19
WHEN DANE SAYS some news, he means he caught the person throwing rocks at my security camera. He tells me this in place of polite small talk, and I launch myself out of the chair across from his desk, knocking over a cup filled with pens and a miniature model airplane.
“You what?” I glance around me like the suspect is about to pop out from behind his curtains. “Who is it? Why did they do it?” I squint through the glass wall of his office to the small kitchenette, the holding cell, and the receiving area for walk-ins. I point toward a door in the back corner. “Do you have them in interrogation?”
Dane rubs his fingertips between his eyebrows and gestures to the chair, a quiet command to sit. “That’s a utility closet, Cinnamon Stick.”
I sit back down, balanced on the very edge. “Did they confess?”
He nods. I want to punch the air in victory.
“Do you need an interrogation partner?” All my binge-watching of Law & Order is about to pay off. I feel like I should go home, change into a smart pantsuit, and grab a briefcase. “Want to do good cop, bad cop?”
“That is not a thing that happens.”
“Says you.”
“Says literally every law enforcement professional in the country.
Listen”—he levels me with a look, a frown tugging at his lips—“there’s no need for an interrogation. He’s already told us everything he’s done. I’m having trouble with this one because I’m a little miffed on your behalf, and I’m not embracing my usual”—he rubs at his jaw as he searches for the word —“impartiality, I suppose you could say.”
“Did you punch him in the face?”
Dane shakes his head with a faint smile. “I did not punch him in the face.”
It looks like he wanted to punch him in the face.
“Then I don’t see the problem. You don’t have to be impartial if he’s already confessed.” My mind races with the possibilities of who it could be, their motive. Luka had wanted to come with me, but I forced him to stay at the farm in case Evelyn needed anything. I caught a glimpse of her just before I left, hot chocolate in hand. Interestingly enough, Beckett wasn’t too far behind.
“They’re here now”—I open my mouth to ask—“not in the interrogation room that does not exist.”
“They’re here now. And no, they are not in interrogration. We are a small town. There is no interrogation room.”
He is exhausted by me. He grabs a stress ball out of his top drawer and starts to squeeze it. “How would you like to handle this?”
“I guess I want to know my options.” I’d like to throw some rocks at this person, for starters. An eye for an eye and all that. But I don’t think that’s going to fly with Dane.
“They’re facing several counts of malicious destruction of private property. That’s a misdemeanor in the state of Maryland. Because it was done willfully and resulted in thousands of dollars’ worth of damage, he could face jail time.”
“Jail time?” I’m upset about the camera and the missing shipments and the broken fence posts, but I’m not sure I want someone to go to jail over it. I frown and settle back in the chair. “Is that the only option?”
“It’s up to you if you want to press charges or not.” He starts to squeeze the ball again, harder this time. “He asked if he could—he asked if he could talk to you. Apologize.”
I blink. “I suppose that’s probably a good start, yeah?” It would be nice if
we could handle this civilly.
Dane’s mustache twitches. “Sure.”
“All right, then lead the way to interrogation.”
“It’s not—” Dane sighs and gives up. “This way.”
I don’t know who I am expecting it to be. Some grungy gargoyle of a human, maybe. I think part of me hopes it was someone doing all of this in a plea for help. Maybe they were throwing rocks at my camera because they needed to feed their family . . . or something. Maybe they just ran because they were scared, and this has all been one big misunderstanding.
I certainly don’t expect Will Hewett sitting at the conference table in his tweed jacket and tortoiseshell glasses, nursing a cup of tea in a paper cup.
“Where’d you get the tea?” Dane grunts in greeting as I stand motionless and confused in the doorway.
“Deputy Alvarez,” Mr. Hewett responds, looking up at me briefly and then back down at his cup. I feel like I’m part of an elaborate practical joke.
Caleb slips quietly into the room behind us, notebook wedged under his arm.
Dane gives him a look.
“We’re serving tea to criminals now?”
Caleb blinks and looks at the tiny paper cup of tea. “Want me to take it
away from him?”
“Obviously.”
Caleb reaches for the cup and I wave him off, taking the empty chair across from Mr. Hewett. He doesn’t look up at me again, and I fight the urge to whisper, What the fuck?
“I’m confused,” I manage. I look up at Dane, standing over my shoulder with a thunderous expression, arms crossed over his chest. I turn and frown at Caleb, reclining against the door. I settle and glance back at Mr. Hewett. No one in this room is being particularly effusive. “Is this a joke?”
