Chapter 20
LIE HARD
Heath
You wouldn’t think heavy metal blaring as loud as my phone will blare it would take the edge off of a hangover, but it’s at least distracting me from replaying what I can remember of yesterday as I lay out laminate tiles on the kitchen floor of the mother-in-law house with Lav’s help.
Cricket has to get out of my house.
And the only way that’s happening is if she has somewhere else to go.
So I’m fixing the flooded mother-in-law house ASAP.
It’s dried out. The subfloor was replaced three days ago.
Flooring came in two days ago.
Plumber finally fixed the main line into the house and got the kitchen plumbing repaired yesterday while I was—never mind.
Not important what I was doing yesterday.
What’s important is that the mother-in-law house is at the top of my priority list.
The only thing I’m doing until it’s done.
I even called in sick to the job I had scheduled this morning, promising to do it tomorrow instead.
My music abruptly stops as Lav and I are both wailing along. Olivia brought her by a bit ago, which was only frustrating since I hadn’t realized Lav had disappeared while I was working.
“Sorry to interrupt,” Mabel says as she leans in the doorway, making me flash back to Cricket leaning in the storage room doorway in the fermentation building.
Everything makes me think of Cricket.
I sit back on my heels and reach for my water bottle.
“I’m an alien who delivers these weird rectangles from space!” Lav tells Mabel, still talking as loudly as the music was playing while she shows Mabel a floor tile. “Bee-boop-boop-boop-bee-boo.”
“Have all of the dragons left? Do we not need the dragon slayer anymore?” Mabel asks her.
“I’m a dragon-slaying alien.” Lav points to the rhinestone dragon on her pink shirt, then to her headband, which has two springs making giant foam eyeballs dance all around.
That and her green dragon scale fingernails are new since yesterday.
Ginny pops into the room too, sliding her phone into a pocket of her dress. “Thank goodness we’re still protected from the dragons.”
“I’ll protect you forever, Ginny,” Lav says.
That hits me in my heart and my gut.
Can’t protect someone forever if we’re not here, and we need to move.
Ginny squats in front of Lav. “Elizabeth and I are going to the salon. If it’s okay with your dad, you can come with us.”
Elizabeth.
She helped Lav make the pink shirt that matches Cricket’s.
Arts and crafts time.
And now I’m thinking about waking up next to Cricket, and how it felt to have her body pressed against mine—
Knock it off, dumbass, I order myself.
Have a last hurrah before you leave, my dick replies.
I ignore it.
Lav’s wrinkling her nose. “I hate haircuts.”
No shit.
But she needs one. Combing her hair this morning—no, yesterday morning—was brutal.
“Oh, we would never cut your hair.” Ginny tugs gently at one of my daughter’s two braids, which one of the women must have done for her today. “But we could ask your dad if we can put some trophy color in your hair.”
I left Lav all day yesterday.
I should be parenting her, not turning her over to the ladies for one more day. Especially since I’ll need their help tomorrow too.
Breaking my rule.
Making up a job on a Saturday.
Lav can help me here today.
But she should have as much time with them as possible before we leave.
So I nod to Ginny while Lav asks what trophy color is.
“It’s when we put a streak of color in your hair for every dragon that you’ve slayed,” Ginny tells her.
Lav laughs. “I don’t have a zillion jillion hairs, Ginny!”
“Huh. That’s a problem, isn’t it? Do you think Ms. Peg at the salon might have some ideas?”
Lav looks at me. “Can I go get trophy color, Daddy?”
“Only if you give me hugs first.”
She flies into my arms and squeezes me tight, then plucks at the hairs on my head. “Can we color your hair for my trophy too?”
“Unfortunately, I need your dad to finish this project,” Mabel says. “My bad. Maybe he can get trophy color another day soon?”
“Before my birthday.”
“Before your birthday,” I agree.
“I want green hair trophies, but you should have pink,” Lav tells me.
“We’ll decide when I get my appointment.”
“Oh, you don’t need an appointment,” Ginny says. “Primary dragon slayers go to the salon, but helpers can get their hair dyed at home.”
I’m too tired and sad to be irritated at knowing what they’ll do to my hair.
Gotta make memories while we can. Hopefully these will all be good memories.
“Can I help?” Lav asks.
“You have to,” Ginny tells her. “Otherwise, they’re not real trophy hairs.”
Lav rubs her hands all over my beard. “Daddy has enough hairs. He’s really hairy.”
“A lot of daddies are,” Mabel muses, which makes Ginny snort, then cover it with a cough.
