Chapter 10
Cade
Okay. I have a confession to make.
Aurelia Maplewood, Keeper of the Autumn Leaves, was single-handedly the most terrifying thing I had ever done in my life.
Even more terrifying than being a twenty year old kid in a suit standing in front of a room full of old, hot-headed, stubborn men who all thought I was out of my mind for wanting to buy a company that was basically already dead, and somehow convincing every single one of them that it was a great idea.
That had been terrifying. But at least it did not involve a leaf-green leotard squeezing my crotch.
The leotard was tight. Not snug. Not form-fitting.
Tight in a way that required me to suppress an unsettling urge to itch my crotch like a madman every single day, for six hours straight.
In front of twelve kids and Maple and Nancy.
And I had been suppressing it, quietly and professionally, with a tight smile on my face. Yes, that was tight too.
Honestly? That alone was fair punishment for the shit that came spewing out of my mouth that night. The leotard was justice. Plain, Cruel Justice.
And then there was the pulley.
Here is something I did not know about myself until Aurelia Maplewood entered my life: I was apparently terrified of being lowered slowly through the air on a small wooden platform while wearing a tutu.
I had jumped out of a plane. I had hung off the side of a cliff.
But something about the combination of the platform, the slow descent, the tutu, and the fact that my parents would be in the front row when that happened turned my legs into mush.
And I flailed.
There is no dignified way to say it. My arms would go out.
My legs went out. The tutu rose, and the leotard became very, very visible to the entire audience.
My parents, who named me after my grandfather and sent me to the best schools in the country and introduced me at every gala as the Managing Director of Sonnenberg Constructions, would be sitting in folding chairs watching this happen.
Well. That was something the small town paparazzi from The Chestnut Herald would fall on top of each other to capture.
But I was willing to do all of it. Every bit of it. If standing in front of the whole town in a fairy costume was what it took for Maple to see how sorry I was — how genuinely, completely, no-qualifier-attached sorry I was — then I was going to be the best Aurelia Maplewood this town had ever seen.
I would have danced naked on that stage if she needed me to.
I would have asked my parents not to come first. But I would have done it.
To make the performance fractionally less catastrophic, I had started coming in early to practice.
Maple had given me an extra set of keys three weeks ago so I could get in before the kids arrived to sweep and mop. I had been using those keys every morning at five-thirty to come in and run my lines, practice the twirl, and work on the shrill voice.
The shrill voice was a work in progress.
Aurelia Maplewood, according to Maple, had a voice like a small woodland creature who had inhaled helium.
I had been practicing this voice in the empty studio every morning for a week.
I had gotten better. I had also accepted that if anyone ever heard a recording of this practice, my entire professional reputation was over.
Worth it.
This particular morning I was mid-twirl in the studio, full tutu, working on keeping my arms in the right position while also not wobbling, which I had not yet mastered, when I heard the front door open.
I froze.
It was five-thirty in the morning. It was dark outside. Nobody should be here at five-thirty in the morning except me.
I switched off the studio light. I tiptoed out into the dark hallway, moving very carefully, very quietly, like a man who was absolutely not wearing an orange tutu and therefore had every right to be moving through a dark hallway at dawn—
I walked directly into something.
Something large and ceramic came hurling in the other direction.
There was a crash — not of breaking ceramic, thankfully, but of impact with a person— and a sound came out of my mouth.
I need to pause here and describe the sound.
It was shrill. It was high-pitched. It was, ahem, a shriek. The shrill voice I had been practicing for a week came out involuntarily, at full volume, in a dark hallway at five-thirty in the morning, and I sounded exactly like Aurelia Maplewood being startled by a woodland predator.
I hit the floor.
A beam of light came through the window and landed on the hallway.
Maple was standing over me, holding a large flower vase above her head like she was prepared to use it, squinting into the dark.
She squinted at me.
She looked at the tutu.
She started laughing.
It was a full laugh. Real, completely silent and completely uncontrolled. It was the kind of laugh I had been trying to get back for three weeks. One hand over her mouth, the other hysterically swirling the vase, shoulders shaking, the kind of laughing that takes over your whole body like a spasm.
I started laughing too. Partly because it was objectively funny, and partly because I would have fallen down a hundred hallways in a tutu if that laugh was the result.
She reached down and gave me her hand. I took it. She pulled and I got up. We stood in the dark hallway both still laughing.
There she was. There was my Maple.
I straightened the tutu. Dignity first.
“Sorry,” I said. “I was just practicing my lines.”
She squinted at me. The laughing had settled into something quieter but her eyes were still bright with it.
“What are you doing here?” she said.
“Practicing my twirls. And my voice.”
“Yeah, the Voice. I heard. The Voice.” she smiled.
“Yeah, it still needs some work.”
Please don’t ask me to make the voice again. Please.
She looked at me for a moment. “Do you come this early every morning?”
“Yeah.” I shrugged. “I like to squeeze in some practice before I start the floors.”
She was quiet for a second. “You don’t need to do all of this, Cade.”
“I know I don’t need to,” I said. “I want to. I want to be there for you, Maple. I want to be on your side. I want to make myself worthy of your worries, your problems, your responsibilities.” I paused. “And I’m not going to stop until you can see that.”
She let out a long, tired breath. “Just go and live your life,” she said. “Your real life. The one outside this studio, outside the glitter and the tutu and the kids.”
“I don’t want that life,” I said. “Not if it doesn’t have you and River in it.
” I looked at her. “It took me too long to understand that. It took me some time, and a foul mouth full of hurtful words to realize it. But now I know, Maple. I know I had to pay a very heavy price for that realization, but now that I’ve realized it, I’m never ever stopping to try to have you and River back. ”
She looked at me. “Then you’ll be trying for the rest of your life, Cade.”
“That,” I said, “is exactly my intention.”
I took one step toward her.
She didn’t step back.
We were close. Close enough that I could see her eyes in the thin morning light coming through the window, and she was scanning my eyes — searching my face for honesty, or probably the assurance that everything she had just heard was true.
And I knew for sure that she saw what she was searching for.
Because probably for the first time since I had met her, I had meant every single word I said.
My eyes landed on her lips. Her lips were parted ever so slightly in a small smile.
I wanted to kiss her. Oh, I wanted to kiss her so very badly.
I took one step back instead.
With all the willpower a man madly in love could muster. Because I had more work to do, and she wasn’t ready, and I knew the difference between a moment and a conclusion. This was a moment. The conclusion was still ahead of us.
We stood in the hallway in the dark for another second.
Maple cleared her throat. “Your Aurelia Maplewood voice is spot on, by the way. It’s the twirl that needs work.”
“I know. I’m bending my wrist wrong.”
“It’s not the wrist. It’s the elbow. The elbow leads the twirl.”
I looked at her. “Are you going to show me?”
She looked at me. A very long pause. Then that smile.
“Maybe after I sweep the floors?” I asked.
Her smile was still on her face as she walked past me toward the studio.
I watched her go.
Then I went and got the broom, and I swept every floor in Happy Steps, and I was smiling the entire time, and I did not care even slightly.
***