CHAPTER FIVE #3
His cheeks were a little red, too. “Anytime. I mean… not that I think you fall a lot or anything.” He grinned, and my stomach turned a flip. Wow. When he smiled, he took my breath away. I grinned back.
“I think they’re getting ready to eat. Let’s go.
” And we walked companionably over to the picnic tables.
They were beautifully decorated for the occasion, as usual.
Mom, Mrs. Whittaker, and Siobhan were fantastic at that sort of thing.
Mrs. Whittaker always said she wasn’t happy unless she was feeding around twenty people.
She came from a big Irish American family in New York, but she rarely went back home.
Just from hints she’d dropped, I wasn’t sure her family was so happy she’d left home and moved all the way to Georgia.
Then there was the mystery surrounding Callum’s birth.
He wasn’t Hawthorne’s son, and he’d been just a little guy when Orla had married him.
I didn’t have a clue what had happened between her and whoever Callum’s dad was. No one ever talked about it.
I knew he’d been up to New York a few times to visit his biological dad or his mother’s family, but he never discussed the visits with any of us. Not even his actual brothers and sister. After a while, we quit asking.
We all sat down to eat, and soon the talking and laughing took over. I didn’t feel quite so awkward around Edward anymore. At least my embarrassing fall had broken the ice.
I glanced over at Livy. She was still staring openly at Lufton, who was loving every minute of it.
Aidan was unusually quiet, even for him, and I noticed he watched them from time to time.
Athena, his goat, bleated and bucked around under the table near him.
She was begging for food almost like a dog would.
Davenport the pig looked at Athena with disdain.
I swear I think he rolled his eyes at the goat, but I couldn’t be sure.
Willa and Siobhan were giggling together and taking turns staring at first Edward, then Lufton. Typical thirteen-year-old behavior.
“Orla,” Mom said to Mrs. Whittaker, “you’ve outdone yourself. I don’t know where you find the time to learn to cook new things, but somehow you do.”
“Do you mean you cooked all of this yourself?” Mrs. Ashton looked horrified.
She had been so quiet I hadn’t even noticed that she’d stayed for the party.
She looked very uncomfortable. She was wearing a beautiful pantsuit and heels, but it had to be over eighty-five degrees even in the shade.
She was an elegant woman, with frosted blonde hair, makeup always done, just the right pieces of jewelry—she always looked perfect in a 1950s housewife kind of way.
But right now, she really didn’t. She just looked out of place.
Like a polar bear on a Florida beach, or a penguin in the Mississippi River.
Mom and Orla had on pretty sundresses and sandals, and both wore their hair up. They looked cool and comfortable. They looked just right. “Oh, yes, I cook all the time. Look at all these strapping boys I have to feed.” Mrs. Whittaker replied, laughing.
“You don’t have a cook?” It wasn’t sinking in for Mrs. Ashton.
“I’m the cook,” she laughed. “I love it, actually. Now, I do have more than one maid to clean up after these heathens, but I don’t want a cook. That’s my thing.” She said firmly, but nicely.
Mrs. Ashton smiled nervously. “What about you, Charity?” she asked my mother.
“Oh, our cook is basically part of the family. We adore her. Sometimes I think the kids like her more than they like me. I do have trouble keeping maids, though. It’s because I kind of let the kids run wild, like a pack of very pretty wolves,” Mom laughed.
I think Mrs. Ashton tried to laugh, but no sound came out. It was easy to see that she agreed with our maids; Mom let us run wild, and Mrs. Ashton didn’t think highly of that.
I looked at Edward. He was listening to all of this, and I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. “I think your mom is scandalized by how we all live.”
“Oh, she is,” he said, not even trying to hide it, “but deep down, I think she’d like to be more like your mother and Mrs. Whittaker. I think she’d like to be friends with them.”
“Really? She seems so much more… formal than they are.” I had been going to say ‘stiff’ but thought that sounded mean.
“She’s very reserved,” he agreed. “I think if my father didn’t have so much of an influence on her, she would have turned out differently. She loves to laugh and have a good time, you know.”
I couldn’t even picture that. “That would be nice to see. I hope she becomes friends with the mothers.”
“The mothers?”
“Oh, that’s what we all call them. Remember from last year? We’re over here so often and the Whittakers are at our place so much, we all treat the moms and the dads as kind of like all of our parents. Is that weird?” I asked, seeing the look on his face.