“Time to go, Lav,” Ginny says. “We don’t want to be late.”
I kiss Lav on the head and hug her little body tightly, then release her to scamper off with Ginny.
Then I eye Mabel, who’s still leaning in the doorway.
“What’s up?” I ask her.
“I assume by the volume of the music that you’re feeling better?”
I grunt.
“Ah. Only mostly, then.”
Nailed it. “Thanks for the help with Lav yesterday.”
“Of course.”
“Her nails are pretty cool.”
“Dori did them.”
“She didn’t leave.”
“No, but I think Elizabeth is about to. Private investigator found a lot more dirt on her husband than she was expecting, and she has a divorce lawyer lined up, plus a solid group of empty-nester friends who’ve been through the same thing back home.
We’ve been more of a holding ground for her than a recovery center. She’s in good shape.”
“Good for her.” And thank fuck.
If Elizabeth’s moving out, Cricket can move into the main house.
“I had three new orders roll in overnight,” Mabel says.
That’s unusual. Her work is pretty detailed, and she generally only takes one project at a time.
And one project typically takes over her entire workroom.
Which means—
Goddammit.
It means I have to finish this house, if I’m reading this situation right.
“Don’t you work only on commission?” I ask. “How do you get three orders at once?”
“Didn’t think two of them would be willing to pay the price I quoted them. Especially when I added the rush fees.”
“So you need that extra room for more projects.”
There’s a lot I appreciate about Mabel.
I appreciate that she wouldn’t have told anyone where she found me and who she found me with this morning.
I appreciate that she wears all black, since it’s easier on my eyes today.
I appreciate that she runs this place as efficiently as possible and doesn’t generally ask for as much handyman support around here as she’s had to ask for lately.
But I don’t currently appreciate the bland look she’s giving me that tends to mean she’s about to say something I won’t like.
“Whatever it is, no.”
“Is this grumpiness because of the hangover, or because you don’t know what to do about being attracted to a woman for the first time since Ava passed?”
“I’m not attracted—”
She lifts a brow.
Just one.
One simple movement above her glasses.
I huff out a breath. “It doesn’t fucking matter. I don’t date. Even if I did, Lav and I are moving. I’ve found a few options. Just—just need to decide where I’m most likely to be able to get a job and where I like the schools the best.”
“I took out a loan.”
My brain is still too full of sludge to process that immediately, but when all of the ramifications of that simple sentence hit me, I huff in surprise. “Mabel.”
“It’s done. I got a loan to fix the fermentation building.”
“You—”
“I called in favors and may have resorted to a little blackmail and I did a few things Aunt Pip would murder me for if she ever finds out, even if she finds out why too. It’s a personal loan, basically with my own reputation and some very old bottles of wine as collateral.
I didn’t qualify for enough to stave off foreclosure more than a few months on top of the repairs, but I bought us some time, and I bought us some safety. ”
I swallow hard as the implications, both good and bad, of what she’s done continue to sink in. “The old wine for collateral—it wasn’t stored in the tasting room, was it?”
She smiles. “I have my own hiding places that even Pip doesn’t know about.”
“How much debt are you in now?”
She ignores the question. “Ginny has a call with a promising potential investor this week, and I’m prepared to have the hard conversations with Aunt Pip about it too.
With exclusive events and creative marketing and some fencing to separate our homes from the functional parts of the winery, we can maintain most of the same privacy and pay the bills. ”
She doesn’t add the part where we only have one booking for exclusive events, and it’s a nepo job. Or that any of the other buildings around here could fall apart at any minute.
“How much debt, Mabel?” I repeat.
“Irrelevant.”
“It’s entirely relevant.” She’s doing this for me. For me and Lav. So we can stay.
But I don’t know if it’s enough.
She doesn’t break eye contact. “Aunt Pip won’t live forever. But the biggest thing she’s expressed repeatedly in the past few years is that she wants her home to stay a refuge for women in distress when she’s gone.”
So long as the bank doesn’t foreclose on the property, Mabel will be the sole inheritor of every last inch of this place when Pip passes.
She’s smart. She’s savvy.
She’ll pay herself back tenfold when she can run this place the way she wants, and I give her all the credit in the world for continuing to honor Pip’s wishes and desires while she’s still here.
But if I have my way, Pip will live to be a hundred and seventeen, which is still thirty years from now.
The Notorious P-I-P might cause trouble, but god knows she’s earned the right to have fun.
And unorthodox as it might seem, having Lav regularly around a woman comfortable with her body is good for her too.
But also fuel for my in-laws if they decide to try to take Lav from me again.