All three men shake their heads with varying degrees of enthusiasm.
“Okay, well—” I’d like some tea too. With a healthy dose of whiskey.
“Can someone explain to me what’s going on? I’m having trouble understanding. Mr. Hewett, you destroyed my camera?”
“Why don’t you start from the top, William.”
It begins with the sale of the farm, long before I drove past and saw the FOR SALE sign. Mr. Hewett explains that he had a gentleman’s agreement with Hank to buy the land, but he needed more time to get the money
together. While he was trying to liquidate some of his assets and free up the cash, I swooped in and bought the farm from under his nose.
I vaguely remember Hank mentioning there was another interested buyer when I put in my offer, but nothing ever came of it. I had been tucking money away for years in the hopes of opening my own place, the payout from my mom’s insurance policy sitting untouched in my bank account. I had been saving it for something special, something meaningful. I saw the sign, made the offer, and the next week, Hank was in Costa Rica and I had the
keys to the place.
“You wanted a . . . what?”
Mr. Hewett picks a piece of paper off the edge of his cup, disdain in the curl of his lip. Whatever altruism that led him to confess hasn’t impacted his overall perception of me. “An alpaca farm,” he mutters.
“An alpaca farm.”
“It’s my dream,” he replies with thinly veiled impatience.
Dane snorts behind me. Clearly, there have been some thoughts shared between the men in this room on the concept of an alpaca farm.
I hold up my hands. “And you were upset with me because you thought I took the land from you,” I reason. I duck my head and try to meet his eyes.
“But you have to know, I had no idea you were interested. Hank never said
anything to me about your agreement.”
He nods. “I realize that now.”
“Okay, well”—I shrug—“I still have some questions.”
He gives me a jerk of a nod and shifts in his chair, clearly uncomfortable.
His eyes glance over my shoulder to the room beyond with a wistful little sigh.
“Why did you tell Dane the truth about everything?”
“That night, when I broke your camera and Beckett chased me through the fields, he almost caught me. I ended up lying in a ditch for three hours covered in pine needles in an attempt to hide. I realized then it was time to take a hard look at my choices.”
Okay, fair. I’d imagine anyone might reconsider their actions after lying in a freezing cold dirt ditch in an attempt to evade a pissed-off farmer.
“And what were you doing?”
He sighs. “I started with small, inconvenient things. I just wanted you to feel like the farm was a burden and maybe think about selling. To me. But nothing gave you pause. I broke some fence posts, called your vendors and canceled some orders. I took some of your decorations from last year— they’re in the basement of the library if you’d like them back.”
I nearly snort. “I would, thank you.”
“And nothing seemed to frustrate you. It was maddening. Your lack of frustration was . . . frustrating. I knew I had to do something bigger, so”—he swallows and glances at Dane before looking back down at the table—“I tinkered with the drainage system in the south pasture. I, well, there’s quite a bit of literature on Fraser firs in the library, you know.”
Dane clears his throat, not interested in whatever educational resources the library offers on Fraser firs. Even sweet Caleb looks disappointed. The south pasture. The twisted and dead-looking trees. My stomach sinks.
“What did you do to my trees?”
“If you oversaturate the soil, the roots become overwhelmed and can’t pull oxygen from the ground. I disabled your soil moisture sensor and gave your trees root rot.”
Poor Beckett spent hours out in those fields on his hands and knees checking each individual tree for clues. He ran the equipment through countless tests and audits, drove himself into the ground trying to figure it out.
“But those trees don’t look like they have root rot, they look—”
“Like something from an alternate realm, yes. I’m not—I’m not entirely sure how that happened. I repaired your drainage system after a couple of weeks, just after the rot took hold, so you wouldn’t notice the cause. And things just sort of deteriorated from there. I bet the local university horticulture department would be interested in taking a look—” Dane coughs again, sounding more like a grumbling bear than anything, and Mr. Hewett shrinks in his chair. “But I suppose that’s up to you.”
I collapse back in my chair, winded. Mr. Hewett has caused thousands of dollars in damage to my farm over the course of a year in an effort to get me
to sell so he could establish his very own alpaca farm. The truth can certainly be wild.
I rub my fingers over my lips. “I don’t know what to think,” I say faintly.
It’s a relief to know that all of our troubles can be explained away. That the challenges we’ve had will likely disappear now that he’s confessed. But the saddest thing to me, the absolute heartbreak of it all is— “Mr. Hewett, I would have happily given you space for your alpacas,” I tell him, “if only you’d asked me.”
