Emerson hadn’t told him a single detail about the wedding since the night they met. All Luca knew were these wildflowers.
“Eh.” Liv emitted a noncommittal grunt. “We’ll take it, then. Let me know if he needs anything for it, all right?”
“Will do.”
Liv was already smacking SKU labels onto squares of cellophane, to soon be wrapped around the bundles of flowers. Luca turned to go.
“It’s been nice having you around Short King,” she said, stopping his departure. “Emerson’s always so tight-lipped about everything, I never know how things are actually going. Jayden used to give me all the gossip. I miss that bastard, even if he abandoned us. Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask. Your mom doing okay?”
Luca blinked.
Jayden. The ex. Daisy’s other dad.I miss that bastard.
Your mom doing okay?
“Yeah,” Luca forced himself to say. “She’s doing okay.”
The refrain they always said. The refrainshealways said, that he knew she wanted him to repeat. But the truth was, six months ago, Leah Yaeger had collapsed in the kitchen. Had been unresponsive when Molly Riverman found her who knows how much later. She’d woken up on the way to the hospital, appeared right as rain. They’d held her for monitoring and test after test. But everything came up inconclusive. Not a stroke, not a heart attack, not any other hidden disease. Or more accurately: probably not any of those things. Maybe one of those things? But nothing definitive. Nothing any doctor could say with confidence.
Humans were planning habitation on the moon. Destroying every river and plot of land they could in the pursuit of advancing artificial intelligence.
And not a single fucking person could tell Luca what was wrong with his mom.
She had brushed off every sign of concern from her loved ones ever since—probably just a bout of low blood sugar; please, Luca—but nothing could erase the fact that Leah had lain unconscious on the kitchen floor while her husband and sons were miles away in the middle of the ocean.
“Tell her to come say hi more often, okay?” This was what Liv always said. If you were a year-round resident of Greyfin Bay and she didn’t see you in her grocery store at least once a week, she demanded this lapse in judgment be remedied as soon as possible.
“Will do, Liv.” With a wave, Luca pushed off from her doorframe and walked out of her store. His arms felt light on the walk back to his car, his body too free, the way he’d startedfeeling since arriving at Short King Farms any time his hands weren’t being useful.
He sat for a second once he got inside his car, thumbs drumming along the bottom of the steering wheel. It was Friday. Emerson had assured him his weekends would be his own. He was looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow, but a sliver of unease was already seeping through his bones about it. He didn’t want to slow down. He didn’t want to check his writing email. He didn’t want to have extra time.
But this had been one of his justifications to his family, right? If he wasn’t fishing, he’d have more time to be home. More time to check on Leah.
Tomorrow, then. He’d sleep in, and then he’d drive to town and up the hill. He’d share a cup of coffee with his mom.
Maybe he wasn’t entirely sure who he was becoming. Not a fisherman anymore, not a writer. Maybe a farmer, but the more Emerson ignored him, the more he heard about how wonderful this Jayden had been, the more he worried about only being a ghost. A fill-in for the person who was actually supposed to be there.
But becoming a man who was able to drink a cup of coffee with his mom more often.
Maybe that, for now, was enough.
He really did meanto sleep in Saturday morning. Let his overwhelmed body rest.
But turned out, maybe he was becoming a little bit of a farmer after all. Despite his best intentions, Luca woke with the dawn.
And the more he lay in Emerson King’s guest bed, the more he thought about spreadsheets, and the more he thought about Nightshades, and whether they fixed his book or ruinedit. And why the fuck was he thinking about this at all? He’d given up the ghost. And maybe hewasa ghost, but he wasn’t going to be a ghost who fucked with writing anymore. He’d be damned to drag his liminal being down that low.
In short: it was time for Luca to get the hell out of bed.
It’d be good to get a head start on the day anyway. He’d gotten a message that the folks who had rented out his cabin for the week were heading out early. Time to get some experience with his second new weird job of the month, before he met his mom: housekeeper to his own fucking house.
He was on his way to the car, keys clutched in his fist, feet crunching over the gravel of Emerson’s drive, when a noise startled him so badly he almost tripped over his own feet.
“Oh.”
Emerson came to an equally awkward halt, a box of produce cradled in his arms. His face only a bit more surprised than it had looked the rest of the week, to continually find Luca still there.
“Hey.” Luca cleared his throat. “Can I help with what you’ve got there?”
