“Why on earth would you do that?” I ask before I can stop myself. Honestly it’s to my benefit because I’m almost one hundred percent sure we lost this. If we come in under fifty we will be able to attend the next Sunday, so I should just shut up.
“Tell me I have bad business sense, I don’t care. I’m just trying to be fair.” Tate shrugs. “I bet we beat you by more than that anyway. Now just tell me your sales.”
“Okay, I agree to the fifty buck rule,” I mutter and take a deep breath and close my eyes and spit it out. “Four hundred and forty-four dollars and fifty cents.”
I keep my eyes shut and wait for the laughter, the judgement, the hoots of victory. But there’s nothing but the rustle of the fall wind through the nearby pussy willows. I open my left eye.
Tate is staring at me with his mouth hanging open. “Say that again?”
I give him the total again. He shakes his head. “Damn it…is it too late to reconsider that fifty dollar thing?”
“Yes. Why? What’s your total?”
“Four hundred and sixty-six dollars.”
A twenty-two dollar difference.
Tate shrugs. “Okay, well, see you next Sunday then. I have to take a load of stuff back to the farm while Jace takes the dunk tank back to his buddy.”
He turns and walks over to his truck, which Louise has loaded with stuff. She gets in the passenger seat and he hops behind the wheel and I’m still staring as they drive away, the tall grass scratching at my jeans in the cool wind. What the hell just happened? I should be relieved. I should be thrilled, but something isn’t sitting right.
He lost his mind over a beer pong tie but he’s giving us a fifty buck buffer?
I walk back to the booth to grab the last box of stuff. Raquel is still there and she sighs in typical Raquel fashion—loudly and dramatically. “Where is my cousin? I have to give him the sales figures.”
“He left,” I mutter and then her words hit me. “You have to give him what?”
Raquel looks annoyed. “The sales figures. The jerk left? Why am I even here? He said he needed me to run the stupid booth and count up the sales as fast as possible as soon as it closes and the brat didn’t even wait for them? I swear he is so annoying.”
“Tate didn’t have the sales figures?” I find myself saying—out loud—in shock.
Raquel turns and glares at me. She’s been doing it since she was born, so I’m used to it. “Not all of them. I counted the cash but I forgot to count the sales we made through cards. And mind your own business.”
Thisismy business, I think but I don’t say it to her. I just turn and march over to my car with a new fire building inside me. That asshole had to have known he didn’t have all the sales. That means he beat me and purposely let me think we tied. Why? There must be a nefarious reason for this because Tate Adler is not about to let a Todd—any Todd, but especially me—get a free pass on something.
Daisy is standing at the trunk of our car pushing it closed because it’s packed full already. “That’ll have to go in Uncle Bobby’s truck.”
I nod and hand it to her. “You’ll have to go with him too. I need the car for an errand.”
She looks confused but doesn’t argue which is great because I want to figure out what he’s doing before I let her in on it. Despite the nickname Tate uses exclusively for me, Daisy is actually much more of a firecracker than I am. She tends to shoot first and ask questions later. She’ll just flip out on him and make the situation worse. I want to know what he’s up to so I can plan the appropriate revenge successfully. I jump in our car and am out of the parking lot before I even click my seatbelt. The drive to his farm is the same as the drive to mine so, despite wanting to get there as soon as possible, I take a small detour around the town center so Bobby’s truck doesn’t follow me the whole way there. If Daisy figures out I’m on my way to the Adler farm, she’ll show up there too.
When I turn onto our road, the sun is low in the sky and the road is empty. It looks really beautiful this time of year when the trees are starting to show little patches of color here and there and light is so golden it almost makes the road glitter. I love this time of year most of all in Vermont but I don’t let myself enjoy it right now because there’s a growing knot twisting in my belly with Tate Adler’s name on it.
I drive right past our open farm gates and hook a left onto the Adler’s property. There’re two ways in. The main one that everyone uses and this little, blink-and-you-will-miss-it dirt lane that hooks around the back of their barn. It used to be fenced off, but last year a tree crushed the old, rickety wooden gate when it fell in a windstorm. They never fixed it and despite the tall, unmown grass at the foot of the lane, I turn onto it. I want to avoid alerting every Adler in the place I’m on their land. I park my car halfway up the lane and walk the rest of the way toward the barn. As I crest the small hill, the lake gleams ahead, all serene and sparkling. The farmhouse is to my left and beyond that, the orchards. My right has the barn. Well, what’s left of it, which is three walls. I don’t have much of a plan in place except to sneak around the Adler Farm like a member of the Scooby gang until I find my villain, Tate.
I don’t have to go far as he’s on the main drive on the opposite side of the barn, unloading market stuff from the back of his truck. There are about six other cars peppering the drive and I can hear the murmur of voices and I realize their farm is open for apple picking today. That means his father and George are in the orchard handling the customers. I steal around the side of the barn and as he turns to haul something into it, I block his way. He jumps like a scream queen in a horror movie and drops the box he’s holding. I would laugh if I wasn’t hyper focused on exposing his lies.
“Why did you let us win?”
Tate blinks repeatedly and regains his composure. “What are you doing here?”
“Raquel was looking for you because you forgot to count the receipts from people who paid electronically,” I say flatly. “Which means you won. We didn’t. You lied and said we did.”
I stare at him with laser focus waiting—hoping—to see some look of shock which should be quickly replaced by excitement that he beat us. He won. He gets the booth to himself next week. But instead he just blinks those eyes the color of wet moss, all dark and lush, and shrugs. “Raquel doesn’t know what she’s talking about. And honestly, neither do you. You didn’t win. We tied. Big difference.”
He bends to pick up the box he dropped and walks around me toward a small, aluminum storage shed beside the barn. I follow so close behind I almost clip his heels with the toes of my Converse.
“Go home Maggie.”