“No, it sounds pretty great, really. If I didn’t go to boarding school, I wish I could be a part of that, too.” His face looked so wistful. I felt sorry for him. “I know Lufton feels the same way. We talked about it after having to leave y’all last summer.”
I put my hand over his, to provide a little comfort, but it created a kind of zing of awareness between us instead.
He stared down at me with such intensity, I thought he was going to kiss me.
His eyes dropped to my mouth. There was something sort of electric between us as our hands touched, and I quickly moved mine away, smiling to cover up my confusion over the moment.
He regarded me thoughtfully and then went back to eating.
It was almost time for dessert when Willa interrupted everything. “I have a present for Declan. It wasn’t here in time for his birthday last week.” She handed him a carefully wrapped gift, surprising all of us. It was no secret how she felt about Dec.
He hesitated. “Should I be scared to open this?” his blue eyes looked wary.
She shrugged. “You’ll just have to see.” There was a gleam in her eyes I thought he should be afraid of.
He opened it and then looked at her in surprise. “How did you know I wanted this?” It was an ant farm.
“I heard you talking about it last year,” Willa said as if it was no big deal.
“Wow, uh, thanks, Willa.” He went to give her a hug, but she stepped back. “Ew, gross! Don’t touch me, weirdo. Also, if the ants happen to break out and crawl all over you, biting your face in the night, I wouldn’t be too upset.” She grinned, and it looked a little evil.
Declan paled slightly as he looked at the ant farm. He suddenly seemed less pleased with it. “That’s… a strangely specific thought.” He shuddered.
“Glad you like it,” she sang out, running off to play with the younger kids now that Declan had opened the present.
Declan looked at the rest of us with wide eyes. “Sometimes she scares me.”
I laughed. “You’re the only one she’s like that with.
She’s very proper and nice with the rest of us.
Too proper, really. She’s always telling on us when we do something wrong.
” I glanced back to see if Mom was looking or listening.
She wasn’t. “Not that my parents ever care. I think it makes Willa so mad.” I laughed. “Serves her right for telling on us.”
Edward was looking at me. “What do y’all do that’s so bad?”
“Oh, nothing really,” I said quickly. “Just sneaking out to swim at night, that kind of stuff.”
“Oh, look,” Livy said, “The geese want to be fed. Come on, Cara.”
I grabbed some crusts of bread from my plate and walked down to the pond with her. The pond was really more like a small lake. We swam here all summer long. The wind had whipped some small waves up, and they were slapping the sides of the floating dock in the middle of the water.
“Here goosy,” I called, tearing off a small piece of bread and offering it to the closest goose.
It was the gander, I realized. He was never as friendly as the lady geese.
He wouldn’t take the crust from me. I shrugged and dropped it on the ground in front of him.
He still didn’t take it, instead waddling a couple of steps closer to me.
I frowned. Was he being… aggressive? I started to turn around, but at that moment I noticed a strange look in his eyes.
A cold, hard look.
Like he wanted to hurt me. Did geese bite? Did they attack people? He suddenly lowered his head, stretched out his neck, and hissed while running at me.
I had my answer.
I turned and ran.
Olivia laughed at me for running at first, but then she started screaming.
“What?” I cried, still running. I looked over my shoulder to see he was chasing me, honking and hissing, big wings flapping wildly. And he looked pissed.
“Oh my God!” I screamed, trying to get away, but he was too fast for me. The goose grabbed the back of my sundress with his beak and held on tight. I ran as fast as I could, and he half flew, half ran behind me, beating my legs with his powerful wings.
Vaguely, from the corner of my mind, I heard Declan say, “I think maybe we should sign her up for the Olympics. I’ve never seen someone run that fast!” I ignored him.
I looked to my left and saw a group of stunned faces watching the scene unfold.
To my right was water. Neither way seemed like a good option.
I didn’t know how to escape the goose. I tried running faster, but that just made him fly harder, his wings hitting me with greater force and hurting my legs even more.
I wasn’t far from the little kids now. They were playing badminton straight ahead of me.
Even in my panicked state, I knew I couldn’t lead the goose in their direction.
Athena the goat approached with her head down as if she was going to head butt the goose, and I almost breathed a sigh of relief. But then the goose turned on her, hissing, and Athena bleated in fear. She hightailed it back to the safety of Aidan’s arms and left me to my own defenses.