“Only in the way she does about everybody.”
She sighed. “I know it was fast and everything, but… I know what I want.”
“I think Jade just had other things on her mind she was channeling into an outlet she had feelings about. It doesn’t meanit’s right, but it doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you and Charlie, either.”
She pursed her lips—didn’t say anything, just scowled down into her coffee, and I gave her the space, drinking my coffee, taking a little cookie from the tray and taking a bite of crumbly shortbread. I probably shouldn’t have said anything—I only meant well, but the road to hell was paved with good intentions, and judging by the darkening look on her features, she was rolling right along down that particular road. I was about to say something and walk it back when I heard the rumble of an automatic garage door opener from the house, and Linda and I looked back at the same time.
“Oh—Charlie’s back,” she said. “I should actually gather these chives so I don’t get in trouble.”
I laughed, standing up just as Linda did. “Don’t let her know I insisted on helping, but I insist on helping.”
“You are determined to make a terrible host out of me,” she said, with that little smile of hers flashing, but she didn’t fight it. We stepped off down a path, and she showed me the chives in a raised garden bed, and we picked out a few good stalks together. The back door opened just as we were preparing to go inside, and Charlie leaned out, sleek in a black pantsuit.
“There you two are,” she said. “Sorry I’m home late. I hope Linda didn’t take you off wandering into the woods while you waited, Alyssa, dear.”
“Oh, it’s fine,” I said. “Just a quick hike, got run over by a stag, fell in a river, she had to give me CPR, but we made it back in time.”
“It was more of a stream than a river,” Linda said.
“Okay, you two troublemakers. Alyssa, fix your floating sternum and come inside, it’s freezing out here. I’ll get dinner started right away. Did you get the chives, Linda?”
Linda held them up off the tray. “Had to fight the stag for them, but Alyssa’s scrappier than she looks.”
We went inside and gathered around in the kitchen and Charlie put Tchaikovsky on the surround-sound speakers while she went and got changed, and she was cooking up a storm just a minute later, with a fresh bread she’d picked up on the way home and a soup base that had been prepared ahead. Charlie didn’t give one millimeter for me to help like Linda had, so Linda and I sat in the kitchen with her and talked about the Sunday market, the meditation evening they’d had at Matt’s and Skye’s place yesterday, Birdhouse events, and lowkey town gossip. The dark look on Linda’s expression faded, slowly, but it didn’t seem to go away entirely, and it stuck in my mind even when Charlie sent Linda to go set the table in the dining room and talked quietly once it was just the two of us.
“It’s been nice of you reaching out to talk to Jade,” she said. I folded my hands at my waist.
“I like her a lot,” I said. “Daniela does, too.”
She gave me a tired smile. “Daniela especially, from what I understand. Before everything went down, most of us had been watching the will-they-or-won’t-they game Daniela and Jade had been playing.”
“Ah, well—” I stood up taller, and I tried to push down the sad, frustrated feelings that bubbled up in my stomach when we talked about it. They weren’t going to leave me alone and stop being friends with me if they got together. I didn’t know why this was so uncomfortable for me. “I’m kind of rooting for them now, too,” I said. “I got them talking again, and I think they still have feelings for each other.”
She chuckled slightly, cracking the fancy wall-mounted oven to check the stuffed peppers, and she spoke absently while she took a potholder and slid the tray out of the oven. “Well, maybe a relationship would mellow her out a little.”
“Oh.” I frowned. “You think she needs some… mellowing out?”
I shouldn’t have said it, but I said it. She strained her smile at me, setting down the tray with a clatter and turning off the oven. “Sorry,” she said after a second. “I need to remember to be more polite. I don’t want to insult your friend.”
I was in their home, and they had plenty of leverage in this community, and Linda was the one potentially connecting me to a good job. I shouldn’t have poked the bear. But I never was able to shut up. “You can say what you like,” I said, standing taller. “But I’ll defend her if it feels right, just like I’d defend you if she were talking about you.”
She busied herself checking the peppers. “I don’t doubt she’s had a few things to say.”
“She hasn’t said anything about you to me.”
She sighed, and once again, she was quiet for a second, attending to the food, ladling the soup out into a big bowl and sprinkling cheese on top. “She just doesn’t know how to mind her own business at times.”
“I… trust you do feel that way from your experiences, but she’s been closed up in her house all this time I’ve known her, so you’ll understand I’m a little surprised to hear that.”
“Her friend wanted to leverage the fund Drew has been putting away by his own blood, sweat and tears over the past five years, and to do it behind his back.”
“Behind his back? Seriously?”
“She doesn’t like being told no. And when he told her no anyway, she got her friend to yell at me on her behalf. Drew and I go back years,” she said. “And I don’t need the Birdhouse to become some big, serious commercial venue. She’s trying to take what Drew made and turn it into something it’s not.”
“That’s—”
“I am doing perfectly fine,” she said, her voice barbed. “So if they want to invent issues, I’ll be okay without them.”
