You, With a View(17)

I fold the map while Paul riffles through the box contents. Across the table, Theo is watching all of this with an inscrutable expression. His gaze lingers on me until I start squirming in my seat. When I wipe at my face, searching for errant crumbs, he smirks.

“What?” I mouth.

He shakes his head, and I watch, fascinated, as his lips pout around his response: “You.”

Like a sparkler bursting from a single flame, my mind erupts with countless meanings for one word. You what?

The urge to ask him what the hell he means wars with the refusal to give him the satisfaction of knowing he’s sent me spinning. But he reads it on my face, like it’s written in a language he created, and that smirk turns into a full-out grin.

Time and distance will make you forget, but I’ve never had enough of either to forget the way Theo Spencer can aggravate every nerve in my body with the twist of his mouth.

I nod my chin, forcefully banking the heat he’s stoked in my body. “What’s on your agenda for the rest of the day? More vegetable planting? Some remote CFO-ing while you’re elbow-deep in cukes and tomatoes?”

He doesn’t respond, but I don’t expect him to. I anticipate the way his smile falls, the way his gaze moves past me, and I feel a pang of . . . regret? No. I’m not going to feel sorry for him, even if I’m beginning to see that work is a wound for him. I’m sure his feature in Forbes soothes the ache.

“Oh, I have some zucchini going in, too,” Paul says cheerfully, pulling out a stack of papers.

I match his tone, just to irritate Theo. Sure enough, he snorts when I say, “Sounds delicious!”

“When everything starts coming in in a few months, I’ll put together a salad for us.”

“That sounds really nice.”

My throat goes suddenly tight at just how nice it sounds, to have someone who knew Gram in a way that feels new to me and who calls me sweetheart, whose s’s have a slight whistle to them, a sound brushed over with age. A grandparent, though I can’t call him mine.

Paul holds up a piece of paper triumphantly, then hands it over. “Found one.”

Theo rises from his seat and circles the table, sitting next to me. I give him a sidelong glance. “You really want to read this?”

He lifts a shoulder. “It’s my family, too, right? Might as well.”

Not quite as obsessive as my thought process, but he has a point. This is a tie that binds us, for better or worse.

With a sigh, I return my attention to the paper. But the handwriting stops me short.

I didn’t realize how emotional it would be to see Gram’s writing again. It got spidery in later years, but this is still the hand that wrote her love for me on birthday cards every year, when I got my first period in seventh grade (she got me a cake, too, chocolate with red frosting), when my tennis team won district champs my junior year. She said it out loud, too, so often I still hear it sometimes when it’s really quiet and very late.

I didn’t keep most of those cards. After she died, we found every one we ever gave her stashed in a series of storage bins. I sped back to my apartment in the city, tore through my room, my roommate hovering in my doorway while I tried to find any cards she’d given me over the years. I finally found a few, and they’re tucked into my nightstand now. But I regret every one I ever discarded thinking I had an infinite supply of them.

This note is a gift for so many reasons, and my blurred gaze moves to Paul. “It doesn’t have to be today, but can I read anything else she wrote you? Her handwriting . . .” I swallow hard. “I miss it, and this makes me feel like I’m getting to know her in a different way.”

It’s too revealing, especially with Theo sitting right next to me, his gaze heavy on my face. But I can’t care about that right now. I want it all.

“Of course,” Paul says gently. “I’ll organize them so you can read them in chronological order for next time. I’d be happy to tell you the story alongside them.”

I give him a watery smile. “That’d be perfect.”

Theo’s knee presses into mine. “C’mon, get reading, Shep. I’m way ahead of you.”

I huff out a breath, blinking away my tears. “It’s not a contest, Spencer.”

“Isn’t it always with us?”

When I look over at him, his expression shifts from something undefinable into a challenging smirk.

“Because you make it that way,” I mutter under my breath, then focus back on the letter.

    Paul.



Incredible. Gram could have taught a masterclass on how to infuse deadly disdain into one word.

    We’ve been in this class together for two weeks and you’re already a nuisance. I wasn’t sobbing outside, despite how you classified it. I was . . . misty-eyed, but this is how it is when I come back to school after the summer. I can’t wait to get back here, and then I leave and—

I don’t have to explain anything to you. I miss my family, but I’m fine. Two weeks from now, my father will be irritating me with calls and I’ll be glad for the distance, so you’ll never see this again.

A word of advice: if you see a woman who is actually crying, staring at her in bewilderment is a horrible strategy to make her feel better.

Kathleen



“You weren’t kidding about her not liking you at first,” I say with a laugh.