Chapter 7
HOME UNIMPROVEMENT
Declan
Pip Makepeace is trouble.
She mishears half of everything I say. She makes us wait to record until she’s slathered on sunscreen.
She makes us wait again while she runs inside to get her dead husband’s ashes so that he can be in the shot too.
She puts a can of sardines in a decorative watering tin in the garden that she says are for the garden dragons, but the twinkle in her eye—it’s something else.
Definitely something else.
And then she catches Shade, the director-slash-cameraman that Eddie likes to work with, not actually recording the footage of her talking about the history of Makepeace, and she makes him do it again, then show her that it’s actually captured.
Shade caught on quick that the only way we’ll have peace to record is if we give Pip what she wants, and I get the feeling he’s not opposed to using the footage.
Blurred out. Definitely blurred out.
Or possibly as a voice-over.
Pip’s stories about the winery’s history are fascinating.
Internal family battles over control in the early years, when Dean Makepeace and his brother were kids and the winery was in their parents’ and grandparents’ hands, hard years with wildfires and droughts, harder years when Dean turned into a cheapskate who always hired the lowest bidder, which, she says, is why the fermentation building tried to eat Cricket a few months ago.
But for all of the trouble Pip is, she’s nothing compared to the trouble that arrives as Cricket’s finally about to start the tractor in the barn.
“Ginny? Ginny, Mommy’s home! I’m here to help!”
My throat constricts and my heart winces and my balls shrivel at that voice.
Cricket, a brunette with big brown eyes and a ready smile, pops her head out of the tractor window, not smiling. “Freida?”
Heath, Cricket’s boyfriend, whom I’ve been told is the resident handyman around here, growls from the sidelines as he shifts his attention from the motor that we’ve been tweaking and looks at Freida Rhodes.
Fuck.
She shouldn’t be here.
Freida beams at them. “Yes, yes, I’m here. Where’s Ginny? I saw her car parked right outside.”
Cricket squints at her. “You saw…Ginny’s car…here?”
“Oh, this is about to get good,” Shade whispers.
“Turn it off,” I mutter to him.
“Yes, Ginny’s car,” Freida says. “The one she drives? You’re her friend, and you don’t know what she—wait. Cameras? What are the cameras for? Give me ten minutes. I need to touch up my makeup.”
“Oh, it’s not that kind of video,” Cricket says quickly. “We’re recording—” she shoots a glance at Heath and grimaces—“umm, how to…how to fix a tractor. Yes! How to fix the tractor. So that we’ll know how if it breaks again. So we won’t have to call the—the tractor fixer guy back again.”
Freida squints at her, then at Heath, then at me.
“You’re the tractor repairman?” She tilts her head. “But weren’t you at the wedding? Why would Caro invite a tractor repairman to her wedding?”
Now she asks questions.
“You know celebrities,” Cricket says. “They all have other things they do to make money while they’re waiting for their big break and friends from those, ah, before years.”
Freida sizes me up. “I remember you. You’re…very strong. You could do…other things…if you need a side gig.”
“He tried,” Shade volunteers. “Wasn’t very good at it.”
I slide a look at him.
He smirks back.
Cricket coughs, then smiles at Freida. “So anyway, this is a surprise. We didn’t realize you’d be back so soon.”
Shade shifts his camera.
“Put it down,” I mutter to him with more force.
Heath’s glare echoes my order.
Shade half rolls his eyes. “You two are so easy to play. I’m not recording it.”
“Where’s Ginny? Where’s my baby?” Freida asks. “I need to see her immediately.”
“Ginny wasn’t interested in helping fix the tractor.” Cricket swings down from the tractor. “Actually, I’m not sure she’s here at all today. I think she had to travel for work?”
Freida huffs. “You live here, and you don’t know where she is?”
Cricket drops her voice. “Don’t tell Mabel, but Heath and I…we feel pretty left out, since we don’t live in the main house with everyone else. It’s really hard some days. I’m hoping that the more I do with the grapes, the more they’ll include us.”
Heath turns around and rubs a hand over his face.
Cricket’s lying and the dude’s amused by it.
Zero doubt.
“That’s so like Ginny,” Freida says. “Doesn’t think about other people at all. Not about helping fix your tractor or about telling people where she’ll be.”
“Oh, I’m sure it’s not intentional,” Cricket says.
“But why is her car here?” Freida demands.
