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“Videos of him mowing lawns,” Daisy answers.
For years, I’ve kept this information to myself. Daisy’s been here all of half an hour, and somehow all my secrets are being revealed.
“Whose lawns?” Mum asks, looking between Daisy and me. “Your own?”
“No, strangers’ lawns,” Daisy replies.
“Are you the one who’s been mowing the lawns at my grandparents’ house?” Poppy asks with wide eyes.
“Guilty as charged, darlin’.”
“Guilty of what?” Bennett asks, choosing that exact moment to wander back into the room.
“Nolan is the one who’s been mowing the lawns at my place,” Poppy answers.
“You,” he says, frowning. “Why?”
“It’s his job,” Daisy chimes in.
Bennett chuckles. “Nolan doesn’t have a job.”
“Watch his channel, and you’ll find out he does. He works damn hard,” Daisy says, and I don’t miss the hint of annoyance in her voice.
I’m not used to anyone outside my family having my back, so the gesture shocks me. One thing’s for sure, Amanda never did anything like that. She was more the type that liked to mock me in front of others.
My Mum stands and grabs her phone off the countertop. “What’s the name of the channel?”
“Mow-It-Forward,” Daisy tells her. I never told her what my secret squirrel business was called. She must have done an online search for it, and for some reason, I find that oddly flattering.
Bennett chuckles again and mumbles, “Mow-It-Forward,” like the name is lame. It’s not. It’s a play on the phrase pay it forward. I think it’s rather clever.
This time, Daisy can’t hide her displeasure. “It’s a charity. He does it for free out of the goodness of his heart. He helps the elderly and less fortunate; you should be proud of him, I certainly am.”
My eyes find her again. “You’re proud of me?”
“You do good things just because, Nolan. Why wouldn’t I be proud?” she deadpans.
I watch as Mum taps on the first video, and within seconds, her expression changes. The transformations I film take hours—sometimes days for the really big jobs—so I edit them into sped-up versions for people to watch. No one wants to sit through the whole thing in real time. It’s the promise of an end result that keeps people watching.
Her hand flies to her chest, and her eyes begin to glisten. “Oh, Nolan.” I can already hear the emotion in her voice, and I immediately regret not telling her about this sooner. “I watch videos of people making sourdough bread,” she says, looking between the screen and me. “Sourdough, Nolan. Strangers kneading dough for twenty minutes, explaining hydration percentages and proofing times, and I don’t even cook. Yet I sit there engrossed in every second.”
A tear slips down her cheek, and a lump forms in my throat. I love my brother; I do, but Bennett has always been the golden child. The success story. The one everyone expected great things from. Me, on the other hand …
“You’ve spent years doing something this wonderful, helping people who need it, and I didn’t even know. I would’ve been your biggest fan if I had.”
“It’s no big deal, Mum.”
“It’s a huge deal.” She looks back at the screen, shaking her head. “All these years I thought you were wasting your life away being a couch potato ... and then I find out you’ve been selflessly giving back to the community.”
“How many charity boards do you sit on, Mum?”
“Oh, please,” she says with a flick of her hand. “We basically drink too much wine, gossip about our husbands, and occasionally write a cheque when someone reminds us there’s a fundraiser happening. Don’t compare what I do to this.”
“Wow,” I hear Bennett murmur, and when my attention snaps to him, I see he has his phone out. His finger slides over the screen, and I can only presume he’s flicking through the countless videos on my channel. “You have over a million followers. Were you even going to tell us you were twlighting as the patron saint of overgrown lawns?”
I shrug because the truth is, probably not. For most of my adult life, all I’ve heard is that I have a degree in finance, one I worked too hard to earn, and what a waste it is that I don’t put it to good use. I honestly thought if they found out I was mowing lawns, they’d see it as a slap in the face.
My father enters the room, and the first thing he says is, “Why are you crying, love?” Which is quickly followed by, “And when did Poppy have a child?”