out of! ”
Penny breathed hard as Zander circled around her words—big fucking loan, they don’t know, some stupid idea—until he could piece it together.
Her air of panic about the festival, her ominous comments about the future, the way she’d shot down his expensive culinary station idea so quickly: it all clicked.
“This is why when you talk about the Honey Festival, you seem so desperate. You need it to be successful so you can pay toward the loan.”
Penny drooped like a thirsty flower, the fury he’d helped her work up draining from her face. He ate up the space between them and wrapped his arms around her, rubbing a hand on her back as her face pressed into his chest.
After a moment she stepped away and walked slowly to sit on her front stoop. Zander followed, sitting beside her and pulling out the paper she’d thrust at him. Hearing it all from Penny’s perspective was what mattered, so he kept the page folded and handed it back to her.
“I’m proud of you for telling me.”
She grumbled, “You didn’t give me much choice.” Then, quieter, “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I was afraid you wouldn’t like me if you knew how much I messed up.”
He tugged her braid. “Don’t you remember, baby? I hated you when I thought you were perfect. I like you so much more now because I know you can mess up just like me.”
Silence settled for a moment, broken only by the drumming of a woodpecker somewhere nearby. Zander rubbed Penny’s back and watched an occasional bee fly by, and eventually Penny started to talk.
She told him about being deeded her family’s property, about Henry’s plan to ferment cider and the ways it had gone awry, about being saddled with a debt she was too ashamed to reveal.
Zander held her hands as she told him about the piling-on of additional challenges—slower sales, her grandmother’s health, and a poor harvest the year before.
“I made the payments for a while,” she explained. “Until I couldn’t. And then the interest rate went up, and I was just—it was dumb, to trust Henry with so much. He said it would all work out, and I wanted so badly for it to be true. I thought maybe I had a partner, you know?”
Zander nodded even as he burned from the inside, ready to go after every man who’d ever walked out of Penny’s life.
“But the lender was shit and the builder was shit,” Penny continued.
“And then one day I was like, ‘You know what? Henry is shit, too. This would be easier on my own.’ And now here I am. I’d hoped that the festival would do well enough that I could start managing the loan again and I’d never have to tell my family.
It’s sad that my goal was to keep it secret forever, but it’s the truth.
But then RJ—he’s the only one I’ve ever told about this—he told me today that by not telling you what was happening, I was keeping you from seeing all of me. ”
She sniffed. “And I’ve been doing that with my mom and Mimi, you know? By not letting them know what’s going on, I’m not letting them know me. Then I get mad at them for not knowing, and I shut myself off more and—”
“And it’s a really big pothole.”
“Yeah.” Her gravelly laugh was halfway to a sob.
Zander wanted to see the loan contract, to examine her books. He wanted to look into this shady lender and track down Henry and make him pay. He wanted to solve every problem Penny had ever had. But that had to be up to her.
“You said you needed help. Is there something specific you need from me?”
“Actually, yes.” She stood and wiped her palms along her jeans. “I need you to walk me to my mom’s house. I need you to stand there while I go inside, and then I need you to stay there for five minutes in case I try to run back out.”
Zander rose and took her hand. “I can do that. I can definitely do that.”
It was a quiet walk, everything in the trees resting in the midday heat.
They passed the gardens, where squash vines wound between staked tomatoes.
Penny stopped to pick a sprig of peppermint and squish it between her fingers.
They didn’t talk, because they didn’t need to.
He knew Penny was preparing, and he was doing just what she needed.
And somewhere deep in his chest, something was cracking open as Zander did some preparation of his own.
When they got to the house, he kissed her face where it was still damp with her tears, then gave her a friendly nudge up the steps.
And five minutes later, he headed for home, a sense of urgency propelling him down the path he’d worn through the grass. He moved quickly around his living room and up the steps two at a time, until he was standing in front of Papou’s bedroom door.
He hadn’t opened it since that first week in Sullivan’s Glen.
But if Penny Becker could turn a corner today, maybe he could, too.