Excerpt -
Kissing Mr. Mistletoe
Chapter 1
Four Christmas Eves ago
Emily
A hush descends on the bookstore the moment Miles Murphy steps inside with a whoosh of frozen air. The only sounds left are the familiar tinkle of Christmas music and his heavy boot-falls as he enters Little Apple Books, his presence filling the space in a way that goes beyond his height and breadth.
My boss, Mr. Campbell, is having a Christmas party this evening—one nearly the whole town was invited to. He allowed me to decorate the shop with garland and twinkling lights, and we set up a refreshments table loaded with hot chocolate, spiced cider, and so many cookies they’d make a person sick.
The only family that wasn’t invited?
The Murphys.
They weren’t asked because of the man who just walked in with a look of purpose written across his handsome face.
I only moved to Apple Ridge a few months ago, so I don’t know Miles personally, but I do know this: he’s the only survivor of a car wreck that killed two other young people this past summer. One of them was his ex-girlfriend, and the other was a young man he’d apparently never gotten along with. They were all in their mid-twenties, same as me.
No one knows why they were together, or even where they were going. Miles insists he can’t remember. The one thing the public knows is that the other boy was driving, and the car went off the road at Nutgap Curve then hit a tree.
The young woman, Ann, was Mr. Campbell’s granddaughter, and my boss has made no secret of who he blames for the accident.
Nearly everyone is staring at Miles, so I figure there’s no harm in me doing the same. He has mismatched eyes, one blue and the other green, messy dark hair, and a pink scar that scissors his eyebrow. His dark overcoat makes him look even taller and almost forbidding, but he’s carrying a sealed card and one of those lovely cinnamon brooms they sell at the general store.
The murmuring kicks up again as he approaches Mr. Campbell, who’s standing beside the refreshments table. All the color leaves my boss, and when it rushes back, his face is red beneath his curled white mustache.
Miles halts in front of him, looking lost now that he’s reached his destination. But he clears his throat and stands tall. “I wanted to wish you a Merry Christmas, sir. My grandmother made this for you.” He gestures to the broom. “And the card is from me. There are some things I’d like to say.”
Mr. Campbell accepts the card, sending a new wave of surprised murmurs through the crowd. For a moment, I think he’ll accept the kindly meant gesture. So I gasp when he tears it in half, his face contorting into an angry mask. While Mr. Campbell is undoubtedly surly, I’ve never seen him like this.
From the expression on Miles’s face, the man may as well have ripped the cheese knife out of the brie and stabbed him with its dull blade. But he stands tall, accepting what’s been done as his due.
My heart burns for him.
“I don’t want anything from you, boy,” Mr. Campbell says, shaking his head at the broom Miles is still holding out. “You should have been the one who died.”
Miles looks him in the eye, brave as can be, and says, “Yes, sir, I know that.”
No one in that whole room, not one single person, says anything in Miles’s defense. Worse: the Christmas music continues to pour from the Bluetooth speaker.
Oh, it’s awful, just awful.
Even though I don’t know Miles, I’ve heard stories about him and his family, who run the Evergreens & Apples farm just outside of town.
They grow apples and Christmas trees, which sounds like something out of a fairytale, but maybe that’s because I grew up in a series of foster homes around the Florida panhandle. We had plenty of oranges and Florida-man jokes, but no seasonal magic. No Christmas trees dusted with snow, and no apples, crisp and sweet and heavy on their branches.
I’ve heard people say Miles was the wild Murphy. The one who didn’t fit. The boy who sold moonshine and then spent a whole summer chasing treasure. The talented artist who wasted his talent by “defacing” the town whiteboard in the middle of the night and having the audacity to leave his tag. The danger-seeker who rode a moped without a helmet and pulled off gravity-defying cliff jumps. The ladies’ man who’d seduced half the single women in town and possibly some of the not-so-single ones.
But he doesn’t look wild tonight.
He looks plain broken as he stares at Mr. Campbell in desperation, as if the man who condemned him is the only one who can save him.
I want to speak up, but I hesitate because I just got this job and can’t afford to lose it.
Then Miles starts walking toward the back door, his head ducked as if in shame. I stop thinking and follow him, practically shoving my way past a woman who’s preparing to snap off a gingerbread man’s head.
I throw the back door open, worried he’ll have already blended back into the night, but I nearly clip him with the heavy wood. He’s standing on the stoop with a ragged look on his face, his eyes shining in the dark.
And I don’t think. I don’t think at all.
I simply rise onto my toes and kiss Miles Murphy on the cheek.
“There’s mistletoe,” I explain as I pull away.
At least I hope it’s still there. I hung it the other day, figuring it would make folks more cheerful as they left the party.
One corner of Miles’s full lips lifts, forming a crooked grin that makes his face painfully handsome. “So I guess you missed.”
His voice is low and dry, like wind crackling leaves together, and I know I ought to pull away.
But I don’t.
