Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 94313 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 472(@200wpm)___ 377(@250wpm)___ 314(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94313 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 472(@200wpm)___ 377(@250wpm)___ 314(@300wpm)
What the hell would I do if Esther wasn’t fine? Tell her to come with me? That wouldn’t go over well. We barely knew each other. I could maybe convince her to go to my parents’ place. I knew without a doubt that my mom would step in to help. She’d never seen a person she wasn’t willing to jump in front of a bus for and she had a soft spot for kids with shitty parents.
The nursery was pretty quiet when I got there, only a few cars in the lot, and I slipped off my cut before getting out of the car. While the sight of the Aces leather wasn’t any kind of novelty in our area, I still figured it would be best not to advertise who I was. Wiping my hands on the thighs of my jeans, I headed toward the front gate area.
The nursery wasn’t huge and there wasn’t a lot of stuff to choose from, probably because it was winter—but the place looked like it had pretty steady business still. The gravel-covered aisles were tidy and the shelves were covered even if they were lacking in variety.
“Can I help you?”
I turned to face the speaker and was relieved to see Esther’s brother, Ephraim. He’d always been quiet and a little strange, but he was nice enough.
“Ephraim?” I said, putting my hand out. “Hey, man. Haven’t seen you since school.”
“Hey, Otto,” he replied, shaking my hand. “Yeah, it’s been a while.”
“This your place?”
“My family’s,” he said, confirming what I already knew. “You looking for anything in particular?”
“Flower beds at my house are lookin’ pretty pitiful,” I replied, following the script that Titus and I had planned out. “Not sure what to get, though.”
“We can help with that,” Ephraim said, nodding.
“Is there anyone that could help me choose some stuff?” I laughed and threw up my hands. “I’m terrible with this kind of thing.”
Ephraim laughed too. “Just me and my wife here today.”
“You’re married?” I asked in surprise, my hopes sinking at the knowledge that Esther wasn’t there.
“For almost a year now,” he confirmed proudly.
I couldn’t imagine it. He’d been married for almost a year? The guy who barely spoke? He wasn’t a bad-looking dude, but he was goofy as fuck. How the hell had he gotten someone to marry him at what—twenty years old?
“Hey Caity?” he called, looking over his shoulder. “You in here?”
“Yeah,” a voice called back from a few rows away. Seconds later, a tall woman came around the corner and I understood.
She was wearing the same type of long skirt and loose long sleeved shirt that I’d seen Esther wearing at school, her hair pulled back in the same hairstyle. The only difference that I could see was the puffy vest she wore over it all, sort of trendy but clearly worn in deference to the weather and not as a fashion statement.
“Can you help Otto here pick out some plants for his flower beds?” Ephraim asked, smiling at his wife. “We need a woman’s touch.”
His wife—Caity—laughed and looked at me. “We’ll find you something. There aren’t really any flowers blooming at this time of year. Were you hoping for some shrubs, maybe?”
“I—whatever you think,” I said, shaking my head. “I have no idea.”
“I’ve got some ideas,” she said, smiling. She looked over at Ephraim and at his nod waved at me to follow her.
As we moved through the rows of greenery, I couldn’t help thinking about that look. It was as if she’d been asking for permission to show me around—which didn’t make any sense since he’d called her over to do just that. It gave me a sour taste in my mouth that only intensified when I realized that Ephraim had followed us at a distance and camped out one row over while Caity asked how big my garden beds were and showed me what she thought would look nice.
“You went to school with Ephraim?” his wife asked casually as we stood at the little register near the front door a few minutes later.
“With Ephraim and Esther,” I confirmed with a nod.
Her gaze sharpened. “You know Esther, too?”
I laughed lightly and shrugged, my stomach clenching for a reason I couldn’t pinpoint as she watched me closely. “About as well as I know Ephraim. I didn’t really hang out with either of them, but it’s not a big school.”
She smiled back at me as she nodded, but her eyes were wary.
“You guys all finished?” Ephraim asked, wiping off his hands as he walked toward us. As if he hadn’t been watching us the whole damn time like a psycho.
By the time I left, I had six bushes in pots on a drop cloth on my back seat and my skin was crawling. On the outside, they seemed like any other couple. No sense of tension or anything like that, but when you watched them a little something just felt wrong about it. Maybe it was because I’d grown up with women who had no problem saying what they wanted and doing what they wanted and generally taking no shit from anyone, not even their husbands. There wasn’t anything that I could say that definitively bothered me about Ephraim and his wife, it’s not like he’d beat her in front of me or something, but the way she’d looked to him like she was gauging his opinion of what she said and how she acted…felt gross.