Twice Shy, Sarah Hogle [100 books to read in a lifetime .txt] 📗

A choked laugh bursts from Wesley’s throat. “We’ll be lucky if we make enough to cover all the costs for new flooring, new windows, new pipes, new drywall—the only pool you can afford is one of those round plastic kiddie ones from the dollar store.”

“Pessimist.”

“One of us has to be realistic.”

“I get it,” I groan. “You’re Mr. Reality Man and you have no tolerance for good vibes or whimsy, but you know, dude, you’re really starting to bum me out.”

“Mr. Reality Man? What kind of superhero lottery did I lose? And for your limited information, you aren’t the only one who wants this place to succeed in some capacity.” As an animal sanctuary. Which will not, by the way, turn a profit. How am I the impractical one here?

He continues to tally up costs. An electrician. New insulation, which he tells me will save us money on heating and cooling in the long run, which I already knew. Mansplainer. I suggest solar panels and he’s visibly jealous he didn’t think of it first. “Should fix that dumbwaiter,” he mentions. I want to crack a joke using the word dumb but I’m too tired.

“We’ll need to hire a real landscaper,” I say, adding to the list.

“I’m a real landscaper.”

The waist-high grass twenty feet from Falling Stars doubles over in laughter. “Are you, though? The grounds are a mess.”

“It’s an ecosystem.”

Lazy justification for a mess. “When I stayed here,” I reply airily, and he’s heard me begin enough sentences this way that he’s already rolling his eyes, “the yard was immaculate. Neat hedges. Short grass. There were violets and roses and all sorts of beautiful flowers that you could actually see, not covered up by weeds.”

“Those aren’t weeds.” He gestures to the wall, as if I have X-ray vision and can view what lies outside. “That’s Cain’s reedgrass. Smoky Mountain manna grass.”

“Well, it looks awful.”

“Ugh. I can’t—you are just—” He shoves a hand through his hair. At the rate he’s doing that, he’s going to end the week with bald patches.

“What? It does. Don’t you know anything about gardening? You want to get plants that are pleasant to look at. Tulips. Snapdragons. I’ll send you a link.”

“Violet specifically instructed me to grow those plants in large quantities because they’re endangered species, along with Virginia meadowsweet and spreading avens and Blue Ridge catchfly, because conservation is more important than the useless aesthetics of neat hedges. I’ll send you a link.”

“Oh.” I stand tall, but I don’t feel it.

Wesley takes all the height I’ve just given up and adds it to his own, towering over me. “Nature conservation was important to Violet. I don’t know if it was when you stayed here, but she hired me after she heard about the diminishing numbers of Fraser fir and ginseng being poached from the parks. She felt it was her responsibility, with considerable acreage at her disposal, to replenish what humans have destroyed.” He’s getting all worked up over this. “Is it pretty? Not necessarily. Sometimes chaos serves a larger purpose.”

“But you want to raze it, you said. For your pig nursing home.”

“First of all, this is not the first time you’ve mentioned pigs,” he tells me, vehement. “When did I ever say pigs? Not that I’m not going to get pigs, but you keep going back to that one animal—” He waves a hand. “Never mind! I’m not razing all of it, just a few acres, and none of the endangered plants. Some of the property is wild but can be altered without hurting the environment.”

“So . . . some of the property is simply neglected, you mean.”

“You think that’s neglect?” He angles his head, facial muscles clenching, and takes a stride toward me, then another, getting up close in my personal space. Oh, wow. When his eyes flash like that, they don’t remind me of root beer or bronze coins. They’re daggers glinting in starlight. He’s never invaded my personal space before, as if I am an ogre to be shied from, so I must have really touched a nerve. “You have no idea how much work I’ve put into that land. Weeding out invasive species and adding flowers to attract endangered birds. Over a hundred boxes put up for native pollinator bees. There’s a method to the madness.”

I don’t have anything intelligent to say. “Okay, but it still doesn’t look good.”

If I could read auras, I think Wesley’s would be black as the night sky right now. His wild stare fixes on me for a tick too long, which sends my nervous system spiraling; my automatic reaction is to smile, and he definitely takes it the wrong way. He stalks off and doesn’t speak to me for days.

Chapter 9

WISH 3. MAYBELL, DEAR, I’d be thrilled if you painted a mural in the ballroom.

Wesley was right: there isn’t going to be enough money in the budget for an in-ground pool. I’m gratified, however, to report that the estate sale netted a nice chunk of change. Which Wesley didn’t help with. At all. He hid up in his bedroom the whole time and wouldn’t come down even when I tried to tempt him with vegetarian hamburgers, because he thought it was a trap. (It was. I needed help lifting a chair into the back of a teenage girl’s truck, but he saw us struggling from his window and came out to help. He made up for the moment of niceness by glaring excessively.)

If I can’t offer my guests a refreshing swim in a pool, they can at least stand in the ballroom and marvel at my giant painting of a waterfall lagoon.

I’m having trouble making the paint do what I want with it; it’s dripping down the wainscoting instead of staying put. I try to blend colors à la Bob Ross and they’re too faint, more like the memory of color than true pigment. My trees are pale green blobs. I