I stare into his mismatched eyes as he cups my cheek and lowers his mouth to mine. His lips are surprisingly warm, and they meld to mine, opening them urgently, as if kissing me is the only thing that will keep him alive.
He tastes the same way he smells, pine sap and spice, and it’s delicious.
Miles grins down at me. “Thanks for that, Emily.”
I’m surprised he knows my name, even though I’ve come to realize the people around here know almost everything about one another. Or at least they believe they do. I guess what surprises me is that he bothered to know it at all.
I’ve learned to be a quiet observer. Because when you seem to be beneath notice, people don’t trifle with you as much.
“Mr. Campbell was wrong to say that to you,” I say with all the conviction I possess in my bruised soul.
“Nah, I don’t think he was. But thank you for saying so.” He runs his finger over my lips, sending a tickle of sensation through me. “And thank you for the kiss. I’m leaving tomorrow, and you gave me one good memory to carry away.”
“You’re going?” I ask, crestfallen. He’s letting them drive him away. They may as well have chased him out with pitchforks and torches like in Beauty and the Beast. So much for the small-town Christmas spirit. “You shouldn’t let them make you go. This is your home too. You’ve lived here all your life.”
He has a pretty twin sister, Bianca, an older brother, Theo, and a little sister, Isabella. Their parents are divorced and live out of state, but his great-uncle runs the family farm with the boys, and their nonna bakes the goods they sell at the apple barn.
I’ve seen them around town plenty. There’s something shiftless and unsettled about them all—a deep worry that’s burrowed in deeper with the cold.
He shakes his head. “I want to leave. I love my family, but I’ll go crazy if I stay. So will they.”
He starts to turn away, but I grab his wrist.
He darts a surprised look at me, and again I find myself staring into his mesmerizing eyes. “Wait here. Please. There’s something you need to have before you go.”
He lifts his eyebrows, probably wondering what I could possibly know about that, given we haven’t exchanged a single word before tonight. But his family must have raised him to be polite because he shoves his hands into his pockets and leans against the wall next to the door. “Take your time. I probably won’t freeze to death.”
I hurry back into the spice-smelling warmth of the shop. My heart is a jackrabbit’s; my fingers buzz as I hurry through the shelves, walking around clumps of people sipping their drinks and feeling smug in their moral superiority.
I search the shelves and find the book.
I’m slightly panicked about giving him this particular book, but I feel the rightness of it through my fingertips.
This story will help heal Miles Murphy’s heart.
I pull it off the shelf, experiencing a kind of ecstasy only readers know, and hurry to the back door.
My heart pounds a little faster as I step back into the cold, but he’s still waiting. He looks a little unsure of himself now, and more handsome because of it.
I practically shove the book at him, and he takes it from me with cold, tentative fingers.
“The Phoenix’s Feather,” he reads out loud.
“You need it.”
He gives me another crooked grin. “Are you trying to recruit me to a cult? Because I have it on good authority my soul is already damned.”
“You weren’t driving the car.”
He’s silent for several seconds, watching me, before he says, “That doesn’t mean it’s not partly my fault.”
He doesn’t volunteer an explanation, so I move on and nod at the book. “It isn’t about saving your soul. It’s about learning to be a survivor. Take it from someone else who’s been there, you should give yourself grace.”
His eyes hold mine for a moment, intense and hot, and I can tell my words have shifted something for him. He nods a couple of times, his mouth pressed in a firm line that makes me think of how his lips felt against mine, so pliant and soft.
“Thank you,” he says simply.
I expect him to leave then, but he gives me a self-conscious smile before holding out the cinnamon broom.
“I’d like to give you something, but this is all I have.”
I almost tell him no. It seems like a bad idea to accept the broom Mr. Campbell just rejected. I don’t know my new boss well enough yet to give him such sass. That sort of thing requires legwork.
But I can’t deny Miles, and I don’t want to. I wrap my hand around the top of the broom, accepting it.
His fingers caress mine as he releases it, and he smiles at the sight of me with the broom in my hand, my red hair waving in the brisk winter breeze.
“You look like a witch.”
“You’re the one who forced the broom on me.” I’m not displeased, though. Anyone with sense knows witches are simply women who were powerful enough to piss people off.
“You only need a cat to complete the effect.”
“I’d do just about anything for a bookstore cat.”
“You’ll make it happen, then. I can tell you’re a woman who makes things happen.” He gestures to the little bundle of greenery hanging above us. “You’re still standing under mistletoe, Winter Witch.”
I take a step toward him as if he was the one who cast a spell on me. He kisses me one last time, his lips cold but soft, and I feel a surprising pricking of tears in my eyes.
“Take care of yourself,” I say. “Read the book.”
He gives me a soft, sweet smile. “Merry Christmas, Emily. I think I’d like to remember you this way.”
And I’ll be—he pulls out his phone and snaps a photo of me.
I don’t object.
I don’t tell him my own heart’s wish, that I had a photo of him with the book in his hand.
“Merry Christmas, Miles,” I parrot back.
And he disappears into the night, and out of my life.
