Page 27 of Hand Picked
“Wait, what? But Webb, you said…”
“She’s flighty as fuck? She makes promises and flakes? She’s always after the next shiny thing? She hurts Aiden’s feelings again and again? Yeah.” I took off one of my gloves to rub the back of my neck. “But she’s stuck around a lot longer than I expected this time. She’s been dating Roberta Oliver’s brother for a few months. And Aiden… he loves his mom. No matter how flaky she is, he wants to see her. I feel like I’m hurting him just as much by keeping them apart as she does by disappointing him.”
“Shit,” Knox said with feeling. “So… what? She just… gets to visit him whenever? That doesn’t sound right.”
“No. Noo-ho-ho. No. We’re starting out slowly. Curt and I drafted an agreement where she’d start out by taking him to hockey practice and helping out with Nature Scouts. Those are some of Aiden’s favorite activities anyway, and he’d like to have her there. And I—”
“You’ll feel better because there’ll be supervision,” he surmised.
“Exactly. If they don’t show up to practice, his coach will let me know, and if he’s not at Scouts, Maryanne will call me. But assuming Amanda sticks—which is kind of a big assumption—then in a few weeks, she’ll take him for overnights.” I shook my head. “I don’t know why that makes me nervous when he spends half his nights at Olin’s, and Olin spends the rest of the nights here, but it does.”
“Yeah, it does,” Knox said with feeling, and it helped to know he understood.
“Anyway. The judge signed off on it. I think it made a good impression on her that I offered to try this. And if Amanda doesn’t follow the terms of the agreement—”
“Meaning, if she disappears with Aiden again?”
I nodded grimly, my hands tightening into fists. “That would be an end to it. The judge didn’t look too favorably on Amanda’s conduct last fall, and it made me feel better to know she took it seriously.”
“No shit. So… you’re good, then?”
“Yeah.” I hesitated. “Or I will be. Eventually. Once I wrap my head around some things.”
“Uh-huh. And you’ll process your feelings by… chopping a block of wood into tiny splinters?”
“In the time-honored tradition of our ancestors, Knox.” I rolled my eyes. “You know, the one that doesn’t involve freakin’…apple tithesand bugle blowing.”
He laughed. “Is the chopping working yet?”
I thought about it for a moment. “Kinda, yeah. I do feel better.” It might have had as much to do with my brother’s presence as it did with the wood chopping, but I wasn’t going to tell him so. He’d only getmoreannoying.
“And how’sLukefeeling about things?” Knox prompted.
I sighed. If I knew Luke—which I didn’t… but was kinda starting to—he was probably at home, alone, wearing a sweater vest and thinking cheerful thoughts… and feeling unliked—again—for something that wasn’t his fault.
God, I was such an asshole.
Knox lifted an eyebrow at me like he knew what I was thinking and agreed.
I grimaced. “Fuck. I should, ah… probably go apologize, huh?” I said fake-reluctantly, like I hadn’t been waiting for an excuse to go find Luke and make sure he was okay.
As afriend. Clearly.
“Oh yeah,” Knox advised. “Bring gifts.”
ChapterSeven
LUKE
Have you ever tried to attach a plastic tarp to a slate roof five feet over your head while a stiff, cold Vermont wind whips your hair into your eyes and turns your fingers to icicles?
No?
As I lay sprawled on the roof of said portico, blinking up at the afternoon sun, I wanted very badly to say that I hadn’t tried that either… and that the wind hadn’t then gotten underneath the tarp, creating an inadvertent parasailing situation, which had then caused me to kick the ladder down to the ground and left me stranded twelve feet above the ground…
But that would be a lie.
“What the freak was I thinking?” I asked the puffy clouds drifting overhead.
