In the Weeds (Lovelight #2)(79)

I could go down the hallway and check her room, see if her suitcase is gone. Her laptop and the stack of papers she kept on the nightstand under a book. That's what I did the first time she left. I wandered around that little room and looked for any clue she might have left behind. A note, maybe. A slip with her phone number scribbled down. All I found was a pile of loose change and a receipt from the tiny bar we were in. A button and a pen cap.

The second time, I was in the bakehouse. I sat at the corner table with two cups of coffee and a cinnamon roll I had no intention of eating. I waited while telling myself that I wasn’t waiting at all. I picked at the edge of that damn cinnamon roll until the whole thing was gone.

If Layla thought it was odd that I was sitting at the window seat for the duration of her morning rush with two mugs of coffee, she never said a word about it. Turns out Evelyn left that morning. I hadn’t even warranted a casual goodbye on her list. No text. Nothing.

The solution, this time, is a simple one.

I won’t go down the hallway to check. I won’t look for signs or signals or whatever the fuck else. I need to realize that sometimes a shooting star isn’t magic at all. Sometimes it’s just a bunch of space dust burning through the atmosphere.

Sometimes you don’t get a wish.

Evie is always going to be leaving. And I’m always going to be the one standing here, wondering where she went.

Third time’s the fucking charm, I guess.

“Stupid,” I mutter. My muscles vibrate with the urge to throw, snap, break. I want to flip the table. Smash the glass vase holding a bouquet of wildflowers against the wall. I rub my palms down over my face until I see spots.

And then I go to the fridge and I make a sandwich.



“Beckett?”

I ignore the call from the far end of the field and continue digging.

Push. Dig. Dump.

I’ve been out in the fields for an hour and the sun still hasn’t inched above the horizon. The sky is filled with the dull gray light that comes just before dawn, the sky deciding how it wants to wake up for the day. Thick clouds have hidden the stars and it looks like they might hide the sun today, too.

Good.

“What the hell are you doing?” Luka demands from halfway across the field.

What the hell are you doing, I want to snipe back. These are my fields, after-all. But I’m not in the sixth grade anymore and Luka is damned persistent when he wants to be, trudging his way towards me with a mug of coffee in each hand. I ignore him and drive the shovel down again.

Push. Dig. Dump.

“I’m digging.”

I’m digging because the second I sat on the edge of my bed and reached for my sweatpants, I remembered her fingertips against my shoulder blades, her body twisted in worn flannel and her face in my pillow. I got up to go to the kitchen and heard her laughter bouncing against the countertops. Pictured her chopping tomatoes with her hair tucked behind her ear.

I’m seeing Evie in every single empty space and planting these saplings felt like the logical thing to do. I’ve got a hurricane inside my chest and the pull and stretch of my muscles is the only thing keeping it contained. I bite my teeth around it—clench my jaw so hard it hurts.

“I can see that,” Luka mutters, eyes firmly on the hole at my feet. “But why are you digging at four in the morning?”

I don’t say a thing.

Push. Dig. Dump.

“Beck, what’s going on?” he sighs.

I grunt. “I’m digging a hole—”

“I can see that.”

“—for your body.”

He snorts a laugh into his coffee mug. “That’s nice.”

I drive the shovel into a fresh piece of earth and rest my elbow against it, my thumb swiping at my eyebrow. “How’d you even know I was out here?”

“The cameras,” Luka offers. Stella installed cameras over the winter when someone was vandalizing the farm. It turns out the town librarian, Will Hewett, really wanted an alpaca farm and decided that destroying ours was the best way to accomplish that particular goal.

Idiot.

“Stella got a notification about a madman loading saplings into his truck and driving them out into the field.” He takes a loud, obnoxious sip of coffee. “Which is weird because dig day is in a couple of days. It is also not scheduled for four in the morning.”

“Decided to get a head start,” I say, as casually as I can manage, peering over the handle of my shovel at the hole I've been working on. It’s way too deep for a sapling, but I’m committed now. I place the shovel to the side and reach for one of the bundles from the wheelbarrow. I loosen it from the travel-safe container they arrived in and transfer it carefully to its new home.

It drops to the bottom, the top branches not even visible.

I sigh.

“That’s quite the hole,” Luka says.

I pinch the bridge of my nose.

“Will it—” he tilts his head to the side and takes another slurp of coffee. “Will it grow up out of the ground, you think?” He mimes some complicated gesture with his hand, like a rocket launching. “Like a pineapple plant. Have you seen one of those?”

I have. I sincerely doubt this will look anything like that.

I reach into the hole and pull the tree out, shoveling some of the dirt back in with my arm. Luka taps my shoulder and holds a cup of coffee in front of my face.