Chapter 2
Emily
The years pass like pages turned in a book.
On the first page, I was new to Apple Ridge, an outsider who tried to comfort a son of the town who’d been cast out, and now, four and a half years later…
Actually, no, I won’t lie about what small towns are like. Anyone who’s been to one knows. If you weren’t born there, you’ll be an outsider until the day you die.
But I’m an accepted oddity. I’ve heard what they say. That one red-headed girl, you know the one, the slip of a thing who moved in above the bookstore. She has no people.
They’re right about most of it, but not about that last part. I’ve got no blood kin who care for me, but that’s not to say I have no family.
In truth, I’ve become part of Miles’s family.
I’m no stalker, but after he left town, I kept an eye on the Murphys from afar. When someone wrote “murderer” on the sign for their farm, I drove up to Evergreens & Apples in the middle of the night and scrubbed it with an old cloth and some mineral spirits until my fingers bled. And when Bianca showed up at the bookstore one day the spring after Miles left, her eyes tired, and asked me if I had any good bodice rippers for her clients, I asked her what kind of business she did.
I knew, of course. A person who listens learns. But she hadn’t told me herself, and a person should always have the chance to set their own story.
“I’m a nurse.” Her smile was tight, but as she studied me it spread wider. “I take care of dying people. Some people around here call me the black widow, but as far as I know, I’ve never killed anyone on purpose.”
I knew then that I was meant to be her friend.
I told her to wait right there and headed up to my tiny apartment, tucked above the bookstore, and came back with a stack of fat romance books, thumbed over and dog-eared, the same way I’d found them at a dozen different thrift shops. Because I may work around beautiful hardcovers with slip jackets and golden script dancing across the covers, but I can’t afford them.
“I can’t take these,” she objected. “They’re yours.” She glanced over her shoulder, making sure we were alone, and added, “That crusty old man can’t pay you nearly enough for you to be giving away your own things.”
I shrugged. “He doesn’t pay me much, but he’s very permissive. I’m putting in a spicy romance corner over there.” I pointed to the wall that I’d already taped a pink paint swatch onto, then swiveled my finger to the opposite corner. “And over there, I’m getting a hanging dragon for the young adult section. I found one on Etsy that fits the shop’s budget. And I tell you what—Mr. Campbell may have hemmed and hawed about it some, but he agreed in the end. So he knows sense when he hears it.”
She grinned at me, wider and more genuine. “You’re Emily, right? I’m Bianca.”
I paused, wondering if this was where I should tell her I knew Miles. But I didn’t know Miles. Not really. All I knew was that he was suffering, something I’d recognized as surely as words written down on a page, because like knows like.
I’d also recognized a strength in him, buried down deep. It would have taken courage for him to come into Little Apple Books like he did that last night, knowing what he would be facing.
He did it anyway, and for that I admired him.
I also admired the noble line of his brow and those beautiful, strange, mismatched eyes.
I wanted to know if he’d read the book.
I wanted to know where he’d ended up.
I wanted to know, most of all, if he’d forgiven himself for the thing he hadn’t done.
I wanted to give him a hug and breathe in his piney scent.
But I suspected Bianca had been hearing a lot about her brother over the past six months. I didn’t want to be one more person who reminded her of what she was unlikely to have forgotten.
So I just smiled and nodded, holding out my hand. “Yes, I’m Emily.” I exchanged a powerful shake with her. “And take the books, please. I’ve read them so many times I could probably quote them back to you. They’re comfort for the soul.”
She studied me, her lips curling up at the corners. “If you say so, but I’m warning you now—I’m not a woman who goes around accepting favors, willy-nilly. I’ll feel a real need to pay you back in booze.”
I didn’t think twice about saying yes. And when I met her at the bar, I brought her another book—one I thought she needed.
I didn’t get the urge to select a book for every person who strolled through our doors, but when I did, I couldn’t shake it until the person held the book in their hands. While Mr. Campbell had given me a lecture or two about my habit, he’d come around to my way of thinking—particularly since I always covered the cost of the books, and the majority of the people who got Emily picks came back.
The habit hadn’t started at Little Apple Books but before, when I used to spend my days at the library. My favorite librarian had told me that books spoke to the soul, and some whispered louder than others. She’d tapped my nose. “You, Emily, can hear the whisper.”
And she was right, although sometimes it was more of a roar than a whisper. It certainly had been for Miles, and for Bianca too.
I saw how hard she worked for others. How she kept getting up every morning and trying again, no matter how much it cost her. That’s why I gave her a novel called Life After Life by Kate Atkinson.
It’s a story about a woman who keeps dying and being reborn. Strength and resilience can keep a woman going even when life throws her down in a dozen different ways.
When I handed it to Bianca at the bar, she tapped the cover with her fingernails, painted black, and said, “Well, crap, now I’m going to have to take you out for another drink.”
“That’s the idea,” I told her with a grin.
That was a lifetime ago, and in the time since, Bianca has become more of a sister than a friend.
