Page 13 of The Dangers of Daydreaming

By the time I made it back to the farm, I was exhausted from watching Gram's exhaustion. I hadn't stayed too much longer, just another fifteen minutes or so, but to see the haunted look of worry in my grandma's eyes had weighed me down.

Gram and Pops had raised me since I was fourteen. They'd stepped back into parenthood with an ease that made it so I hadn't considered how hard it must have really been. Until a few years back, I'd never realized how much that must have rocked their lives, but they hadn't batted an eye. And throughout the next decade, they had met challenges and setbacks in their personal and professional lives with the same ease.

Until now. And it stressed me out.

Lots of people broke their hips, though. And that wasn’t a life- or future-ender. We’d work through this.

A light in the parlor had me leaning back to look through the doorway. I had a small duffle of clothes and toiletries I’d grabbed from my house on the way in, and I dropped it on the floor in the middle of the entry so I could go shut the lights off.

But someone was in there. Someone cute with red hair and a smattering of papers surrounding her on the loveseat and coffee table. When I came in, she looked up, her brows pulling together beneath her upswept hair. At some point, she must have plopped it all on her head, and curls fell around her forehead and down the nape of her neck. Dark red that framed her face and accentuated the angles of her nose, cheeks, and jaw.

A bit of my junior high crush might have survived the last decade.

“You wear glasses?” I asked as I stepped further into the room.

Her eyes crossed for a moment, as if checking if there were really glasses on her face. “Oh, no, these are just for the blue light.” She pulled them off.

“Too bad, they’re cute.”

Her eyes narrowed. It almost made me laugh how annoyed she got with a bit of light flirting.

“Have you moved from here sincewe left this morning?”

“Yes.” She drew the word out.

“That wasn’t very convincing.”

“I’ve been working. But I did take breaks.”

I picked up one of her papers. It was a handwritten list of tour locations… all surroundingAnne of Green Gables. My mouth quirked up. “Still obsessed?” I asked.

She snatched the paper from me. “It’s for work.”

“How much did you have to bribe them to create anAnne of Green Gablestour?”

She started grabbing all her papers with a disgruntled expression. Seemed my teasing worked as well on her now as it had in junior high. “If you need to know, my agency has decided to offer literary tours. I am planning out the Lucy Maud Montgomery one.”

I nodded, sitting down on the coffee table as if she didn’t seem like she was just getting ready to leave. “You know, we go to a lot of these places on our tours.”

She stilled. Interesting. She’d been quick to dismiss the idea of joining our tours earlier.

“Yeah,” I said. “We even go to Green Gables. Mrs. Hastings told me today that she and her daughters all read the books together. That’s a big part of why they chose to come here for their family trip.”

Yep, she was definitely interested. Her hands full of papers and her computer had lowered back to the couch, and her mouth was parted as if she wanted to say something. I cocked my head at her. “Still sure you don’t want to just join us?”

She pressed her lips together, something holding her back.

Probably me, to be honest.

“Come on, Lucy.”

“What?”

I gave her a knowing look. “You haven’t been able to book anything, have you?”

Sheglanced down. “No, I’ve been able to book a couple things…”

“But not the important ones. I’ve lived here half my life. I know how quickly tours fill up this time of year. And you said this was a last-minute trip, so you probably haven’t had a chance to plan ahead, which means you can’t get into any of the important tours. But I already have reservations for a group.” My lips lifted in a slow smile. Her eyes fixated on my mouth, and for the briefest of moments, I let myself think there was anything but annoyance in that expression.

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