“I like baked goods,” she replied. “Is that illegal in Brim’s Hollow?”
He sighed. He wasn’t always such a jerk. Leticia had been the people person. The one people gravitated toward. He’d always been quieter, happy to stand back and be in her orbit. He didn’t know when he’d turned into the kind of guy who bristled anytime someone new showed up.
The way Honey looked at everything too closely, like she was gathering evidence, made his hackles rise.
He looked around, suddenly aware of how visible he was, idling on Brimrose Lane in the middle of the afternoon. He tried to keep to himself these days. Ever since Leticia left, people were always looking at him. And then came the inevitable:
How are you holding up, Ethan?
The girls doing okay?
Anything we can do?
He didn’t want to be asked. And he sure as hell didn’t want to be pitied.
“I keep The Inn Between stocked with apple pie cookies this time of year,” he said. “I’ll give you a ride.”
“What on earth is an apple pie cookie?”
“Exactly what it sounds like.”
“It sounds like an abomination.”
Of course, she thought it did. That was exactly the problem with bureaucrats. They couldn’t stand anything that didn’t fit into a neat, labeled box. There was no room for mess or invention. Just rules and forms and whatever it was she carried around in that filing cabinet of a brain.
“I need to stop by a pharmacy,” Honey said, and he realized he was still frowning at her.
“Are you hurt?”
“If you must know, I have a scrape on my leg from when your daughter threw a snake at me and I fell.”
Ethan’s jaw twitched. He should’ve apologized. Or offered sympathy. Or done something other than clench the steering wheel and frown at her knees. Instead, he just grumbled, “I’ll give you a ride to the pharmacy.”
“I’m sure I can find my way.”
“Get in the car, Ms. Baxter.”
She paused only a moment before she walked to the passenger side and opened the door.
“You’re very demanding,” she said, settling in.
“And you’re very nosey.”
“I prefer the term professional curiosity,” she murmured, clicking her seatbelt.
Ethan didn’t reply. He just pulled away from the curb and tried not to think too hard about the fact that she’d gotten in.
She looked at him, then at the dash, and he saw the car through her eyes. Its polished hood, its cracked leather seats. Maybe she could see the ghost of something old and warm stitched into its bones.
Not more than two minutes later, they pulled up infront of Brim’s Apothecary & Sundries, a squat brick building with a crooked little sign swinging over the door.
“Runa should have whatever you need,” Ethan said.
“Right. Well then. See you tomorrow, Mr. Hale.”
“I’m coming with you,” he said, putting the car in park and getting out.
He told himself it was because she’d probably wander off and start asking all kinds of questions she shouldn’t, but the truth was, he didn’t like the idea of her hobbling around town, scraped up and alone. He wasn’t proud of the way he handled her visit or that she’d gotten hurt on his property. The least he could do was make sure she got a damn Band-Aid.
