Amy didn’t know anything about professional golf other than it dominated Sunday afternoon TV viewing. She shrugged a little.
“I looked long and hard and found a place where I can heal and think. Someplace off the beaten path whereIcould be alone. Therefore, I will not be leaving.”
Her phone suddenly pinged. She hoped it was Julie checking in so Amy could tell her about the grand fuckup. Then Julie would call Sam and make her give this man his money, and in a matter of a couple of hours, he’d be gone, and Amy could resume her two weeks of bliss. Which had started with a most excellent bath, the zen of which Mr. Neely was ruining.
But the text was not from Julie.
Mom do we have any milk?
The message came fromJonah the Destroyer’s phone, otherwise known as her seventeen-year-old son. Who was at home right now, presumably waiting for Ryan to pick up him and his brother. But never mind that—did he really think she would be on top of the milk situation just now?
Where are you?
Home.
Unbelievable. “Excuse me,” she said to the interloper, who was now eying her bananas. She turned away from him so he couldn’t see the flames of fury licking her face. She knew absolutely that she should notcontinue this text exchange given the total chaos here, but seriously, was Jonah for real?
Can’t you go look?
I don’t want to go downstairs rn. I’m playing a new game.
Okay. I’m not driving back to Willow Valley to look for you.
Amy turned back to Mr. Neely. She suddenly felt dangerously close to tears. She’d had her heart set on these two weeks. She could never afford to do something like this on her own, and it was only Julie’s generosity that was making it possible. “I don’t think you understand,” she said to Mr. Neely. “My son just texted to ask me if we have milk.”
He looked at her with confusion.
“But he’s at home, where the milk is.”
“Okay,” he said uncertainly.
He didn’t get it. How could he? “No,notokay. Ineedspace from my family, Mr. Neely. I can’t go back there. I can’t. You don’t understand—look, I love them more than life, and I would literally kill for them. But my forty-eight-year-old brother is sleeping on the couch because he broke up with girlfriend number eighty-two, for God’s sake, and my ex-husband is trying to get back with me for reasons that I don’t get and I don’t want, and my oldest son has no sense of what he is going to do with his life, and I think he’s smoking pot, although he denies it and says I am soextra, and my youngest son has anxiety so bad that sometimes he can hardly function but yet, he and his best friend, Connor, are building a flying machine”—and here, she used air quotes because there was no way thatthing would fly—“that they intend to test off the roof of my house. Where is his anxiety when he needs it to keep him from killing himself, I ask you?”
“That does sound sort of dangerous,” Mr. Neely said.
“Right? And I haven’t even mentioned my boss, who thinks it is perfectly okay to mention a woman’s breasts to me, and I’m his HR director! All I ever wanted was to be an artist, butnooo, I had to get married, and the years slipped by while I had babies, and life got in the way, and now I have a chance to recapture that dream, but it all boils down to two weeks atthishouseby myself, so you really need to leave.” She stopped to take an enormous breath.
Mr. Neely frowned. “You seem distressed,” he said.
“Yathink?”
“Look, I could give you a litany of woes, too,” he said. “Which is why I need a place to recover and think, and which is why I paid in advance. So nothing like this would happen. So nothing like this,” he said, gesturing between the two of them, “could interrupt. But here we are. Now, while I still believe you’re the one who needs to leave, how about this? What if we just split it? There are two primary bedrooms. Plenty of space. We could just agree to stay out of each other’s way.”
Amy blinked. “Are you seriously suggesting that I live with a complete stranger for two whole weeks? That’s howDatelineepisodes are made, you know. How do I know you’re not a murderer or something?”
His gray eyes widened. He glanced down at himself as if he thought maybe he was dressed like one. “Wait—how do I knowyou’renot? Murder is an equal-opportunity activity. Or how do I know you’re not planning a drug-fueled orgy?”
Amy snorted. “As if I know enough people for an orgy. And I’m pretty sure I can’t be bothered to murder you unless you don’t clean up after yourself. I’m on a break.”
He almost smiled. “The point is, the only thing I want to do is try andrehab my knee and think carefully about my options. I can do that on the deck. Or in the living room. Or wherever you are not. All I need is peace and quiet.”
“That’s allIneed,” Amy said. Well, that and wine. And some potato chips. “I’m going to be in the studio most of the day.” Wait…was this doable? She could feel herself warming to the idea.
“There’s a studio?”
She nodded. “Separate from the house.” She pointed at the small, cabin-like structure on the lower level of the yard.
“This house is huge,” he said. “We probably wouldn’t even see each other.”
