Page 67 of Forbidden to Fall

I halted. “I’m actually off tomorrow.”

She blinked. “Oh, right! I’d forgotten—but that reminds me…” She hurried over to a drawer near the register and opened it, pulling out a paper. “Mom and I reconfigured the schedule a bit for the week of the Harvest Festival.” She handed it across the counter to me.

“Oh.” I took it with a little stab of anxiety in the pit of my stomach.

“I finally convinced Mom the bakery should have a booth at the fair,” she said, clearly thinking I’d be pleased with this success.

I glanced over the new schedule for the week, anxiety settling in. It was set up to show who would be covering the morning and afternoon at the bakery and who would be running the booth at the festival. My reduced hours had been unreduced.

I would be covering the booth.

“Does it look okay?” Morgan asked.

“Um, yeah,” I said. “It’s just…” I hesitated. The bakery was my job. My actual employer. What I was doing at Carver Farm was essentially moonlighting and needed to take a backseat to it.

“I hadn’t realized Mom reduced your hours with my arrival in town,” she said. “I figured this would help you—and provide some extra income for the bakery. Win-win.”

“It’s really nice of you,” I said, my stomach twisting. Was there a way I could make it work helping at both booths? I needed to sit with the new schedule and think through things. May insisted she’d help woman the booth, as she called it, but neither James nor I was sure she’d be able to. She wasn’t supposed to stand for too long, and getting up and down from a seat to help customers constantly would be even worse.

“Looks great,” I said, taking a picture of it with my phone.

I’d figure something out.

There was no sign of James when I reached the maple farm in the truck (with just one stall en route, by the way.) I’d kind of hoped he’d be there to witness my triumphant arrival after yesterday’s lessons, but he was probably on a tour.

I only had a couple of hours before my—apparently strict—sixteen-hour break was supposed to begin. I still wasn’t quite satisfied with my maple blondies, but I wasn’t sure how to fix that. Maybe I was trying too hard to set them apart. A solid, classic maple blondie was nothing to sneer at, right? Wade had given his official stamp of approval by eating two and stealing three more to “take to coworkers” at the school. He probably meant Ari.

I looked over the product on our displays and in the small fridge in the sugar shack and decided to whip up a batch of cookies, which were selling more quickly than the cream puffs, probably because they kept better.

We’d be welcoming our first Horseshoe Holler trail group on Monday, so I would come back after my break tomorrow to be sure we had enough pastries on hand, then drop some by the inn and candle shop.

It was getting dark by the time I pulled the cookies out of the oven, and still, there was no sign of James. I shrugged off my competing curiosity and a slight sense of neglect. Not a day had gone by without him at least dropping in to check on me and see if he was needed for any taste testing.

A thought flashed across my mind, making my lungs clench.

He’d been different after the hardware store yesterday. He’d tried to make conversation, but I wasn’t fooled. The playfulness I’d enjoyed during the driving lesson and its follow-up had been gone.

Had the interaction with the Rigbys bothered him enough to make him leave?

I picked up my phone and typed Where are you? only to erase it.

He was a grown man, and he certainly didn’t answer to me.

Instead, I went for something a little less aggressive.

Sadie

Guess my break supervisor decided I was trustworthy after all

I waited for any sign of a message being typed back, then set down my phone when there wasn’t.

Maybe I should go up to the house and see May—not just because I was wondering about James. I loved May in her own right. But if James had left, that would change a lot.

Everything, even.

The thought made me a little sick, resurrecting a hint of the angst I’d nearly drowned in during my teenage years.

The door opened, and I whirled around.