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We’ll see if she can stomach me after she learns what I did.
Archer
The drive home is quick with Horseshoe Holler only ten minutes from Autumn Ridge. We eat our burgers from the Maple Bar and Grill as I head down the back roads.
I’ve got one hand on the wheel, the other wrapped around the burger as I take a bite. A bit of ketchup lingers at the edge of my lips, so I reach out to lick it away, chewing my bite before I catch Juliet’s eyes darting away from mine.
She takes small bites at first, but soon, she’s eating as heartily as I am. We finish just as I pass by Aunt May’s house set back from the newly paved road. She’s sweeping the front porch, so I give my horn a little honk, and she waves in response. I hope she can’t tell who’s with me. I’ll be the Ednas’ next topic of gossip if I’m spotted alone with Juliet.
Not that I really care. I just don’t want to risk the mayor using this as a way to cancel Sleepy Holler, now we’re only a month out.
“Do you see her often?” Juliet asks as we move past Carver Maple Farm and draw closer to my stables. “Your aunt, I mean.”
“At least once a week. I help her around the farm when I can, though I haven’t needed to as much the last couple of weeks.”
“Because James is back?”
I give her a look of surprise.
“I saw him darting away at my dad’s party.”
She doesn’t miss a thing, does she?
Still, I’m glad she doesn’t press for more information about my cousin. I don’t want to get into another sordid family affair—James and the fallout with his best friend, how he’d left for years and only now came back. He’s a good man—a far better one than the town believes.
We arrive at Horseshoe Holler a few minutes later, the property tucked up against a hillside with the stables adjacent to the house.
“Wow,” Juliet says as I pull onto the drive. “When did you build that?” Her eyes shift from my home to the stables nearby. “And that?”
“Probably the year you left for college?”
She steps out of the car and stares up at the house. The farmhouse-style structure is painted white with exposed natural wood wrapped around in a full, front porch. White-paned windows line the front, four on the bottom, three on the top, and two flower-hanging-baskets dangle from the edges of the porch roof. Her eyes warm as she looks at my favorite personal touch on the house—a wooden porch swing with the back depicting a horse made out of horseshoes.
“It’s beautiful.”
“Thanks,” I say casually, though pride pours into every inch of me. I’ve worked hard to make this house a home. It’s nice to see someone appreciate it.
“Quite the step up from the trailer home you were living in before.”
Just like that, the pride seeps from my chest and lands in a pathetic pool at my feet. “Ah, you remember that?”
“Yeah. Especially the cardboard duct-taped to the outside of the trailer in place of your windows.”
I rub the back of my neck. “I didn’t really care what I lived in before.”
She eyes the front garden where purple asters and red and orange zinnias still bloom—flowers I didn’t know the name of three years before.
“What changed?” she asks.
“A desire to see outside my windows,” I joke.
Really it was her dad’s attention that forced me to change. Mayor Monroe never thought I’d succeed, but when Horseshoe Holler became more and more profitable and popular, he ordered an inspection of my business—performed by one of his good friends—to ensure everything was up to code.
The report came back with hundreds of required changes. I wasn’t family friendly due to the “suspect nature of the living structure on the property.” AKA, my trailer home. The stables were also deemed “hazardous” due to a wayward nail here and there.
I wasn’t about to be kicked out of Autumn Ridge after all my hard work, so I poured every penny and every ounce of energy into improving everything. I hired contractors, interior designers, lawyers, landscape architects, professional horsemen—anyone and everyone I could think of to help me design the most quintessential-looking, family-friendly-appearing, comfort-and-safety-inducing house and stables in Vermont. Within less than a year, I passed the follow-up report with flying colors.
I guess I have the mayor to thank for it. I was exhausted, but I never regretted the money and time I spent. The improvements have only increased business and my value of life. My only regret? Having such a large house all to myself. It’s made me acutely aware of how isolated I am. I know I’ll have a wife and kids one day to brighten up the space, but the days can get long.
