“Then what’s the problem?” He stares at me.
“This.” I motion to the barn. “She didn’t know how to tell me without fighting, so she made a grand gesture. She wrote it right there on the wall for the whole town to see.”
“My wall,” he grunts out.
“But she wasn’t ashamed. Even after everybody sa
w it, she wasn’t ashamed of it. Instead, she owned it. And despite my worries, I want to own it too.”
“What’s that mean?” he asks. “Owning it?”
I point to the building. “Well, I didn’t just come here to paint over what we messed up.”
He frowns. “So you were going to deface my building. Again.”
If it were daytime, I’d be trying to hide my face. “Yes, sir.”
“What were you going to write?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Need some help?” he asks. “I might know a thing or two about grand gestures.”
And suddenly we’re both washed in bright headlights as a fancy car pulls up. My dad gets out of it.
“What’s he doing here?” I ask Mr. Jacobson.
“I called him, knucklehead. Sometimes a boy just needs his dad.” Then he adds quietly, “And a dad needs his boy.”
“So, you need some help wooing that girl, still?” Dad asks me with a grin.
I heave out a sigh. “I reckon I do.”
“What did you have in mind?” Dad says.
I tell them my plans, and they both stare at me. “No way you can pull that off in the amount of time you have,” Mr. Jacobson declares.
“I can do it.” I stare at the two of them. “With some help.”
“Okay,” they both say at the same time. “I’m in,” Dad replies. And Mr. Jacobson slaps his knee and says, “Me too.”
“This is stupid, right?” I ask, more to myself than to anybody else.
“Yep,” Dad says.
“Sure is,” Mr. Jacobson agrees.
“But it’ll work.” I scrub my hand down my face. “It’ll work.”
31
Evie
Before we left Florida, Grady had arranged to have one of his employees drop off his truck at the airport so we’d have transportation, since we drove Grandma’s car down but flew back. After our plane lands, we locate the truck and then Grady drops me off at Grandma’s house, since my car is still there. With a quick kiss and a far-off look in his eyes, he leaves me standing there all alone.
I watch as he backs out of the driveway, trying to figure out what has gone wrong. I feel like there’s about a foot of space between us, even when he’s touching me. On the plane, even when I’d reached out and taken his hand, it had felt like he was miles away. Like he had somehow put that space between us.
After I putter around Grandma’s house for a few minutes, making sure that everything is all right, I leave to go to my house. If I have to stay in a house all alone, I might as well stay at mine.