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Michael arrivedhome just after five, and I’d managed to pick up some drinks and dinner from The Shack.
But even after his truck trundled noisily into the driveway, Michael didn’t appear, so I went out to see what he was doing.
Michael was at the bed of the truck, unloading four white wooden rocking chairs. “For the porch,” he told me. Then he put down the chair he was holding and smiled at me. “For you.”
Something warm and unidentifiable welled up inside me. I was touched.
I remembered saying how much I’d enjoy sitting out there, and I was shocked that he had remembered it too. “These are for me?” I asked, dumbfounded. I couldn’t remember the last time anyone had made such a sweet gesture. “Thank you.”
“I wanted to do something nice. To maybe help offset the years of ‘not nice’ between our families.”
“Wait, did you...” I looked over the smooth form of one of the chairs. They weren’t like any I’d seen online when I’d priced them. “Did you make these yourself?”
He actually blushed and dropped his eyes to the ground. I half expected him to utter the word shucks. But instead, he cleared his throat and then met my eyes. “Yeah. It’s the thing I really enjoy, making furniture. I have a workshop out behind the store.”
“You’re really talented. You could definitely sell these,” I told him, unable to stop myself from sitting in one to test it out. “They’re gorgeous.”
“Thanks,” he said, as I stood again.
I stepped closer to him, wrapping my arms around his waist. “This is nice. This is so nice.” And then I did what I’d been thinking of doing all day. I kissed him, long and sweet and languorous, out there under the sweeping fall of leaves and the angling rays of the setting autumn sun. And for that one moment, everything in my life was perfect.
We had dinner in the parlor after setting up the new chairs on the front porch. I tested out every one of them, rocking back and forth on the new porch planks while gazing out at the gates that led down to the town square. I could never have imagined a couple months ago that I’d be sitting on the front porch of the old haunted house, happy and content.
“I made a swing too,” Michael said, once I’d finished rocking and stood back up to go inside.
“Seriously?” I grinned. The idea of a porch swing made me so happy. It seemed so provincial, so very southern—to sit on a porch swing and drink lemonade. It wasn’t the kind of life I’d thought I’d have, the kind I’d had in New York. But it was the kind of life I was beginning to think I wanted.
“Hey,” he said, leaning over the porch railing, staring at something. “Come look at this.”
I joined him, following his gaze down to the ground, where there was a very noticeable anthill and about forty million big red ants.
My stomach roiled. I hated ants. I hated bugs. “Fire ants?” I asked.
“Yes, I think so,” he said. “I’ll call an exterminator. We don’t want to mess around with those.”
I put the ants out of my mind as best I could and went inside to open the boxes of clams and fries I’d brought home, and then turned on a movie neither of us was really watching.
“I told you about Sunday dinner, right?” I asked him, my mouth half full of clam.
“Yeah,” he said. “Uncle Victor was weirdly agreeable. The cousins are suspicious.”
“Maybe it’s a trap,” I suggested, grinning.
“Knowing your mother...”
“Careful,” I warned, though he wasn’t wrong to be wary of Lottie. “Oh, and speaking of my mother.”
Michael looked at me and then his eyes slid shut. “Just tell me. I can handle it.”
“She came by today with a pet psychic. Long story short, I’m supposed to call you Elias as much as possible and you’re supposed to spend as much time as you can throwing balls and putting out kibble.”
“Should I pretend that isn’t insane?”
“She thinks we’re haunted by a German Shepherd.”
“Right,” he said, just accepting this in stride because based on everything else my mother had done, this made perfect sense.
“So what do you say, Elias?”