As her honorary sister, I’ve heard all about the man I stole a kiss from under the mistletoe all those years ago.
How Miles left his family and hasn’t come back.
How he’s hopped from one job to another as if he’s a reader who can’t get farther than fifty pages before moving on to the next book.
How he’s stopped drawing other than to design tattoos.
At first, I felt nothing but sympathy for him. If he’d read The Phoenix’s Feather, it hadn’t helped in the way I’d hoped. That feeling in my chest, the blossoming warmth I experience whenever I find the right book for the right person, must have gotten it wrong this once.
But as time passed, my sympathy hardened into something sharp-edged and hot, like a knife fresh from the dishwasher.
I couldn’t comprehend why a man with a wonderful family would give them up without a fight. Maybe he was hurting, but he should appreciate what he’d been lucky enough to be born into. I’d always wanted people to call my own, but my mother had given me up before I could string two words together.
His absence was doing his whole family harm.
He wasn’t there when Bianca made a very poor choice and accepted a proposal from my least favorite man in town, Rhett Gallagher, the mayor.
He wasn’t there when she saw the light and dumped that man. Hallelujah.
He wasn’t there when the Murphy farm, a magical place full of apple trees on one side and crisp, elegant firs on the other, fell on hard times, then harder times.
He wasn’t there.
Bianca went to visit him, coming back talking about “wild Miles and his big adventures,” but I felt the hurt behind her stories. I felt it, and heaven help me, I held a grudge that seemed to snowball with every passing month.
Then time claimed a new victim, Miles’s great-uncle, and it turns out quiet Uncle Ted had set up a long game to force Miles to come home—he’d gone and left him half of the family farm. The other half went to his brother, Theo, likely because Bianca was still a nurse, now at the local retirement home, and Isabella runs a B&B.
Not even Miles would miss the Saturday funeral of the man who’d given him half a farm.
That’s where I am now, sitting in the church next to Bianca and her sprawling family.
“He’s late,” Bianca mutters with a sigh. Theo, sitting beside her, breathes out an annoyed huff of air. Isabella wraps her arms more tightly around her body. Their nonna, who told me within fifteen minutes of meeting her to call her
“Nonna Rose,” is sitting next to Isabella. Their mother sits stone-faced behind them, along with her second husband, an elegant gray-haired man with light-colored eyes.
“Miles will be here,” Nonna Rose insists, glancing around the old, packed church as if she expects him to crawl out from under a pew.
Rhett Gallagher, of course, is sitting in one of the front pews, his mama beside him. His brother Graham sits on her other side, an expression of boredom on his face. He looks that way most of the time, although he’s got no reason for it. He has money in plenty of businesses around town and flat-out owns The Big Apple Inn.
The Gallaghers own most of Apple Ridge, truth be told. They even bankrolled this building, which is about as well-insulated as my apartment above Little Apple Books. The church is freezing in winter and so hot in summer that a woman fell into a dead faint during Sunday mass one day and was caught—thankfully—by the man who stood beside her.
A romantic situation, to be sure, but I’m not looking to mimic it.
Miles won’t even remember you, I tell myself. The man’s great-uncle just died. The last thing he’s going to care about is some woman he kissed nearly five years ago. He’ll only know you as Bianca’s friend, and that’s how it should be.
My skin feels too tight, though, and my foot’s tapping with nervous energy.
Maybe I shouldn’t have come, but I couldn’t dishonor the Murphys like that, let alone Bianca’s kindly Uncle Ted. He was a man of few words, but they were always the right words. The book I’d given him was a collection of haikus, found in a free library in Asheville. He’d seemed embarrassed, but a couple of weeks later, he’d pulled me aside and told him I’d done him a great service.
That’s how he’d said it—it was a great service, Emily—and he’d gifted me a pot of geraniums that’s still sitting in the corner of my apartment.
Thinking about Ted puts tears in my eyes, partly for him and partly for the other elderly people who’ve claimed territory in my heart. There’s Mr. Campbell, of course, and Luanne Reeves, whom I met through Bianca’s new job at the retirement home.
Bianca knows I didn’t have anyone of my own before moving here, so I was the first person she approached when she started a program matching the residents to “grandchildren.”
I got Luanne, and I have no intention of giving her back. We started a book club together, Romance with the Golden Apples, and nearly half of the women in the retirement home have joined. They’re here today, sitting a few rows back, all of them wearing little Evergreens & Apples pins on their black dresses in solidarity with Bianca and her loss.
Nearly everyone in town is present, with the exception of Mr. Campbell, who’s nice enough to Bianca when she stops by the shop but is still full of bitterness.
“We’ll give it just one more minute,” says the pastor from his pulpit up front.
Annoyance prickles down my spine.
I know he’s waiting on Miles, and so does everyone else stuffed into the church, sweating up a storm that would sell all the fans in the general store. Even the ones with the town’s ugly apple mascot printed on them.
“Oh, lord,” Bianca murmurs. “We’re going to have a mutiny on our hands, and you know Uncle Ted would hate to make everyone wait in this heat. I’ll text Miles.”