We could have given them reindeer headbands in the winter. Sold Christmas sweaters made of alpaca wool in the gift shop. It would have been adorable.
Something in his face shutters and breaks at that, his eyebrows slanting low as he looks down at the table in front of him. He places his mangled cup off to the side and takes off his glasses, rubbing furiously at his eyes with his knuckles.
“I’ll do whatever you want to make it up to you.” He looks up at me, meeting my gaze steadily for the first time since I’ve stepped into this cramped noninterrogation room. “I’ll do the time.”
I don’t know what I want to do yet, but I do know that this man going to jail for wanting to have an alpaca farm seems a little ridiculous. I push back from the table and stand. “Could I have some time to think about it?” I look to Dane. “The charges?”
He nods. “I think so, but not too long, yeah?” He shifts his glance to Mr.
Hewett. “And if you even step a foot down the road that leads to Lovelight Farms, I will personally keep you locked up in our drunk tank for the foreseeable future. Do you understand?”
Mr. Hewett nods frantically. At least I can rest easy that no one will be smashing security cameras while Evelyn is here.
If only I was as confident with the rest of it.
I MANAGE TO corral Luka, Layla, and Beckett into my office as soon as I’m back on the farm, Beckett pacing furiously in front of my desk. He hasn’t stopped moving since I told him his drainage system and moisture sensors were disabled. Mr. Hewett is lucky Beckett wasn’t with me at the station. As it is, I kind of fear for my flooring.
He stomps one way, pivots, and stomps back to the other side of the office. I need to expand this room by about three football fields. Layla watches him with a thoughtful frown on her face.
“Was he the one who unplugged my refrigerator overnight?” Layla asks.
“I lost two weeks’ worth of ingredients from that.”
I nod. Dane had given me a written list of all of Will Hewett’s actions against the farm before I left the station. It’s two pages long, single-spaced. I hadn’t even realized one of the tractors was missing a tire.
“The crooked mailbox at the edge of the road?”
I roll my eyes at Luka and his too-innocent expression. “Nice try. I know that was you. You always take that turn too sharply.”
“Filthy soil-tampering motherfucker,” Beckett fumes. He turns to face my desk with his eyes blazing, grunts, and continues his ritual hate stomp around my office. My head is starting to pound to the same beat.
“We need to figure out what we’re going to do about it. I thought since we’re partners now”—I glance at Layla and Beckett—“we ought to make the decision together.”
“Is exile a thing? Can we ship him to Peru? His alpaca-loving heart would
finally be satisfied.”
“Beckett, be serious please.”
“You’re right. He’d be too happy there. Let’s ship him someplace miserable. Like Florida.”
“All right, so we’ll come back to you when you feel like contributing something useful.” I look over to Layla. “What do you think?”
“I mean, I’m upset, obviously.” Her eyes flicker over to Beckett trying to strangle one of my chairs with his bare hands. They widen in an expression that clearly says, Not quite that upset. “But also relieved. It’s kind of nice to know that all of this insanity will stop now. I was getting tired of constantly
waiting for the other shoe to drop. Or I guess, a refrigerator to randomly unplug.”
I nod my head. I am familiar with the feeling. “Dane says we can press charges if we want to, potentially file a civil suit for damages incurred. But he said that charges would probably include jail time, especially since losing the south pasture is worth thousands of dollars.”
“Lock him up,” Beckett mutters from the corner. He’s backed himself into the space next to my office tree, cloaked half in shadow. He looks like the Grinch, sounds like him too. “Throw away the key.”
“Don’t you think it’s ridiculous to put a man in jail for an alpaca farm?”
“I don’t know, Stella.” I’m surprised to hear this from Luka, silent up until now. He shrugs at me when my attention whips over to him, his long legs stretched out in front of him. “This is your dream, and he tried to take it away from you. Shouldn’t he pay for that?”
Now, there’s an idea. I would very much like for him to pay for it. All of it, down to the penny. Luka arches an eyebrow at me and reaches for the old- school calculator I have sitting on the edge of my desk, the packet of papers Dane gave me detailing the damages. He starts to tip-tap away as I look at
Layla and Beckett.
“We’ll take a vote.”
IN A SHOCK to no one, Beckett votes for jail time. Layla and I agree to hold Mr. Hewett financially responsible for all of our losses with no additional charges pressed against him. All three of us agree on a restraining order to keep him off the farm indefinitely.
