Page 1 of Cherry Picked
Prologue
HAWK
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a reader in possession of a good book must be in want of an interruption. ~Hawk Sunday, January 2016
Hiding in plain sight had always been my superpower.
“Haaaaawk?” my little sister singsonged from the living room doorway, not realizing that I was a mere two feet away from her. “Hawkins Sunday, my favorite brother in the whole entire universe? Hawk, pleeeeease? Come out, come out, wherever you are! I have the teeniest,tiiiiiniestlittle favor to ask you!” she called, clomping up the stairs.
I stuffed a Thin Mint into my mouth and grinned as I pulled the giant quilt more firmly over my head, snuggled deeper into the sofa cushions, and turned the page of my new book.
I loved my family—trulyloved them. I would happily take a bullet for Emma, or my uncle Drew, or any of the four giant lummoxes I called my big brothers.
I delighted in helping them with their school projects and their town committees, with chores around Sunday Orchard, or, in Drew’s case, with finding the keys and reading glasses he misplaced on the daily, usually somewhere on his person.
But a seventeen-and-a-half-year-old man hadneeds, damn it. Specifically, in this case, theneedto eat this last box of Girl Scout cookies I’d been saving since a ravening horde of Sundays had descended like locusts and eaten all eleven of the other boxes I’d purchased, theneedto not venture into the January sleety-rain combo for anything less than a life-or-death emergency, and theneedto find out if the dastardly George Wickham would actually gain control of heroic, deliciously broody Mr. Darcy’s estate after committing Darcy to Bedlam, or if the intrepid Miss Elizabeth Bennet, racing across England in a stolen phaeton, would arrive to save the love of her life before time ran out.
“Henry Hawkins Sunday! I know you’re around here somewhere,” Emma called again, her heavy snow boots pounding back down the stairs.
“Hey, hey. What’s with the racket, sister?” Drew asked, meeting her in the hallway.
“Porter texted the family group chat that he lost his snow pants and ski gloves, and he wants to borrow Hawk’s,” Em said. “And Webb called ’cause he’s bringing a friend over to go snowshoeing, and he says it’s about time Hawk got some fresh air ’cause he’s probably looking peaky. AndIwanted to ask Hawk to take me to get ice cream at Scoops since he bought himself a car and everything now.” She heaved the put-upon sigh of the unlicensed. “But he’s off somewhere reading his books again.”
I glanced up from said book, scowled at the inside of the blanket, and angrily shoved more cookies in my mouth. Em said the wordreadingin the same tone of voice one might saypreg-checking the cowsorplucking the slugs from the cherry trees.
The trouble with being in a family of lumberjacks (plus one aging hippie and a pint-sized wilderness warrior) was that all of them would rather be slathered in jelly and tied to an anthill than spend a full day indoors, so they couldn’t imagine why I would.
Not long ago, I’d loved the outdoors, too; hiking had been a thing my dad and I did regularly. But the appeal of the activity had died with my dad. Shortly thereafter, I’d learned of the existence ofPride and Prejudicevariations—not to be confused with the actual OGPride and Prejudicebecause the original was still the best—andvoilà. Instant love affair.
There’d been no going back for me.
But no matter how many times I tried to explain my fascination—the plots and the symbolism and thelove—none of them seemed to get it.
“Don’t need to worry about some character’s love life, Hawklet. Got enough problems of my own,” Webb would say with an impatient grunt.
“But it’s fiction,” Emma would say, wrinkling her nose. “Why read about that stuff when the world’s full of catastrophes and people who need help?”
“You’ve been eating processed food again, haven’t you?” Drew would sigh, like perhaps my strange affliction would subside if I’d just commit to eating more quinoa.
They all missed the point entirely. Ofcoursethe world was full of real troubles—earthquakes and political upheaval and pre-calculus tests I was doomed to fail; guys who were too gorgeous and wonderful to acknowledge my existence, and others who didn’t want to take no for an answer; chores to do, and college to consider, and a sweet baby nephew who needed attention; and dealing with all of that while carrying the last name Sunday, which meant something when you lived in the gossipy confines of my beloved Little Pippin Hollow, a town so tiny they putLittlein the name.
Who wouldn’t want to escape into a world with a hard-won, well-deserved, guaranteed happily ever after?
And processed food is tasty, I thought as I shoved another cookie in my mouth.
“Poor kid,” Drew said sadly. “He has at least three nice young men who’d love to take him out if he’d just crook a finger in their direction, but Corinne Perkins told Dottie French she’d heard from Camille—her niece, you know?—that Hawk says he’s saving himself for something special.”
“I say he should spend more time with his friends,” Emma decided. “He’s got bunches of ’em.”
I rolled my eyes. Yes, I did, and I liked them a lot… but sometimes, it felt like my friends didn’t always understand me any more than my family did.
Feisty but perfectly polite Elizabeth Bennet, on the other hand… Now, there was a woman who understood what it was like to have expectations on your shoulders. Elizabeth Bennet knew what it was like to have high standards for one’s romantic partners. Elizabeth Bennet understood what it meant to have…
“Aha!” Emma yelled, snatching my blanket off my head triumphantly. “Gotcha!”
… really annoyingsiblings.
“Hey.” I blinked innocently, shoving my cookies behind the sofa cushion before Emma could see them. “Hi. Fancy meeting you here.”