But when she pulls out her phone, Nonna Rose reaches across Theo like he’s furniture, not a big, tall outdoorsman, and swats her hand. “Don’t you dare use your phone in church. We raised you better than that.”
Bianca sighs and leans back.
A fit of restlessness passes through the gathering, everyone murmuring to each other.
Murmuring about Miles, I’m sure.
Some still blame him for the accident, my boss first among them, but their ire has been rubbed away by the passing of the years.
The family of the boy who died moved away, for one thing, and there have been half a dozen other tragedies since. None have been as shocking, perhaps, but tragedies have a way of outdoing each other as much because of when they happen as because of what form they take.
The pastor opens his mouth, ready to begin, when the door finally cracks open at the back of the church.
I already know from the immediate silence in the room that it’s him. He’s finally here.
A strange feeling flutters in my stomach, a brew of anger and…
I refuse to be excited to see Miles Murphy, but I am curious. Anyone would be. Over the past years, the man’s worked as a tattoo artist, a bartender, an actor, a wilderness camp instructor, and an orchard worker. He’s lived in a dozen different places and probably kissed a hundred different women since me.
Right now, he’s living in Woodstock, Vermont, a place that looks like a Norman Rockwell painting, leading tours at an orchard.
I live my life in the pages of books, but Miles has lived his life out loud. There’s something intriguing about that.
The old floorboards of the church creak, and I suddenly realize there’s no room for him down at the other end of the pew. The only open space is—
“You saved a seat for me?” a voice asks in a teasing undertone as the pastor perks up and clears his throat.
I look up at Miles sharply as Bianca reaches over me, her hand grasping for her brother.
He squeezes her hand, grinning at her, and then looks past her at the rest of his family. When his gaze settles back on me, a small frown forms between his brows. The pink puckered scar is a lighter color now, but it still marks him.
It only makes him more arresting, unfortunately.
“Emily,” he says, my name sounding musical on his lips. The humor has gone out of his voice, and his eyes hold mine with their tawny, mismatched gaze. “May I sit here?”
I nod once, and he settles in beside me, his leg searing mine, because there truly isn’t enough room for him.
I feel more than ever like I’ve taken his place, slid into a family that wasn’t mine, and a choking feeling fills my throat. If he’s back, then maybe the space I’ve been filling with the Murphys is gone.
The right thing to do would be to slide out of the church and walk back to the bookshop to join Mr. Campbell, who’ll be reading the town paper. I know he’d be grateful for the company.
Sure, people would talk, especially since the pastor has started the ceremony, but they’re always talking about someone, and it may as well be me.
But before I can flee, Miles places two fingers on my thigh.
It’s a gentle motion, possibly a mistake, but when I glance up at him, he’s peering back at me. He shakes his head once before lifting it back up.
I don’t know whether he’s shaming me for nearly walking out of his uncle’s service or comforting me, but I don’t leave. And every second I sit there, I’m aware of that seam between us, where I end and he begins.
Chapter 3
Miles
The plane from Burlington International Airport to Charlotte left two hours late, and they held us on the tarmac the whole time, my body compressed into a seat that wouldn’t be comfortable for anyone, but was especially excruciating for a tall guy with a hangover. I had to sprint to catch my connecting flight to Asheville, then my rental car busted a flat ten miles from the airport.
The donut was flat too, so I had to call for roadside assistance, which Uncle Ted wouldn’t have appreciated.
He was a man who solved his own problems, and he’d sooner make a tire out of rubber rolled over a pine cone than call for help.
The guy from AAA immediately launched into a story about his aunt’s dog’s goiter, and nothing on heaven and earth would stop him from giving me every detail of the dog’s medical complaint, even after I told him I was on the way to my uncle’s funeral.
I ended up fixing it myself while he talked, and then I nearly ran out of gas before reaching the gas station just outside of Apple Ridge—the one everyone knows costs thirty cents extra.
As if those signs weren’t enough, a silent alarm blared in my head the second I drove across the town line and parked near the church.
RED ALERT. Leave. Leave. Your life depends on it. Take one step back, then another, then run like your ass is on fire.
And that happened before I saw Emily in the church, sitting next to my sister.
Emily looks even more unreal now than she did outside Little Apple Books nearly five years ago, her dark red hair haloed by the light over the door. That hair now dances several inches past her shoulders, and she has a new pair of gold-frame glasses and a silver nose ring, but otherwise she’s the same woman who grabbed my arm beneath that bundle of mistletoe and pulled me close.
Emily isn’t the first woman who’s kissed me without saying barely a word, but she’s the first one who surprised me. She’s also the only one whose face I can’t quit.
Every time I do something stupid, I see her staring up at me from under that mistletoe, her light brown eyes full of warmth.
It’s widely agreed I’m an idiot, so it happens a lot.
I also like to look at the photo I took of her, standing outside the bookstore that belongs to the man who wants me dead.
Don’t ask me why. I decided a long time ago that my brain is broken.
