Thirteen
The days bled into one another. Emmy split her time between researching in the library and working on the exterior design of Will’s house. His two weeks’ notice was almost up, and she was no closer to an answer about how to get out of the damn book. With each fruitless visit to the library, she became more certain that she was pursuing the wrong course. Meanwhile, if time was passing normally in the real world, she’d missed her sister’s wedding and then some. It hurt to think about her family, to wonder how they were handling her disappearance. The only way she could stop fretting about it was to convince herself that time had stopped when she’d been pulled into the book. Or maybe she was only a projection of herself. Maybe her real body was lying comatose in her bed. Her family would still be worrying about her—likely while watching over her in a hospital bed—but at least they wouldn’t think she’d been kidnapped. Or worse. The problem with the coma theory was that it meant there was no way to pull Will out of the book with her.
Her brain started to throb whenever she had too much downtime. Fortunately, she never felt lost or overwhelmed when she was working on the landscaping outside Will’s house. She had a pile of new supplies thanks to a trip to the hardware store Will had insisted on a few days prior. As she finished filling a window box with potting soil, she thought again about the conversation they’d had at the hardware store in town. She couldn’t help but smile a little at the memory.
“Fresh herbs in the window box would be good,” she’d said, more to herself than to him, as she perused a shelf of small green plants in their flimsy, disposable pots. “You cook enough where they’d actually get used, and they’d smell really good, too.”
“I don’t know if I can identify enough herbs to make it worthwhile. I mostly use the dried stuff in the conveniently labeled shakers.”
Emmy cast him a withering look. “You want flowers, you can have flowers. I’m just saying, a lot of people are using homegrown fruits, vegetables, and herbs these days. It’s efficient and organic and cottage-core and it saves you from having to go to the grocery store every time you want a tomato for a sandwich.”
“Or I could make a sandwich without tomatoes on it.”
Emmy whirled on him, brandishing a tiny pot of basil. “Look, buster, you’re the one who insisted on bringing me here, so stop sassing me.”
“Sassing?”
“Yes. You’re being sassy. Stop it. You’re going to have a window box herb garden and you’re going to like it.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Will said, valiantly trying to hide his grin.
“That’s better.” Emmy added the basil to the cart and tossed in an assortment of seed packets for good measure, vowing to sort through them later. She didn’t know if she’d be at Will’s place long enough to watch seedlings grow into flowers—in fact, she hoped she wouldn’t be—but she enjoyed the process of planting enough to make the purchase worth it.
Then they’d moved on to a display of perennials, already blooming and giving off an assortment of fragrances.
“You can arrange taller flowers along the edge of the house,” Emmy told Will. “A lot of these plants thrive in partial shade, which is perfect for your house because it faces south. Then you get some mossy rocks to break up the pattern a little, throw in something unexpected. Oh! Maybe a fountain. No… a birdbath. An old one to match the style of your grandfather’s watering can. Is there an antique shop around here?” She turned to look at him and caught him smiling at her. “What?”
“Just a hobby?”
Emmy felt her cheeks get warm. “A hobby that isn’t worth doing unless you do it right.”
“Emmy, you’re talking about antique birdbaths. Maybe it’s time to consider turning your hobby into a career.”
“Not this again,” she grumbled, wheeling the cart away.
“What’s stopping you? You have the skills and the passion. You’re obsessed with herbs, and you can spend twenty minutes staring at one packet of seeds. It sounds like a no-brainer.”
“Yeah, until I find out that I’m competing with people who have been landscaping all their lives. People who studied it, got certifications, won prizes. People who havecrews of dozens of people working for them. And I’ll be sitting there hoping some grandma who lives in my neighborhood takes pity on me and asks me to prune her rose bushes.”
“Or… you could do up grandma’s garden real nice and she could tell all her grandma friends. Then, after you’ve done up all their yards, their worthless kids can come for a visit, see what you’ve done, and then you’ve got more customers.”
Emmy raised an eyebrow. “What makes them worthless?”
“Because they never call, and they only visit on major holidays.”
“Oh, sure. Obviously.”
Will fell silent. She thought he was finally ready to drop the subject. She thought wrong.
“You could try it out for however long you’re here. I bet there are tons of people in town who would love to redo their yards, and there wouldn’t be any pressure because none of it is real anyway.”
“It would feel real to me.”
“That would just help motivate you to give it your all.”
“If I agree to try it, will you stop pushing this?” she snapped.
“Yes, because then I’ll have won.”
