There was definitely something there. Lila Mae wasn’t sure if it had already started or if it had been an attempt that had failed.
“Anyway,” Elaine said, as if she didn’t realize how quiet and still Colt had become. “You’re back with your daddy now.” She reached out and tickled Jonas. “I can tell your mother, if you want. She’s sitting with mine.”
“I’m sure it’s about time to go,” Colt said. “Thank you, Elaine.” He turned away abruptly, as if he would leave by crossing the patio, took one step, and froze again. “This is not the way out.” He turned around and practically bowled over Lila Mae and Elaine to get back on the sidewalk just outside the church’s back entrance.
They all watched him go, and Trap said, “I’ve got to figure that out. Thanks, Laney.” He took an extra moment to duck his head in Lila Mae’s direction and say, “Ma’am,” before he scurried after his best friend.
Lila Mae stood there with Elaine, a woman she didn’t know at all, and watched the cowboys return to their table.
Elaine folded her arms. “Well, that was a little weird.”
Lila Mae couldn’t help smiling at her. “I’ll give you that.”
Elaine shook her head. “The cowboys in this town, I swear.” Then she turned and started to leave the patio as well. “Have you got yourself a boyfriend, Lila Mae?”
Lila Mae hurried after her and fell into step beside Elaine. “No,” she said. “I just moved here from Atlanta. Well, not really—from Atlanta via Baltimore.”
She’d been back and forth between both places often, as her family had homes in both cities, but Lila Mae liked to say Atlanta and bring out her Southern upbringing when necessary.
Elaine looked over to her, her eyebrows raised. “You’re the one opening the cat sanctuary, right?”
“That’s right,” Lila Mae said. “We’re open, but we’re only taking the most extreme cases right now, because we still have a lot of work to do on our facilities.”
“Yes, Trap is the best,” Elaine said. “I’m over here with my brothers.” She started to the left and then turned back. “Did you want to sit with us?”
Lila Mae stopped and surveyed the picnic. It had indeed broken up, and a few people had started to clean up the buffet tables. Lila Mae shook her head. “No, I have to get home. Thank you so much, though.”
“It was great to meet you,” Elaine said, and she seemed genuinely nice.
“Great to meet you too,” Lila Mae called after her, and she took one last look at the back lawn of the church and turned to leave. She didn’t need to make a bigger fool of herself than she already had, and she’d fulfilled her assignment by helping to put the food out. Someone else could clean it up.
Her confusing feelings left with her, and she wondered if she could call Fiona, who was now married with a little baby, and ask her how to up her flirting game.
The next morning,Lila Mae pulled into the dirt parking lot at the apple orchards. She was nothing if not a creature of habit, and shehadbeen coming every Monday to get cider for the cats, as well as apple butter and apple cider syrup for herself.
The trip gave her a chance to get outside the walls of her tiny home, which she absolutely loved but which still sometimes caged her. Funny how she’d once lived in a Southern plantation mansion and felt smothered and now lived in a four-hundred-and-eight square-foot tiny home and sometimes still felt the walls closing in on her.
The apple orchards sat due east of Lila Mae’s ranch, but she had to take the small-town roads that wove through different neighborhoods to get to it. All told, it probably took thirty-five minutes from her front door to the entrance of the farm store at the orchard.
The scent of apples greeted her the moment she stepped out of her car, and Lila Mae took a deep breath of it lilting through the already-hot Monday morning.
The store opened at eight, and Lila Mae liked to come in the first hour. Otherwise, they sometimes sold out of their homemade favorites, and if she couldn’t have apple butter on her toaster waffles this week, Lila Mae might lose her mind.
Or maybe that was because she couldn’t stop thinking about Trap Walker.
She jogged up the wide steps of the big red barn which housed the farm store just as the door opened. The twinkling of bells filled the air, along with laughter, from inside. Lila Mae dodged out of the way as an older couple came out.
“Good morning,” the woman said.
“Morning,” Lila Mae chimed back.
The man held the door for her, and Lila Mae ducked inside with a quick, “Thank you.”
She grabbed a basket from near the door and faced the farm store. They sold several varieties of apples as the harvest came on, and then apple cider, apple cider vinegar, apple butter, apple cider syrup, caramel apples, apple chips, and anything else an apple could be turned into.
The left-hand side of the store held canning supplies, with wide-mouthed mason jars and the accompanying lids and rings one might need. Lila Mae had never been much of a homemaker, and the only reason she could cook was because she’d taken classes from a local college in their adult education center.
Her mother had not understood that either, but Lila Mae couldn’t fold their personal chef into her pocket and take her with her to Texas. Of course, both of her brothers still lived in the mansion where they’d all grown up, and thus had access to Dottie and her good cooking.
