Page 14 of The Naughty List

“He kept talking about Aunt Tillie’s ass,” the boy shrugged. “I warned him three times before I did it.” Raising his bruised knuckles proudly, he smirked. “He was a seventh grader too.”

I, personally, find it kind of hard to fault him for defending his aunt. Hell, she drives me crazy and I would probably have to fight the urge to not punch a guy in the mouth if they kept commenting on her ass.

“Alright, slugger,” I chuckle. “You got a name?”

“Sawyer,” he answers as I step around the table and start walking toward him.

With every step I take, his back straightens and he puffs out his chest more and more. Something tells me that wasn’t the first fight this boy’s been in. When I’m right in front of him, I extend my hand the way I would when meeting a grown man for the first time.

“Elliott,” I tell him as he takes my hand in mine. “So, Sawyer, does your aunt know where you are?”

As if I summoned her with my words, a very frazzled red faced Tillie skids to a stop as sees Sawyer standing there, his back to her.

“Oh my god, Sawyer,” she says. Her chest rises and falls as she lets out a breath of relief. “You’re okay. You’re here. You… you can’t just take off like that! I had no idea where you were or if something happened to you and, holy shit, I’ve never felt fear like that in my life.”

I’ll take that as a no.

I’m not sure what to expect when she turns and looks at me again. We haven’t seen each other, except quickly in passing, in the last couple of weeks. While she’s here, I’ve been in my cabin, working my soul sucking job. The only days I’m actively out and about before five o’clock at night are the weekends. She doesn’t work weekends. And now I know why.

Out of every reaction she could have, a sob and a cascade of tears falling down her cheeks is the very last one I could have ever imagined.

Sawyer looks between the two of us, frantically.

Good to know I’m not the only one freaking out here.

“I’m sorry,” she says, wiping her cheeks one by one, and then repeating. “I just…I was so scared.”

I swear my heart cracks when she speaks. Before I can talk myself out of it, I am standing in front of her.

“Hey,” I say, reaching forward to wipe her tears. “It’s okay. He’s okay.”

Her lip quivers as she nods. “I know.” she lets out a small laugh. “God, I’m terrible at this. Who loses their child?”

Turning back to Sawyer, who is watching us both intently, I say, “See that table over there? There’s scissors and tape. I’ll give you five bucks for every present you wrap.”

I have a fifty dollar bill in my wallet that I plan to give him whether he wraps one present or ten. I know bribery is usually frowned upon, and I probably should have consulted Tillie about it, but I figure this is a special circumstance.

Once Sawyer is behind the table, scissors in hand, I face Tillie again and point to the door. She glances over to Sawyer with unease, so I reassure her that we’re just going to step right outside.

“There’s no back door,” I tell her. “He won’t be able to leave the stable without walking by us.” I point to the only way he can vacate the area and notice small snowflakes starting to float down from the sky. I listened to the weather report a bit ago on one of our old transistor radios, and supposedly it’s going to get pretty bad later on tonight. So far, though, it’s been a relatively nice day. The wind picks up as Tillie looks from the door and back to me, nodding her head.

A small amount of the tension seems to leave her shoulders, and for some unknown reason, it makes me feel lighter, too. I guess now that I think about it, until Tillie, I’ve never really been this way with anyone. It’s probably why I’m always called a fucking golden retriever, which apparently women like but it’s always rubbed me the wrong way. At least I’m not quite a cinnamon roll. I don’t know. Clara was trying to explain it to me the other day…

When Tillie and I first met, her vibe set me off. Over the past few weeks I’ve started to see there might be a lot more to why she’s been so down…and maybe I shouldn’t have judged her so harshly—or said the things I said to her. She’s clearly overwhelmed and dealing with an ornery pre-teenager isn’t helping things.

“Look,” I say, hooking my thumbs through the loops of my jeans and shrugging. “Why don’t you let Sawyer hang with me while you work. If there’s anything I know more than how much of a handful our festival is, it’s being a boy stuck on this farm. I was one once.”

She lets out a quiet sigh and I know I have her. There’s no way she can deny the uninterrupted work time, even if it’s me who is offering it.

“Okay. Fine,” she says, glancing down at the floor and then looking up at me from behind her long lashes. She turns to walk away from me but then she quickly looks back and says, “Thank you, Elliott.” The smallest of smiles tilts up the corners of her mouth as she moves a few strands of hair that have fallen into her eyes, and just as she does so, the sun shining in through the barn hits her face. Suddenly she looks a lot less like the grumpy woman I met at Ivy House and a whole hell of a lot like art.

Calm down,I scold myself before I can start going all soft for the woman.

I really am a fucking golden retriever.

THIRTEEN

TILLIE

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