When Bianca told me she’d made friends with Emily, I was relieved. I hadn’t felt good about leaving my sister behind in Apple Ridge, so I was glad she’d found a friend who’d treat her right.
I was a little jealous too, to be perfectly honest.
It had felt like Emily was mine up until then. My confessor. My winter witch. My secret confidante.
But the side-eye she’s giving me now, as we sit side by side in the pew, tells me she’s not so hot on me anymore. Her full, pink lips are pressed into a tidy line, and a furrow is notched between her dark auburn brows. She keeps trying to edge away from my leg, which she won’t be able to escape unless she crawls into my sister’s lap.
I’m a pro at knowing when I’m not wanted, and I’m getting definite get the hell out of here vibes from one of the only people I was interested in seeing.
Well played, Apple Ridge.
Don’t get me wrong. I wanted to see my family, of course, but I wasn’t looking forward to getting onto that old seesaw. They love me, but they feel a bone-crushing disappointment in me.
My brother will barely look at me.
I mean, no, he’s not actually supposed to be looking at anyone but the pastor right now, but that hasn’t stopped Emily from darting pointed glares in my direction.
The alarm in my ears gets louder as I sit back and pretend to listen to the ceremony, my mind shifting to the sad fact that I didn’t get to say goodbye to Uncle Ted.
I didn’t get to tell him that I’d turned my life around and made something out of myself.
I haven’t done either of those things, but I wish I could have told him that someday and meant it.
Uncle Ted was more of a father to us than our own dad. Our parents got divorced when Bianca and I were seven, and Dad moved across the country. Both of our parents were Murphys—unrelated, thank Christ—and before they’d started hating each other, they’d thought it was evidence they were meant to marry.
My grandfather was always around, but he was a kids-shouldn’t-be-seen-or-heard kind of guy with a quick temper.
I was the one who always got in trouble for climbing the wrong embankments, falling off things, and drinking out in the orchard or Gallagher Park, so he obviously adored me.
Uncle Ted, though, he was one solid guy.
When I was twelve, I got into some deep trouble for changing the letters on the sign at the apple barn to read APPLE BRA. (I’d had better ideas, but I’d figured that was the combination I could get away with for the longest.)
It took my grandfather four days to notice, and when he finally did—and I admitted it had been like that for days—his face had turned the exact shade of a Pink Lady apple.
Nonna was the only one who could ever calm him down, and she’d steered him away from me, saying she needed him to see about a sick tree. Uncle Ted would handle me, she’d insisted.
Which had come as a relief, because my great-uncle’s idea of a punishment was a heartfelt talk that was at least fifty percent meaningful silences, not mucking out the barn or mashing rotten apples for compost. And he never once took a belt to me the way my grandpa had a few times.
Uncle Ted sat me down, said literally nothing for five minutes, then finally sighed. “We’ve all got a devil and an angel on our shoulders, son, but sometimes your devil’s louder than your angel. You’ve got to learn how to shut it up, is all.”
“Does yours speak in a whisper?” I asked, amused.
“I’ve learned to give him the deaf ear, but it wasn’t always that way, Miles. That’s the kind of wisdom a man learns with years.” Then he swiveled a finger between my eyes, one blue, one green. “And you got to figure out which side is which.”
The green eye was the devil’s, I’d decided then and there. It was a more vivid color, almost yellow. I’d told my little sister, who was nine at the time, and she’d tried to get me to wear a pirate patch to cover it up.
The memory makes me smile, but my chest is heavy with the knowledge that I’ll never see him again. Maybe I’ll never learn to silence my devil, either, because part of me would rather listen to it than deal with the locked box I’ve shoved so deep inside of me that I only feel it when I wake up gasping, covered in sweat, from one of the nightmares. Or at moments like this, when sadness threatens to bust it open.
That get-the-hell-out-of-here alarm is blaring even louder in my head when we leave the church and watch the gravedigger bury poor old Uncle Ted six feet under.
It’s August, and so hot the pavement would probably sizzle if a bird crap on it. We’re all more than ready to move on to the celebration of life, which is a fancy way of saying “after party for a funeral.”
The reception is being held at the B&B Isabella runs, which was my mother’s business while we were growing up. Mom gave her the old, saggy Victorian before running from town, and from the way Mom’s lingering at the edge of the gathering, she and her husband are going to be running again soon.
I guess if I’m like any Murphy, I’m like her—one foot out the door at all times. Desperate to get away. Except, unfortunately for me, there’s a compass locked inside of me, and Apple Ridge will always be true north.
The first floor of the death party is crammed full of food, as if the number one thing anyone wants to do after a funeral is gorge themselves.
That’s Isabella for you, though. If my little sister can’t solve your problem, she will feed you and make you half a dozen spreadsheets. And if you won’t eat and don’t have anything for her to organize?
Well, you’d better find a good hiding place.
Which is what I do half an hour later. I sneak out back and tuck in under the creaking wooden deck. I stopped smoking cigarettes a couple of years ago, but I slide a flask of whiskey out of my pants pocket.