I glance at the clock above my door and wince, standing and brushing my hands over my jeans. “I’m supposed to meet Evelyn for a tour.” I look over to Luka, one of my pens held between his teeth as he continues to poke away at the calculator. It shouldn’t be as hot as it is. Something about the way he’s pushed his hat back on his head so just a tuft of his chestnut hair pokes through the front, wild as usual, nose scrunched in thought as he drags his
thumb down the page, checking his numbers. I clear my throat. “I’m going to invite Evelyn over to have dinner with us if that’s all right with you.”
“Yeah, of course.” He blinks up at me from the paperwork, trying to clear his eyes after staring at numbers for so long. I’ve told him a million times he should wear reading glasses, something to help him so he doesn’t have to squint when looking at small print. I’m almost glad he didn’t agree. I don’t know what I’d do with Luka in glasses. “I’ll make ravioli.”
The simple domesticity of the moment hits me right in the chest. This is what I’ll miss the most, I think, when our week is up. Not the touches and the kisses and the way he makes me forget my name with his hands in my hair and his mouth on my neck, but this. Wandering down the little pathway to my cottage and rounding the bend by the big oak tree and seeing Luka through the window standing at the stove in the kitchen, one of my silly towels over his shoulder. Stepping in the front door and having him brush his lips to mine, the radio turned low in the kitchen. The smell of basil and tomato and garlic. Something sizzling on the stovetop.
I don’t know how I’m going to give that up.
“What kind of ravioli?” Layla asks from her corner of the room.
Beckett must have slipped out at some point after our vote, off to take out his frustration on a tractor engine or maybe check the drainage systems in the south pasture. I wouldn’t be surprised if I find him at the ice-skating rink.
He’s actually pretty good. Some mornings I come out to check on things early before the sun is fully up, and Beckett is quietly doing laps, wearing the old beat-up hockey skates he used as a teenager.
“Butternut squash, probably. I think my grandma put some in Stella’s freezer,” Luka says.
That’s another thing I’ll miss. The amount of homemade Italian food stockpiled in my refrigerator. Will his family still feed me when we fake break up?
Layla’s eyes light up. “Bring me leftovers tomorrow?”
“You’re welcome to join us, you know,” I offer.
“Got a thing with Jacob,” she explains. Luka makes a face at the mention of her apathetic and chronically boring boyfriend. “Plus, this will be good
one-on-one time with Evelyn. You two”—she points at me and then Luka —“are charming together.”
Heat rushes to my cheeks. Layla does not possess a subtle bone in her body. By the time I’ve managed my emotions over any mention of Luka and me together, this week will be over.
“Almost a decade of practice,” Luka quips. He stands and deposits the calculator and stack of papers neatly on the side of my desk, making sure the edges are parallel to one another. I appreciate the effort to try to keep my desk clean. I want to nudge it out of place with my pinky, just to see what he does.
He grips the arms of my chair and ducks down, brushing a quick kiss to my lips. “See you at home,” he murmurs, casual as can be. “I’ll get dinner started.”
He nods to Layla as he leaves, but she’s too busy staring at me with a smug little grin to notice. I fidget in my chair, putting random papers in random folders in an effort to look busy. I wait for her to leave, but she just settles down farther in her seat.
“What?” I ask, not bothering to look up. There’s a receipt in the top drawer of my desk for six hash browns from the drive-through. That must
have been a bad day.
Layla snickers. “You know what?”
“I’m sure I don’t.”
Her snicker turns into a full-blown laugh, bright and loud in my tiny office. She stands to follow Luka out the door. “Oh, Stella honey. You’re in
deep.”
Don’t I know it.
I FIND EVELYN in the Santa barn leaning up against one of the posts as she watches little Evan Barnes tell Clint what he wants from Santa Claus this year. We’ve kept the barn fairly simple on the inside. A wide-open space for the queue on our busiest days marked with a deep red velvet rope. Cozy
armchairs and love seats in lush greens and midnight blues for people to sit while they wait. A wide hearth on the wall and an oversized rocking chair right next to it. A stack of board games close by. Mismatched, faded rugs crisscrossed over one another on the floor for kids to run and jump and tumble. It’s one of my favorite places on the farm. Sometimes I come out here at night when the farm is closed and just lie in the center of the room and stare up at the white lights and barn wood, a sliver of the night sky visible through the slats of the roof. The same way I did beneath the Christmas tree when I was a kid.
