“What do you mean, you’re on duty? On duty for what?”
“Babysitting,” Avery said distractedly as she dug through the bags. “I swear, if they didn’t give me four fortune cookies like Ispecificallyasked for, I’m gonna?—”
“Who’re you babysittin’?”
Avery glanced up at me with a stare that suggested I couldn’t be that stupid. “Uh, you.”
“Me?” I scoffed. “What the hell do I need a babysitter for?”
“When’s the last time you ate?”
“I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”
“Answer the question.”
“Lunch.”
“Mhmm…with Will.” Avery grabbed a container of what looked like chicken lo mein, fell into a chair, and dug into the box with a pair of chopsticks. Around a bite, she said, “And before that?”
“Um…last night.”
Avery raised a brow as she chewed, as if she couldn’t even be bothered with a response.
“What? I don’t usually eat breakfast.”
The brow got higher, and this time, Avery’s foot started tapping a beat on the floor.
Okay, so I did usually eat breakfast, but I hadn’t been hungry lately. That wasn’t a crime. I also hadn’t really gone anywhere—like The Willow Tree, or, you know, the grocery store—so my food supply was pitiful.
But, well, I was just so tired after work and wanted to go straight home and face-plant into my bed. And I hadn’t been in the mood to talk, so I didn’t want to chance running into anyone while I was out. Like…Edna. If I happened to avoid an encounter with Hudson while I was at it, well…
“You don’t have to treat me like I’m a child,” I said.
“Your lack of basic adulting says otherwise.”
I rolled my eyes and finally dug into the bag in front of me, the smells too enticing to ignore. Settling on General Tso’s chicken, I grabbed a fork—Avery was a show-off with those damn chopsticks—and settled back into my chair.
She lifted her chin toward the paperwork strewn across my desk. “Whatcha working on?”
“Just gettin’ my ducks in a row before I approach Atticus and Darcy with the proposal.” I’d casually suggested it to them earlier in the week, and they’d both been receptive—the truce between them that I had initiated had paved the way for that nicely—but I still wanted to make sure my i’s were dotted and my t’s were crossed.
“It’s a great idea, Mac. And the funds the produce from the garden will bring in will go a long way in wiping out student lunch debt at the elementary school. People will be flocking to their businesses just to support them.”
“I hope so.”
But I still felt a nagging tug in my belly that this wasn’t what I should be doing—that it wasn’tmyjob to be pushing for things like this because I was only here temporarily. While, yes, what I was doing was for the good of Havenbrook, others may not see it that way. They may flat out reject it, or report back to my daddy that I was turning the town soft. I could hear the arguments now—Kids can pay for their own lunches, and if they can’t, their parents should just work harder.
But, well, as much as I didn’t want to rock the boat, I also didn’t want to sit by when I had the platform to affect real change in our town. So maybe a tiny little nudge wouldn’t hurt. Not too far…just a little.
“Hey,” Avery said, pointing toward me with her chopsticks. “Open the bottom left drawer.”
I furrowed my brow but did as Avery asked, pulling open the drawer. My God, my daddy’s desk was a complete pigsty. How he managed to make such a mess when he didn’t do any actual work was beyond me.
“You have a need for some used envelopes or extra napkins?” I asked.
“Nope, what I want is all the way at the back. Careful while you dig—never know what you’ll find in Dick’s drawers.”
I screwed up my face in disgust, definitely not interested in blindly sticking my hand in to feel around for God knew what. Instead, I grabbed a pencil from the desk and pushed the items aside with the eraser end, my gaze snapping to Avery’s when I uncovered something interesting.
