“So, you’ve talked about this already?” Chey asked.
Vivi nodded. “Haven’t you?”
“Not specifically, though I think we may have opened that door today.”
Vivi covered her hand. “Well, darling, Grant and I have. Talked about you and Wyatt, I mean. It’s not my place to say. Grant has some ideas for Wyatt, but that’s for them to discuss.”
It should have terrified Chey how quickly her heart leapt to her throat at even the whiff of a prayer that there might be a solution.
Vivi squeezed her hand. “Be hopeful,” was all she said.
“I’ll be choosing happiness either way,” Chey said, repeating Vivi’s wisdom. “You were right about one thing. The more time we spend together, the more I know what I’d be willing to risk, or to do, for us to have a chance.”
Avery tapped her pen on the spiral notebook. “So, why do I need this notebook?” she asked.
Vivi sat up straighter and took on an official air. “I want us to go through our calendar year here, with an eye toward what is demanded from each of us, each month. First column will list our obligations here on the farm. Second column will list our outside obligations. Your working with Ben and Hannah, your painting, Chey with your horses.” She smiled. “Then we go through once more with an eye toward the key times we would want to spend with the men in our lives, or family, as is Hannah’s case. Those can’t-miss times.”
“And?” Chey said.
“And we see if a glimmer of a schedule starts to emerge, one that allows each of us to have what we need. Yes, there will be compromise, but there are other options that can aid our cause. Like Tory being here to take on some of the workload with the stables and horses,” she added. “We plan to hire seasonal help for the gift shop, and to wait tables in the tearoom. Then there’s the lavender production itself, the cutting and such, and the classes. We decide which of those things we want to do, and which we’d be comfortable hiring out. Like the classes. I know we each enjoy them, but we can occasionally farm some of them out as needed to facilitate the other things we want.” She turned to Avery. “Then we let you do your thing and make us some charts, see what we can do.”
“I can do that,” Avery said happily.
Vivi nodded, content with where this was going. She looked at all of them. “It’s a start. Without compromising our happiness, or the quality of the experience we offer here to our customers and visitors, I think we can keep what we love, but we adjust where we can, so we can also keep the people we love.”
Chapter Fifteen
Chey needed to be more of an optimist. They’d spent another hour that morning in the kitchen, making lists and columns, so many columns, and Chey wanted Avery to chart them into oblivion if it meant finding a workable solution. But she’d left really uncertain that was possible. It seemed too complicated trying to make sure they all got what they wanted. Even hiring out part of the farm workload—she just didn’t see it coming together without someone making fairly major sacrifices.
She recalled Vivi’s veiled comment that Grant had some ideas about Wyatt’s future, but she couldn’t count on that for anything. Their column-making meeting had been a week ago and Wyatt hadn’t heard anything from Grant. They knew he’d flown Vivi out to his ranch for the weekend, wanting her to spend time in his home as he had hers. Hannah had covered the tearoom hours, which were reduced for a little while longer, until Memorial Day weekend. With lavender season underway, Tory had been taking on more and more of the stable management and was already teaching classes and bringing in new students after Bailey started talking up the whole barrel-racing thing. Chey had never once thought about teaching that particular skill. It wasn’t something she saw herself doing again. It was part of her past now. But she’d sure enjoy watching Tory take it on.
So, things were changing, even without their deciding anything concrete. Some things were simply solving themselves as they happened. Chey had hoped that maybe they could just take it one thing at a time, like Vivi going to Montana, or Wyoming, or wherever she was, and Hannah covering for her. And Tory taking on the stables, freeing up Chey to get her farm work done with time leftover to explore as yet unseen parts of Blue Hollow Falls with a guy who was making her appreciate it in a whole new way.
But she knew it wouldn’t always be that simple. Wyatt and Dom, Jon and Peli had decided on their next adventure. They were going to Canada, near the Arctic Circle, to focus on a threatened plant that was vital to the food chain for a host of mammal species. Fixing the plant sustainability problem could result in removing numerous animals from the threatened and endangered list.
Actually, it had been Sunny Goodwin, who owned the greenhouse and was the horticulturalist working with the rare and endangered orchids, who had put her head together with Wyatt’s after he consulted with her on some of the methods she’d discovered for propagation. Together, they thought they might find a solution for the plant problem. Chey was pretty sure Wyatt had also chosen that particular project because part of the plan was to transport plant specimens back to Blue Hollow Falls and Sunny’s greenhouse, where she’d be joined by two specialists who’d agreed to come out and help test her theories and track the plant development from there. Which meant a chunk of the adventure would take place right in Blue Hollow Falls, and Wyatt would do all the postproduction work from there, too, while setting up the next trip.
She was touched and grateful that he’d done his best to keep their two orbits as connected as possible on his first venture out since they’d become a couple. But Chey knew his projects wouldn’t all be like that. There were only so many connections he could make between his work and her home. Their home.
Ultimately, Chey was glad they’d done all those charts in the kitchen that day. Not because they’d yielded any plans yet, but because talking about what she wanted for herself, putting her thoughts into words, had helped her to solidify what she wanted, what she’d be happy to compromise on, and what she’d hoped she wouldn’t be asked to do.
And then she’d laughed at herself as she walked out to the barn that afternoon, because once Planet Reed was done in Canada, and Wyatt flew off to God only knew where next, for who knew how long, she was pretty sure she’d be the Grant Harper in their situation. If Wyatt so much as crooked his finger, Chey would be on the next plane to wherever he was and thrilled for it.
And in the end, that had been answer enough for her.
It had taken some time to put her plan into motion, but now the day was here. And it was time to take the plunge. Hopefully, a figuratively speaking plunge, but whatever it took, she’d do it.
Laughing at that thought, Chey turned her truck onto the road that led back to the boat ramp to the lake. Ground had officially been broken and the park was officially closed to the public for now, but other than a crew beginning to clear the land on the opposite side of the lake where the lodge would be located, not much else had happened.
She’d gotten permission from Bryan for her little mission today. The road back to the boat ramp was open, and when she arrived lakeside and parked her truck, she saw someone else had come through for her, too. There was a rowboat tied to the dock. She smiled. “Thank you, Grant Harper.”