“Thanks,” I said. “That’d be great.”
“Well, you just let me know if there’s anything else you need. I want you to feel at home here.”
I smiled at him and he smiled back. I hadn’t had many expectations of my new boss—I’d learned that expectations weren’t terribly useful—but it was a relief to find he was reasonably normal, as far as first impressions went. It was a quick ride to Dane’s, a rustic, tin-roofed cabin that sat across the road from the river.
“Dane’s?” I said. “This is yours, too?”
“Yeah. Not much to look at,” Crete said, parking the truck, “but we do all right.”
Two gas pumps sat out front, and various hand-painted signs listed the offerings within: Breakfast. Canoe rental. Shower. Bait. We stepped inside, the plank floors creaking, and I smelled bacon and burnt coffee. The restaurant occupied most of the right side of the building, and I saw Judd in the cramped kitchen scrambling eggs. Crete gave me a tour while we waited for our food, rattling off more details than I could keep track of. His family had built the store in the 1920s, and his dad had passed it on to him. They sold camping and fishing equipment, groceries, firewood, and an assortment of jams and vegetables canned fresh from the farm. The outdoor shower cost two dollars for tourists but was free to locals who had just come off the river. Blue laws ordained that certain items couldn’t be sold on Sundays, he explained, but that was ignored unless a preacher or member of law enforcement happened to be in the store. Certain people would come in to buy a bottle of White Lightning, a homemade grain alcohol, but it had to be kept out of sight in unlabeled bottles because, technically, it was illegal to sell alcohol in grocery or convenience stores.
“We won’t need you over at the farm full-time,” he said. “I thought if it was okay with you, we might have you help out over here a bit. We get real busy when tourist season hits, lots of folks wanting to float the river.”
“Sure,” I said, trying to sound enthusiastic. “Whatever needs doing.” We sat at a picnic table on the outdoor patio to eat, the morning sun glaring in our eyes. I could see a rickety old school bus and a couple of boat trailers out behind the main building, and a large metal shed. Beyond that, nothing but woods.
“I don’t mean to throw too much at you at once,” he said, studying my face. “But once you get used to it, I think you’re gonna like it here.”
I doubted I’d ever like Henbane, but that didn’t really matter. My contract was for two years. I could make do for that long. And when I was done, I’d have enough saved to move someplace and start over on my own. Hopefully enough to start taking classes, figure out what I wanted to do.
“More coffee?” His hand skimmed mine as he reached for my mug.
“Sure, thanks.” I brushed toast crumbs from my lips and glanced up to see him looking at me. I didn’t look away and neither did he.
“Damn,” he murmured, shaking his head. “I don’t mean to stare, it’s just… You’re a beautiful girl, you know it? Pictures don’t do justice.”
He flashed a confident smile and got up to fetch the coffee. It was wholly unprofessional, I knew, for my boss to talk about my looks, but nothing at Dane’s was really what you’d call professional. And part of me, the part that always acted without thinking, couldn’t help liking what he’d said.
CHAPTER 3
Lucy
Summer had officially arrived, even if the calendar said otherwise: School was out, it was hot, and I had set out the first jar of sun tea. Bess and I had a few days free before starting our jobs, and we spent one of them floating down the North Fork. We stopped to swim at Blind Hollow and paddled our canoe into the dark chill of the old moonshiner’s cave as far as we dared without flashlights. It was a Thursday and traffic on the river was sparse, mostly fishermen looking for walleye and small-mouth bass. We ate lunch on a pebbled shoal and napped for a while in the sun. When Gabby picked us up that evening, we were sunburned and sore, and by the time I reported to work Monday morning, the skin on my face and shoulders had started to peel.
I walked into Crete’s office at the back of the store, and he got up from his desk to give me a bear hug, lifting me off the ground just like he did when I was little. “Glad you’re finally here, kid,” he said.
“Me, too,” I said. “Thanks for talking Dad into it.”
“Honey, I could talk your dad into anything. Just don’t tell him I said so.” He winked. “So, you ready for your first day?”
“You bet.”
There was a sharp knock, and I turned around to see Daniel Cole standing in the doorway. My breath caught in my throat.
“Sorry to interrupt,” Daniel said to Crete. “Judd said to tell you the boat’s ready.”
“Thanks,” Crete said. “Lucy, you know Daniel? He just started last week.”
They both turned to me, and I hoped my sunburn masked the sudden blush that heated my face. Daniel had graduated from Henbane High the previous year. He’d never spoken to me at school, though he’d given me a pensive half smile the few times our eyes met in the hall—not ignoring or avoiding me, like most people did. He was always alone when I saw him, but it didn’t seem to bother him, not belonging to any particular group, and I admired him for that.
Everybody knew that Daniel’s mom took food stamps and his dad and three older brothers were in prison. But I knew him another way. He occupied a line in my book of lists, kiss number four from the time I played spin the bottle. The first three were classmates who never paid any attention to me at school, and one of them was so embarrassed to be kissing me that he only pecked me on the cheek. Daniel had been sitting outside the circle the entire time, not participating, but when the bottle pointed in his direction, he grudgingly came forward and slid his hand along my jaw, gazing down at me with a grim expression before leaning in. It was awkward at first, but almost immediately something shifted, and for the first time in my admittedly brief experience with boys, I felt a kiss beyond the reach of lips; it spread through me, warming, loosening, and my insides fluttered, thwap thwap thwap, like a deck of cards collapsing in a dovetail shuffle. I’d clutched his shirt to pull him closer. Everyone laughed when he gently—firmly—pushed me away, but I was too stunned to care what they thought. Daniel disappeared from the party without speaking to me, and I tormented myself for weeks afterward, embellishing his name in my notebook, replaying the kiss in my mind, scrawling a self-conscious list of reasons he didn’t like me.
I tried to appear uninterested. It didn’t help that he was even better-looking than I remembered, with his dark chocolate eyes and shaggy hair and tautly muscled arms. He watched me with what looked like amusement, and I remembered to speak.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m Lucy.”
“Hi.” He smiled and extended his hand. “I remember you.”
My stomach knotted. I shook his hand with an extra-firm grip, like my dad taught me, but Daniel was stronger, nearly cracking my knuckles, sending nervous aftershocks through my body.
“Well, we better get busy,” Crete said.
Daniel headed out, and we followed him until he disappeared into the boathouse. Crete’s truck was parked out back, a boat trailer hitched to it. “Get on in,” he said.
We climbed into the cab. “Where’re we going?”
“I thought for your first day, we’d start with something easy.” He grinned. “How about some fishing?”
“That doesn’t sound like work,” I said. “Not that I’m complaining.”