Uncle Ted gave it to me himself eight years ago, the year I turned twenty-one.
“You’re going to drink anyway,” he told me, correctly, “so you may as well do it with style.”
I hold up the flask in the dusky evening light. “You were a better man than I’ll ever be. You were too good for this town.” I hesitate before continuing my speech into the void. “You shouldn’t have done it, Uncle Ted. You shouldn’t have given me half the farm.”
He did it to bring me home, and here I am, so I suppose it worked. Maybe he also wanted to remind me that I loved this place once, back when I juggled apples and charmed tourists.
I hadn’t forgotten any of that, but I know I’m no good for my family. No good for anyone.
There’s an awful burning behind my eyes, but I suck in a deep breath and let it slowly seep out.
I can’t let anything jostle that lockbox full of horrors.
I pour out a measure of the whiskey, letting it seep into the soil of Apple Ridge, then take a long swig from the flask.
“They’re drinking in there too, you know,” a woman’s voice says. “They’re wondering where you are.”
I wasn’t expecting anyone except ghosts, so I start hacking, the whiskey going down the wrong way.
My eyes are watering as Emily comes around the corner of the B&B. She’s still got that disapproving look on her face, like someone came into the bookstore and told her the movies were better.
“I’m out here communing with nature,” I say, lifting the flask and panning my arm around to indicate the recently mowed lawn and a bench sitting between a couple of crepe myrtles.
Someone needs to help Isabella with her landscaping. It’s tidy but boring. Safe.
Emily scoffs. “Because the squirrels never challenge you?”
Yes, she’s definitely soured on me, which is a pity. Because I reverse my earlier opinion. Emily doesn’t look exactly like she did four and a half years ago—she looks better.
There’s more confidence in the way she holds herself, and the black dress she’s wearing hugs her curves in a way that makes me envious of the fabric.
I cap the flask but keep it in my hand, my gaze on her as she stops a few feet away from me. Her eyes, which were so warm and full of comfort under that mistletoe, stare me down as if I’m a slug she’d enjoy salting.
“The last time we saw each other you kissed me,” I point out. “So why do you look like you want to knee me in the balls? Have you decided I’m a killer after all?”
She wraps a hand around her hip. “I know you’re not.” She pauses. “Bianca’s my best friend.”
“So I’ve heard. Thank you for that.”
“I didn’t do it for you,” she says acidly. “You’re not the center of the world, Miles.”
All I can do is laugh. “I’ve never once thought I was. Never wanted to be either. But if you’d like to knee me in the balls, I’ll give you a free shot. This day couldn’t get much worse.”
“You have a wonderful family.” Anger thrums through her words, lightning threatening to fork out. “And you’ve spent years avoiding them. You haven’t been there for Bianca. For any of them. Do you know how much I’d give to have a family like yours?”
Her voice wavers on that last question, and if I’d thought I couldn’t feel any worse, my imagination really let me down. For once, the guilt blaring in my ears is louder than the devil on my shoulder. I know how badly I’ve failed everyone, but I don’t know how to fix it, and her confirmation makes me feel like more of an ass.
Still, I appreciate her straightforwardness. Everyone in my family treats me like I’m an egg that’ll crack if you look at it sideways.
I clear my throat and lean against one of the deck supports. “You did want to knee me in the balls. Good job.”
Emily keeps watching me, her pretty eyes full of disapproval.
“Look, it’s better for everyone if I stay away,” I say in an undertone. “I’m…I still…”
For a second, I’m back in the car in the aftermath—the stink of chemicals filling my nostrils, blood dripping down my face, a scream piercing my ears. It took me a moment to realize it was mine.
I look away from her, thinking I definitely should have stayed away from Apple Ridge. If the delayed plane wasn’t a sign, then the goiter thing was a definite tell.
“I’m here for my great-uncle.” My voice sounds choked, but at least it’s working. I lean more of my weight against the deck pillar. “He was a good man.”
She nods seriously. “He was. I liked him a lot, and I’m sorry for your loss.”
I take a sip from the flask and on impulse hold it out to her. “I just lifted one up to him. Would you like some?”
I thought she’d say no, but Emily’s nothing if not surprising. She takes the flask from me forcefully, her fingers brushing mine.
Her touch is an immediate jolt to the system—as if I just downed a triple shot of espresso—and I stand up straight, wondering at my reaction.
She throws back an admirable slug of the whiskey, then shoves the flask back in my hand, pulling away the second I wrap my fingers around it.
Eyes on mine, she says, “I want to know if you read that book I gave you.”
Well, knock me down with a phoenix feather.
I try not to flinch, because I’m going to have to admit I’ve failed her on this point too. After a second, I say, “I still have it.”
I’ve brought it everywhere, like a talisman. It’s sat beside my bed in New York City, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, and now Woodstock. But no, I’ve never gotten past the first page, even though I’ve tried a half dozen times.
It’s about a kid who had some bad stuff happen to him, and I’m too deep in my own dark room to court more misery.
