“Jason Huffman cheated on Amy. He was supposed to be at his cousin’s house on Vine Street tonight.”
“No shit?” Ford looks at me with the remote still hovering in the air when I tell him why I was in jail tonight.
“Yeah, everyone was shocked. And not just because they were the most adorable couple. Most people who live here know better. He clearly didn’t believe the rumors about Penny and Ginger.”
“He’s only lived here a year. This town should come with a list of rules when you get here.”
I laugh because it’s true. “How are your parents?”
“Fine.” He continues flipping through the channels.
“Did they throw their yearly, wedding-anniversary party at The Bidwell?”
“Yeah. I had to work.” He grabs his fork with his free hand and stabs a piece of chicken.
“That sucks. The logging business is good then?”
“Pretty good.”
Getting Ford to talk is like pulling teeth, but I don’t mind. I like that he doesn’t feel the need to always fill the silence and only talks when he has something important to say. It works out great, since I never shut up, which means we never really have awkward silences.
You know, except for when he told me he missed my laugh, and I spit chicken at him.
“The Douglas firs are looking good this year,” Ford adds. “Bought a new log loader.”
“That sounds exciting!”
He just grunts, flipping through the channels to find what he’s looking for.
I know he’s always under a lot of pressure running Prescott Lumber back in Oregon. He doesn’t talk much about how he suddenly went from doing the manual labor of a logger out in the forest for his family’s company, to running the entire multibillion-dollar business all on his own, and I don’t like to push it. He’s never happy when he talks about his life away from Harvest Grove, and the job I’ve assigned myself when he comes to town is to make him less grumpy than he usually is.
“My fridge took a shit over the summer,” I tell him as he finishes his food, and we start cleaning up the coffee table, taking everything into the kitchen. “Craziest thing ever, but I got a free one from Lindsay Gellatly. It even has a setting for those teeny tiny nugget ice cubes I’m obsessed with.”
Ford just nods in acknowledgement as we move back to the couch.
“Marcus and Callie adopted a puppy. They said they wanted some practice before they start having kids. Nerds. They’re so cute I could puke.”
Ford snorts as we sit back down on the couch, and my insides get warm just like they always do when I can get some kind of reaction out of him other than a grunt.
It’s probably weird to a lot of people I have this friend I only speak to one month out of the year, and we have to give each other the Cliffs Notes of the last eleven months when he gets to town.
Okay, fine. It’s weird to literally everyone I know, but it’s not weird for us.
Does it suck sometimes that he never checks to see how I am in… say… March? Yes. But that’s just the way it is. It’s just the way we are, and it’s fine. Ford’s life doesn’t revolve around Harvest Grove. He lives somewhere else. He has a life somewhere else. He just pops in here once a year to check on his bar like his grandfather did before him. And since I wore him down the night we met and convinced him we should be friends when he’s in town, he’s stuck with me every year now.
You know, just in October.
Ford picks up the remote again and hits Play to start our traditional, yearly viewing of Mostly Ghostly on the night he gets to town, while I lean over to dig through the box he brought in from the trunk of his SUV.
“These might be the best heads you’ve ever severed for me,” I gush, pulling out one that looks like a child already got to it, putting big black Xs over the eyes, with red marker dripping down from them to look like blood.
The severed heads are actually the creepiest doll heads I can find throughout the year that I chop right off the doll’s body. I make the heads even creepier by painting some bloody wounds and scars on them and scuffing them up a little. Then I cut off the top of the plastic doll heads with a box cutter and fill the heads with soil and plants. I call them Severed Head Succulents, and I make some extra money selling them every year at local businesses.
Mostly, that money is used for bail.
Okay, it’s always used for bail.
“My board walked in on me severing them when they showed up fifteen minutes early for our quarterly meeting.” Ford sighs, leaning back into the couch cushions and throwing his arm over the back. He doesn’t continue with his story until I scoot back with him, curling my legs up under me and snuggling into his side, so he can drop his arm around my shoulders. “I was standing in the middle of my office with a pile of doll bodies at my feet, heads all over my desk, clutching one of those damn things by the hair, with a bread knife in my hand from the office kitchen.”
I’m laughing so hard at that image by the time he finishes the story that I don’t even realize a tear fell out of my eye until Ford reaches over and swipes it away.
It suddenly feels really hot in this house, even though he has one of the windows open in the living room and a chilly fall breeze has kept goose bumps on my arms since we got here. The chunky, black-and-orange jack-o-lantern sweater I wore to keep me warm tonight is suddenly making my skin feel sweaty and itchy.
“Shouldn’t you be quoting this thing by now?” Ford nods over to the TV.
I realize I’m supposed to be watching the movie instead of being all weird around this man and quickly look away from him, ignoring the way my cheek still feels tingly from where he swiped his finger across it.
“Give it time. I’ll be annoying you by reenacting every word of this movie any minute now.”
As I rest my head on his shoulder, Ford reaches over to the arm of the couch next to him, muttering under his breath about stupid Halloween decorations. He grabs the black throw blanket with orange pumpkins all over it I brought with me when I spruced up the place and tosses it over my legs.
“Were your parents their usual, joyful selves when you left this year?” I ask as we watch Max try to perform a magic trick in the movie.
Among the little bit that Ford has shared about his life over the years, I do know his parents give him hell every year when he’s packing up to come back here. It’s like they don’t understand he has a business in Harvest Grove to check on.
“You have no idea,” Ford mutters with a deep sigh.
I pull my head back and look at his profile.
“You want to talk about it?” I already know what his answer is going to be. It’s the same one he gives me every year, but it never stops me from asking.
“No. I’m good.” I rest my head back on his shoulder, and he presses a kiss to the top of it. “I just want to sit here and breathe.”
Chapter 3
Sidney
“We’ve got felonies to plan.”
“You’re late.”
“Why is she still wearing yesterday’s clothes?”
“I made pumpkin cheesecake bars!”
“You’re also out of coffee creamer.”