“What car?” Cricket asks.
“That god-awful used Range Rover she bought last year that I told her not to.”
For fuck’s sake. “Black Range Rover?” I ask.
“Yes, my daughter drives a black Range Rover. A used one.”
“That’s mine,” I say. “I bought it new.”
Soulmates, a pesky mosquito buzzes in my head.
I mentally swat it away and order my heart to stop tap dancing too.
We bought similar cars.
Doesn’t mean anything.
Can’t mean anything.
“Ooh, that makes so much sense now.” Cricket keeps smiling at Freida. “Didn’t I hear that you were going on vacation? The wedding was so much work. I know you did a ton. You must want a few weeks on the beach somewhere.”
“I love her so much,” Heath murmurs as he joins Shade and me.
Definitely amused.
Fully appreciating the tale Cricket’s spinning.
Freida spent half her time Saturday before she got high talking about how Caro threw a surprise wedding, and it was just like Caro to be so thoughtful and have the exact gown that Freida would’ve wanted to wear to the wedding waiting for her when she arrived.
She didn’t help plan shit.
“Oh, I can’t escape to the beach,” Freida says. “They’ll see me there, and since the news broke about Caro’s wedding—”
“I’m sorry, the what now?” Cricket says.
“The tabloids found out about Caro’s wedding.” Freida says. “If I went anywhere in public, like a beach, the paparazzi would find me and pester me all about the wedding details. It wouldn’t be relaxing at all.”
The first time I met Freida Rhodes, she’d come to town for Ginny’s birthday.
Nine days late.
Not a week—not oops, I put it on my calendar for the wrong Saturday—but nine whole days, arriving on a Monday and demanding to know when the guests were arriving and asking Ginny why she’d be friends with people who forgot her birthday, completely oblivious to the fact that she, herself, had actually missed it.
Not just the party, but Ginny’s actual birthday.
I’d watched On the Rhodes as a teenager myself. I’d get up, go to school, go to hockey, get home, eat, do homework, eat, and then stream it as part of my TV lineup.
And there was something about Freida Rhodes that I’d never liked.
Reinforced a million times over when I met her.
“Oh, dear,” Cricket says. “I’m sure it won’t be relaxing here either. We’re almost to harvest, and you wouldn’t believe how much our crew gossips.”
“Me too,” I announce. “I gossip all the time.”
Freida gasps. “Tell me it wasn’t you.”
Of the two of us, she’s the more likely culprit.
“You leak that?” Heath asks me.
Don’t know the guy well enough yet to know if he’s playing along or if he really thinks I’d break someone’s trust.
But I stick to my story. If making this place feel unsafe for Freida is what it takes to make her leave, I’m in.
“I only told friends that I trusted not to tell,” I lie.
I didn’t tell anyone.
Not my old hockey buddies, even Alex, because I’m going to Ginny’s sister’s wedding wouldn’t be a fun conversation.
Didn’t mention it to my old coaches or college friends who’ve checked in on me since I gave up trying to get a job in hockey.
My parents and brother don’t know either, and we talk or text nearly every day.
“I’m sure he wasn’t the only one,” Cricket says quickly. “It was bound to happen sooner or later.”
“I just wish my baby’d gotten her full honeymoon before it happened,” Freida says.
I’m about to throw up in my mouth.
She sounds sincere, but I’m positive she’s putting on an act.
Cricket eyes me, then looks back at Freida. “I need to tell Mabel. The tractor will have to wait.”
Heath grabs me by the back of the collar. “To think I trusted you in my home.”
He’s no slouch, but I’m still taller and broader than he is, and I’ve never been one to shy away from throwing a punch.
But I let him manhandle me anyway.
Part of the ruse.
“Apologies,” I say. “I won’t do it again.”
“Damn right you won’t.”
“I can’t even tell you how disappointed I am in you,” Freida says to me.
My jaw clenches hard.
The fucking nerve of that woman, telling me she’s disappointed in me.
But if playing along gets her the hell out of here before Ginny has to deal with her again, I’ll stand here and take her abuse all day long.
Except—
“You told them what?”
Fuck.
Ginny’s here.
Here with her curly hair spilling all over her shoulders, in a black dress printed with cherries, her blue eyes big and wary as they dart between me and her mother.
She heard all of that.
She thinks I’m the bad guy.
And if I change my story now, it’ll only make things worse.