“The moment sounds good to me.” She took a sip. “I remember you telling me you had some lively discussions with your father when you first joined him.”
“That’s true, although I’m the first to admit I didn’t handle it well.” He put his glass down. “I wince when I think about it. My dad probably does, too. I like to tell myself I was young, but I know that’s a pretty poor excuse.”
“You were twenty-three?”
“Twenty-four. After I graduated I worked at a tech startup in Boston. In those first few years I thought I was going to change the world.”
“I can’t picture you living in a city.”
“When I was growing up, it was all I could picture. This place felt—” he paused “—small. Compressed. I lay awake at night dreaming of escape.”
“Was your father disappointed that you didn’t want to join him in the business?”
“Maybe a little, although he never showed it. He and my mother were very supportive. They knew I needed to follow my own path. They were wise.” He stroked his fingers along the stem of the glass. “I think they knew I’d be back. It was just a question of when. It took a couple of years for the shine to come off city life. I realized I was coming home more often, to ski and hike. I missed the mountains and the trails. The clean air. I missed having family close by. Then Dad had his accident and that was that. I decided to come home. It wasn’t something I needed to think about. I knew right away.” He gave a half laugh. “I think it was the excuse I’d been looking for. It saved me having to admit that the city wasn’t for me after all.”
“But you tried it. You had a dream, and you followed that dream. That’s important. If there’s something you want to do, you should do it and if it doesn’t live up to expectations then—” she shrugged “—at least you know. Better that than spending your life wishing you’d done something and wondering if you would have been happy or not. But I’m guessing it wasn’t an easy transition.”
“I tried too hard. Wanted to prove myself. When I came back they had a computer, but barely used it. I changed all that, which led to some friction until I managed to show Dad how much time I was saving him. The turning point was when I persuaded them to buy a drone, so that they could monitor crops and our small dairy herd. Dad thought it was great. It was a game changer. I think that was the point where he realized I could bring something to the business, and I realized how much he knew. We started listening to each other.”
Their food arrived, deep bowls of creamy seafood bisque with walnut bread served fresh from the oven.
“Do you think you’ll ever go back to Boston?”
“To live? No.” He picked up his spoon. “This is home now. I love it. It started as an escape, but now it’s where I want to be. Demand for organic produce has grown, and I enjoy being involved in the whole process—in this area it really is farm to table. How about you? How are you feeling about everything now?”
She gazed at him and a feeling of warmth spread through her body. “Despite everything that happened with Stephanie—or maybe because of it—this week has been the most I’ve enjoyed work in a long time. Working with Claudia has been brilliant. We’ve already made some changes. It’s exciting.”
“It’s good to hear you talking about the place as if it’s yours.” He looked at her across the table and she felt something shift and wondered if he felt it, too. She’d known Noah for years, but somehow tonight felt different.
She felt glad to be here. Not guilty, or uncomfortable, or even sad, and maybe those emotions would come back later, but right now they were absent and it gave her hope that when she fell down into the hole of grief again, she’d be able to pull herself out.
“Buying the inn was Brent’s idea, but I fell in love with it, too.” It was time to be honest with herself. “We viewed it in spring and it was glorious. Moved in the summer and spent a few happy months working on the place and hiking the trails. It was idyllic. And then our first winter we had that crazy nor’easter and lost our power. Then there was a bomb cyclone. I was pregnant with Delphi—”
He pulled a face. “I remember that winter. We lent you a generator.”
“You did, and I’m forever grateful because without it we probably would have frozen to death. I’m British and we’re not used to extreme winter weather so the whole thing was a bit of a shock. But it also taught me the strength of community. We’d only moved in that summer, but people treated us as if we belonged.”
They talked about that winter, and more about Noah’s experiences learning about the farm, and Hattie shared how hard those early days had been when Brent had been driven more by enthusiasm than knowledge.
“After he died, I didn’t know how I was going to cope. I didn’t know how I could give Delphi the attention she needed and keep it all going. It felt like too much.”
“And now?”
“This week I’ve had a glimpse of how the future could be. Some of that has been working with Claudia. She has so many ideas, and talking to her has reawakened all the ideas that I had back at the beginning.”
“Maybe you should offer her a permanent job.”
“I did. And she said yes.” She still couldn’t quite believe it. “We agreed to it yesterday. We have big plans.”
“I’m pleased.” He leaned back in his chair and smiled. “It’s good seeing you like this.”
“Like what?”
“Energized.” He hesitated. “I can’t really imagine how difficult the last couple of years have been for you.”
“It has been difficult. I’m grateful to have Delphi. And grateful to have people like your parents, and the rest of the community.”
And him. She was grateful for him but this didn’t feel like the right moment to tell him that. She’d wait until they were alone, until they were no longer surrounded by people.
Instead, she focused on the meal as they ate their way through a menu of delicious food. After the bisque there was rib of beef, slow roasted with vegetables sourced from the Peterson farm, and for dessert they shared a wickedly indulgent chocolate cake, with cinnamon cream and fresh berries.
They talked about the farm, and the inn, and about family and how life so rarely worked out the way you thought it was going to, and by the time she’d finished her coffee Hattie had forgotten that she’d ever felt self-conscious or unsure about this evening. She didn’t want it to end.
They headed to the car and she settled herself in the passenger seat.
“I’m glad we did this tonight. I had a brilliant time. You’ve been a good friend, Noah. The best.” On impulse she leaned across, intending to kiss him on the cheek, but he turned his head and his lips brushed against hers.
She felt a sharp jolt of awareness and pulled back. “Sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“Why are you sorry?” His mouth hovered close to hers. “I was the one who kissed you. And I did mean it.”
She looked into his eyes and saw something that made her stomach tighten. “Noah—”