Twenty minutes later, I heard the telltale creaking of floorboards overhead, the groan of pipes in the bathroom, and then Addie’s feet on the stairs. For some reason, anticipation built in me over the thought of her coming down to the kitchen, still touched with sleep and whatever strange thing had passed between us the night before. Something in the way I thought about Addison had shifted, and it wasn’t an unpleasant feeling. She might have been a Tanner, and I’d been bred to despise those, but more than that, she was Addie.
“Muffins?” she asked, looking around the kitchen in surprise. “I smell muffins?” Her hair was wet from her shower and had been braided into a long plait that hung over one shoulder. Her skin was pink and clean, and those dark eyes were wide and clear. She looked like she belonged in a soap commercial, and for some reason my stomach flipped when her eyes came to rest on me.
“Yeah,” I said, a twinge of embarrassment pulling my eyes to the floor for no reason I could fathom. I fought the feeling and forced myself to meet her gaze. “I make them for Dan sometimes.”
“Oh, he’s coming today, isn’t he?”
“Yep. I plan to be back here around one, and he should be here by four. I’ll make dinner for us all tonight if you don’t have other plans.”
Addie laughed lightly, but the sound was sad. “I have no plans, Michael. Except Sunday dinners with Lottie.” She crossed the kitchen, pulling a mug from the open shelf and then turning to the coffee pot. The machine made single pods or a full pot, and it had felt like a full pot kind of day. “May I?”
“Of course,” I said, feeling out of place, as if I was hosting this beautiful woman in my house. I took a cup too, mostly to give my hands something to do.
“So roof today, right?”
“Yes,” I said, and her reminder had me peering out the windows toward the back, but the old garage would have blocked my view of any arriving work trucks. “They should be here soon. Want to hear a roof joke?”
Addie looked uncertain.
“It’s on the house.”
“Stop that,” she said. “That’s terrible.” But the corners of her lips turned up in a way that made it feel so much better than terrible.
I shrugged and turned back to the muffins. Dad jokes were in my blood.
“Anything I need to do? To supervise or whatever? I’ve never had a roof repaired.” She wrapped long fingers around her mug and sat at the wood table, those eyes fixed on my face.
“Just be here in case they have a question or find something unexpected.”
She nodded, and then sipped at her mug.
“Oh, speaking of unexpected.” I pulled out my keys and took a seat across from her, singling the one I’d discovered out from the others. “This was upstairs in the medicine cabinet. Any ideas what it might fit?”
She looked at it, one of her fingers tracing the outline against the wood of the tabletop. “No,” she said. “It doesn’t look that old.”
“I haven’t been able to get into the garage,” I said. “Maybe it goes to that door. I’ll try it on my way out.”
She nodded. “Let me know. So while you’re gone, I will supervise roofers, and I guess I can clean out this pantry.” She angled her head toward the open door at the back of the kitchen. “There are cans in there from nineteen-twenty, I bet.”
“Don’t throw the old stuff out though,” I said, surprising myself. “I’d love to see it.”
“Into antique vegetables?”
“I would have said no, but for some reason I want to see the cans.”
The oven timer dinged then, and I went to retrieve the muffins with a smile on my face. Addie’s wit was a combination of sarcasm and self-deprecation that I enjoyed. She wasn’t overly confident—though I couldn’t really fathom how a woman like her wasn’t—but she was clearly super intelligent, and that made her quick with a joke. I liked it. A lot.
“Wow,” she said in a breathy tone as I put a plate of muffins in the center of the table next to a tub of butter. “Don’t let Lottie know you can bake like this.”
“Think she’ll feel threatened?”
She nodded, and the idea of her thinking I was good at something gave me little flush of pleasure. I was good at so few things, it was a nice change.
“Instead of vegetable restoration, you could get the rooms ready for the floor refinishing down here,” I suggested.
Addie looked at me, her nose adorably scrunched in confusion. “How would I do that?”
“I brought the drum sander over and stuck it in the parlor. Just need to move the furniture into the dining room and start sanding, really.”
“I have no idea how to operate that thing.”
“I can show you. It’s like a vacuum cleaner. You’ve used one of those?”
She frowned at me, her eyes narrowing. “Once or twice. But I do appreciate that you didn’t jump to the conclusion that I had just because I’m a woman.”
“Okay, then you should be good. Just get it scuffed up. The professional guys will do the rest.”
Addison was finishing a second muffin as I washed my hands and started getting ready to head to the store, but when her phone rang, I turned to see her answer it.
“S’my mom,” she said through a mouthful of muffin. She finished chewing and then answered the phone.
I watched as her face changed from carefree and happy to dark and drawn. Whatever Lottie was saying wasn’t good. I crossed my arms and waited for her to hang up, feeling an odd certainty that the call might have something to do with me.
“The moose,” Addie said, putting down her phone.
“Oh shit.” I sighed. It had to be my cousins. No one else had access to the kind of heavy machinery required to haul that enormous moose around town. “Where’d they put it?”
“Town square,” Addie said. “Wearing a tutu, I guess.”
I couldn’t stifle the laugh that launched from my throat at the image.
The smile vanished from Addie’s face and her voice was sharp. “That statue is very dear to my aunt.”
“Why a tutu?” I managed to ask between repressed chuckles.
“There was a sign around its neck. ‘Tanners are tutu stupid.’”
I sighed. That wasn’t very clever. “My cousins are idiots.”
“Resourceful idiots,” she noted. “That thing must weigh—“
“About a ton,” I confirmed. When she lifted an eyebrow at my quick answer, I confessed, “I’ve helped move it before. In my less educated days. Before we were partners.”
“And you weighed it?”
“No, but the equipment I used had one point five ton limit, so I know it’s not over that.”
She nodded. “I see.”
“I’ll make sure they return it this morning, okay?”
“My mom is furious.” From her tone, I was guessing Lottie wouldn’t care how quickly the moose made it home. The damage was done.
I sat down for a minute, gazing at Addie. There had been a time when I would have found this funny, but seeing how her mother’s angry call had worn down whatever energy reserves she had made me realize how much even silly pranks could wear on people. “I’m sorry, Addie.”