Clint, for his part, is taking his job very seriously. He’s sitting in the big rocking chair with a notepad in hand, tongue between his teeth in concentration.
“That’s the LEGO City Mars spaceship?” Clint asks. He’s wearing his full firefighter uniform with a big cherry red badge over the left breast that says OFFICIAL NORTH POLE REPRESENTATIVE. Layla made them for all of our volunteers last year and got a little overzealous with the glitter glue.
Evan nods, pushing his glasses back up his nose. “Yes, the research shuttle with the rover. That’s important.”
“Research shuttle with rover,” Clint notes, writing slowly and carefully.
He looks up when he’s done and claps Evan on the shoulder. “Noted, kiddo.
This will go directly to the big man in red.” He peeks over at Evan’s mom, and she gives him a subtle thumbs-up. “I have a feeling you’re going to get
everything you’re asking for, buddy.”
Evan’s face lights up. “Even the pony?”
Evan’s mom winces and she shakes her head. Clint laughs. “You didn’t mention a pony on this list, big guy. Maybe next year, okay?”
“This is a cute idea,” Evelyn whispers to me, nudging me with her shoulder. “It’s a nice twist on an old tradition. And no children have to sit on a stranger’s lap.”
I laugh. “We tried to get a Santa here last year, but they’re surprisingly hard to book. Inglewild stepped up and IGLOO was born: Inglewild Gift List Operation Operation. They really wanted to make it an acronym, so they listed Operation twice.” That had been Dane’s idea, and I didn’t have the
heart to tell him Inglewild Gift List Ornamental Operation would have done in a pinch . . . or hundreds of other options. “We have a rotating fleet of volunteers that sit with the kids and listen to their lists. They write them up and put them in the official North Pole post over there.” I nod toward the corner with the big metal mailbox, which is painted red with NORTH POLE stenciled in gold. “We deliver the lists back to the parents or caregivers just in case they haven’t got their shopping done yet.”
“That’s brilliant.” Evelyn breathes.
I feel a flush of pride for myself and what I’ve managed to create here, and for the town, coming together to do something nice for the kids. Evan runs off to drop his list in the post, making sure to stamp it three times with the special reindeer stamp we have on the side.
“Also, Beckett refused to wear the costume.”
“I’m sure the kids would have had questions about all the tattoos.”
“And there probably would have been a whole lot of women in line with the children.” I wince, remembering too late Evelyn’s history with Beckett.
“Shoot, I’m sorry.”
She waves me off, and we watch as a little girl with pigtails skips her way over to Clint. “Don’t worry about it. He gets a lot of attention, whether he likes to admit it or not.”
I guess she saw Cindy Croswell with her cell phone out while he was flat on his back under a tractor earlier. And the gaggle of middle school moms pretending to be interested in the specifics of the coarse mulch that covers the herb garden in the winter, just to have something to talk to him about.
“I don’t—” Evelyn eyes me warily. “To address the elephant in the room, I just want to make it clear that I’m not—I don’t—” She puffs out a frustrated breath, mouth in a firm line. “I don’t typically do things . . . like that. And I certainly didn’t expect to see him again.”
That was made abundantly clear, on account of her sprinting from the
bakehouse.
“Oh, you don’t have to—”
“It was just—” She shrugs, gaze far away like she’s remembering something. “It just happened. He didn’t know who I was and . . . that was
nice. A nice change.”
I sometimes forget the extent of Evelyn’s influence. She has over 1.7 million followers on Instagram alone. I wonder what it’s like for someone to recognize you everywhere you go. For people to think that they know you.
Exhausting, I’d imagine.
“He’s a good guy.” I begin slowly because, above all things, I want Beckett to be okay. I don’t want anyone coming here and making things more difficult for him. Hurting him. “The best guy.”
Evelyn nods and gives me a smaller smile, more timid. She tucks a lock of dark hair behind her ear, bright red nails glinting in the twinkling lights that line the heavy beams at the ceiling. “I’m not in the business of hurting people, Stella. I can promise you that.”
I relax, not realizing how tense I’d become during that conversation. We watch the little girl lean over the arm of the rocking chair, pointing to something on Clint’s list. He laughs and scratches with his pencil, then writes again.
“I bet she wants a pony too,” says Evelyn.
I glance at the little girl with pigtails. “Not likely with Roma.” I saw her at the summer outdoor games in the middle of town. She eviscerated the competition in the sack race and almost knocked a little boy unconscious during tug of war. “She’s probably asking for a rocket launcher.”
