Page 16 of Lemon Crush

I picked up a peanut butter cracker and handed it to the waiting Merlin before taking one for myself.

Chick and I had talked for hours last night—before he started scaling his wrestler mountain—and it did seem like a good sign. To tell the truth, I hadn’t thought there’d be so much interest this quickly. It was the reason I was out here, scrambling to create a clean-ish path to the apartment door, through a year’s worth of nature’s detritus, in case someone wanted to view it before signing a lease.

You don’t have to accept an application if you’re not ready.

Logically, I’d known that putting Mom’s place up for rent would bring some difficult emotions flooding back to the surface—not that they’d been that far away from it—but yesterday, it felt as if I were drowning again.

At least now I was back to treading water and focusing on the positive. “This is the right thing to do.”

I’d repeated that sentence a lot today.

Accepting Chick’s offer had me rethinking my priorities. Before I listed the house, I would need to fix it up, keeping appealing to a buyer in mind. The front yard, the courtyard and the garage would be top priority, because that was the first thing prospective buyers would see. Inside, the hideous wallpaper border in the living room had to go, the warped flooringneeded to be fixed, and that hazard of a stair railing had to be replaced. I should also call in an AC guy to have the unit checked out, because it sounded wheezy to me, and air conditioning was a critical selling point in this state. Once that was done, the place would probably sell fairly quickly. According to Morgan, this was one of the top school districts in the area, and people around here always seemed happy with the fact that they had their own police force and there was no HOA.

Do you really think leaving is the right thing to do?

It was the one that made sense to me. I knew how to do it. After all these years, starting from scratch was second nature to me. I’d only taken the unique step of actually purchasing this house instead of renting because Mom was getting older and wanted to have us all in the same place again. But now…we weren’t.

Those first few years, we’d been inundated with invitations from Morgan and the Hudsons. From weekly floating dinners and game nights to group yoga classes at Bernie’s studio, they were always scheduling something to bring us all together. After dipping my toe in theunwelcome pool, I was usually too busy being “in the zone” or “in my writer’s cave” or “really invested in rewatching a series in my underwear while avoiding reality” to take part in those. Since my mother lived here and never turned down an invitation to anything, I considered her my proxy and hadn’t let myself feel guilty about it. Even when she told me I should.

After she died, the invitations had, for the most part, simply stopped coming. Either everyone had gotten tired of me saying no, or they felt the same way I did.

I didn’t belong here.

The only one who might disagree—and who would definitely be upset about my decision to leave—was my goddaughter.Phoebe visited me all the time, whether I’d invited her or not, because “eccentric hermit aunties were her jam.”

She brought me soup when I was sick and we watched animated musicals together. We also talked about everything going on in her life. I’d been the first to find out she was pregnant. Mostly, I think, because she knew I had no life of my own and wouldn’t tell anyone until she was ready.

Being with her reminded me of the way things used to be between me and her mom.

And this house reminded me way too much of mine.

I ate another cracker at the table where Mom had had her regular dinners with Wade Hudson himself. I should preface that by saying the man had only stepped foot insidemyhouse twice since I moved here. Once for our move-in party, and once for Mom’s celebration of life. But he’d shown up in my backyard every month for Sam Retta.

Before you go there, it wasn’t likethat. She couldn’t have kept a juicy tidbit like that to herself, plus my office and bedroom windows both look out over the pool and her apartment. I might have taken advantage of that view whenever he made his appearances.

Mom hadn’t been amused.

“You could join us instead of snooping while pretending to answer emails. He was only rude that one time, and it’s not like you to hold a grudge. Wade is part of our family and he could use a friend. Your sister’s got her husband, Bernadette has her daughter and Yvonne’s moved out to the sticks to join a nudist coven or something. It’s not good for anyone to be alone in this world. Not even antisocial authors who have never learned to listen to their mothers.”

She’d basically adopted him, and to be fair, he’d tried to be friendlier after those first few gatherings. But instead ofacting like an adult and rising above it, I’d been unnecessarily prickly around him ever since. All because he wasn’t that into me.

I glanced over at the pool I’d shocked with chlorine this morning and swallowed hard. Partly because of the peanut butter, but mostly because every time I looked at it, I remembered floating in it with Mom and Morgan in the early months after we moved here. Or that torrential rainstorm, when Mom had pulled out a red umbrella, not to keep her dry, but as a prop so she could dance in the shallow end of the pool. Soaking wet and singing in the rain. I still looked at that video on my phone now and then.

“Come on in, August. Dance with me.”

Yep. This was the right decision. I took a steadying breath and started sweeping again. “Let’s get back to Lemons, shall we, Merlin?”

He was lying down by the table, his eyes on the crackers, which meant he was willing to listen as long as he got paid for his time.

“I watched a few more videos last night. I’m not going to lie, the actual racing looks scary, but those guys are hilarious. They said, and I quote, ‘racing is not just for rich idiots. It’s forallidiots.’ Great for me, because I’m probably an idiot, but we are the opposite of rich. In fact, I’d say we only have another four months or so before our supply of peanut butter crackers runs dry, so enjoy them while you can.”

Like I said, even if I could talk my brother-in-law into my insane, but also possibly brilliant, plan, I’d need to spend some serious cash to make this happen. I’d ordered a helmet and racing gloves online last night, but my must-have list still included a fire-retardant racing outfit—including shoes, socks and underwear—and safety gear, as well as several different fees required to enter the endurance race.

Was I really going to do this? I had Jiminy as my ace in the hole, but on the other hand, I also had paralyzing fears of rejection,embarrassing myself in public and dying a violent, fiery death my first time on the track.

“I had the greatest idea, sweetheart.”

I was still doing it. I had to.

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