“Books aren’t keepsakes,” she says as if she’s peered into my mind and plucked out my thoughts. “They’re meant to be read.”
“I know what a book is, Emily,” I say, suddenly annoyed.
“Everyone has a talent. My talent is picking out the perfect book for people. The book they don’t know they need.”
“So, you are a witch.”
She looks the part, even now, with her implausibly colored hair ruffling in the breeze. My gaze catches on it until she speaks, her face demanding my full attention.
“I take that as a compliment, but you’re not the first to say so. Most of the people who’ve read the books I’ve chosen for them have told me I got it exactly right.”
“Is this about being right? Because I have no problem admitting you’re right about a lot of things. I know I’m a disappointment, and my family definitely deserves better. So they’re lucky they’ve got you. You can give them some books.”
She folds her arms across her chest, my eyes following the movement and lingering. “I have, of course.” She doesn’t budge. “Your great-uncle didn’t think you were such a disappointment. He left you half the farm.”
That heaviness is back, trying to weigh me down.
I force a smile. “You heard about that. I may be a disappointment, but I’m a generous disappointment. I’m giving it all to Theo. He’s the one who wants it. He’s the one who’s worked for it. Case closed.”
She surprises me by taking a step toward me.
“Your uncle wanted to give half of it to you. You won’t honor his wishes?”
“What do you want from me?” I ask, somewhere between baffled and pissed. While this woman knows my twin sister, she doesn’t really know me. The only thing she knows about me is what happened on the worst day of my life…and anything else Bianca and the others have told her.
Which, yeah, is probably a lot. I’m the one who doesn’t know her. She’s a mystery that’s haunted me for years.
She pokes me in the chest. “I want you to realize it’s time to grow up and be a man.”
“Did you just poke me?” I ask, laughing.
“Yes, and I’ll do it again.” She does, half a smile on her face. “You should feel lucky I don’t actually knee you in the balls.”
She goes in for a third poke, but I wrap her hand up in mine. I like it there, and from the way her pupils dilate, she doesn’t hate it either. “You could try kissing me again. I liked that better.”
I hadn’t planned on saying it, but then again, I don’t plan ninety percent of the things I do and say.
My pulse picks up as I wait for her response.
She doesn’t pull away, but she doesn’t tip her chin up for a kiss either. Staring up at me, she says, “If you read the book, I’ll kiss you again. But don’t give up the farm until you’ve thought it through. If you do that, it’ll be like turning your back on this place forever.”
I stare at her in disbelief. “You’re bossy.”
“I’m determined.” She wrenches her hand from mine. “They need you more than you think, Bianca especially. She’s lonely. She almost married the mayor, for goodness’ sake.”
“I wouldn’t have let her do that,” I say. “I had a few contingency plans.”
Rhett Gallagher’s a sleaze in a suit, and there’s no way he’s good enough for my twin sister.
I’d think so even if he weren’t the narc who’d tattled on me for selling moonshine in high school.
In fact, there’s only one guy I know who might be good enough for Bianca—my buddy Giovanni. Our nonnas were best friends, and he used to come to town with his family every summer when we were kids.
The last summer he was here, when I was thirteen, I dared him and Bianca to kiss, because I knew he was sweet on her.
He’d shoved my shoulder, but there’d been a glimmer in his eyes, like I was giving him exactly what he wanted, and Bianca hadn’t objected either. She’d just leaned in and laid one on him.
I would have teased them more about it, but our nonnas got into a public argument at the farmer’s market so bad it ended with them hurling apples at each other.
It’s still gossiped about in Apple Ridge, although not nearly as much as the car accident. No one knows what started the argument, but there’s no denying it stuck.
Suddenly, the Cafieros weren’t our friends anymore, and they definitely weren’t coming back next summer or any summer.
Still, Giovanni and I have kept in touch, and he’s a good guy—a solid guy who’d put himself on the line to do a friend a favor.
So, when I heard about Rhett, I had half a mind to drive all the way to Maine to kidnap Giovanni and bring him to Apple Ridge.
And, okay, sure, that wasn’t much of a plan. But I’d had others.
Emily’s still staring at me with one of those soul-piercing looks. “Your family hasn’t told you much about it, I’ll bet, but your farm’s hurting. Rhett’s made sure of that. The whole town’s hurting, but Evergreens & Apples especially. He took it off the town website after Bianca dumped him. Who knows how long the farm will last without some kind of Hail Mary.”
There she goes, kicking me in the metaphorical balls again.
“They haven’t said,” I admit. “You know, you’re making me wish I hadn’t quit smoking.”
“You can smoke and drink and play pretend as much as you’d like, Miles,” she says, going in for one last kick, “but you can never escape yourself. Don’t you think it’s time to stop trying?”
I’m still gaping at her as she turns and leaves.
I’ll give the woman this, she’s read enough books to know to go out on a good line.
Keep reading HERE:
Spicy version
November 9
Apple, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Google Play
November 12
Closed door version