Chapter 6
“You’rethe groundskeeper?”
“Yes.”
“You’re thegroundskeeper.”
“Funny coincidence, huh?” He smiled at her happily.
The cognitive dissonance was profound.Coltraneandgroundskeeperweren’t words anyone had ever included in a sentence, possibly ever.
“So... you mow the lawn and trim the hedges and rake and... and things?”
“Excellent grasp of the job,” he said somberly. “And I’m not only the groundskeeper.” He pointed down the road to that little box of a house. It was about as modest as a Craftsman cottage could get. She supposed she’d seen that before, but she’d thought it was a charming toolshed, or some kind of pump house, maybe. “I’m also your neighbor.”
He turned back to study her for the impact of this statement.
A teeny part of her couldn’t help but think this was funny.
She was speechless, though. About fourteen of those little cottages could have fit into any of the Coltranes’ previous homes.
Her first thought was:my teenage self would never have slept a wink if I knew Mac Coltrane was sleeping nearby. Her hormones and her every cell would have been permanently set to “vibrate.”
Good thing this was not going to be her permanent residence.
“Is that what you, um... do? For work? Groundskeeping?”
“Mainly.”
Mainly? It was another way of saying no. She wondered if his side business involved hookers and blow and rappers. Maybe it involved helicopters. The money he’d bid on this house must come fromsomewhereand nobody got rich mowing lawns.
“I keep hearing farm animals,” she said suddenly. “Sounds like sheep or goats.”
“Those would be my goats.”
“You havegoats?” She rubbed at her hairline. Right about now she would love to be able to blame the blow to her head for the surreal nature of this conversation.
“Well, the goats are my subcontractors. They eat some of the taller grass around this property and mine. And contribute ingredients to some pretty great cheese. I rent out their services locally, too, before fire season.”
She was quiet, because what she really wanted to say was “What thehell?”
She suspected she now knew how he’d felt when she’d told him she didn’t have any pets. As if she was no longer certain this was Mac Coltrane and not an imposter or a hallucination.
As if this were an actual dream, she decided to play along.
“So... um. How... how did you become the groundskeeper?” It was pretty hard to say that sentence without sounding like Lady Chatterley.
“There was an opening here. I applied. Really, the goats were already here, and they were the selling point.”
He was clearly enjoying her discomfiture a little too much. It was pretty apparent there was a lot he was leaving out, and he was doing it just to watch her squirm.
Back in the day, she’d thought he’d told her everything. She’d certainly spilled her heart to him.
But back in the day she’d loved without question because why would anyone do otherwise? She’d thought that if itfeltlike love, then it was. She’d thought that if it seemed like someone loved you, that if someone kissed as though their whole soul was in it, that if they touched you as if it were a privilege and also as if you were beautiful and precious, then they must in fact love you.
Discovering that just becauseshefelt something powerfully didn’t make it true was one of the most brutal—and probably useful—lessons of her life.
She supposed he’d taken her innocence that way.