“I know you are.”
She sighed, dropping her arms to her sides. “Then help me.”
“How?”
“By letting me do what I have to. Stop trying to rescue me, and just . . . be on my side.”
“I’ve always been on your side, Lizzy. Always.”
It was true. He had been. Long before the Gilman girls had become a part of their lives. But she needed something else from him now. “I mean about this. All of this. Selling the farm, dealing with my mother, trying to find out what happened to two dead girls eight years ago. I need you to tell me I’m doing the right things—and that I’m doing them for the right reason.”
Her voice cracked. She bowed her head, suddenly exhausted. “I’m sorry. I’m just tired. I didn’t expect any of this when I came back. I thought I’d swoop in, pack up a few things, put the farm on the market, and go back to New York. Instead, the place is falling apart, there’s no money to fix anything, my mother shows up out of the blue, and there might be an arsonist on the loose. Every time I turn around, something else is imploding. And I have no idea how to deal with any of it.”
Andrew closed the distance between them, took her hands, and pulled her close. “And everyone keeps telling you you’re doing it wrong—including me.”
Lizzy leaned into him, folding against his chest like a sulky child. She didn’t care. She felt sulky. And tired. And lost. “Maybe I am doing it wrong. Maybe none of this is what Althea would want. Maybe it’s what I want, and I’m just mucking through it all so I can feel better. So that this time, when I walk away, my conscience will be clean.”
“Is that really what you think? That this is just some selfish quest for absolution?” He cupped her chin, tilting her face up toward his. “How is it possible that you know yourself so little, Lizzy Moon?”
Lizzy met his gaze, breath held as she plumbed the depths of those warm amber eyes. Familiar eyes, she realized. The kind a less wary woman could get lost in.
She took an abrupt step back, holding him at arm’s length. “I don’t know anything anymore, Andrew. Except that when I leave here, I don’t want any unfinished business. I don’t want to have to look back—ever.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
Lizzy hovered in the shop doorway, glad for a few minutes alone with her thoughts. The birds had quieted, the void filled with a deepening chorus of peepers and crickets. In the distance, fireflies winked on and off, random yellow pulses in the rapidly falling dusk. It was her favorite time of day. Her mother’s too, apparently.
She’d left Rhanna in the kitchen, helping Evvie wash up the supper dishes. To say she’d been surprised by her mother’s sudden willingness to pitch in was an understatement. But even more astonishing than the sight of Rhanna with a dish towel in her hand was the sight of her blowing Evvie a trio of noisy air kisses, followed by the announcement that she’d decided they should be friends. Evvie had rolled her eyes, grumbling that she didn’t have time for foolishness, but Rhanna was a skilled charmer when she needed to be. A full thaw was only a matter of time. And then what? Surely there was some motive behind all this sweetness, some angle she was working.
In the distance, she heard the slap of the mudroom door. Rhanna appeared moments later, barefoot as she crossed the lawn. She had plaited her hair into two long braids and tied the ends with matching yellow ribbons. They slapped her shoulders as she walked. She broke into a grin as she halted and clicked her bare heels.
“Rhanna Moon, reporting for soap duty, sir.”
“At ease,” Lizzy replied dryly, backing out of the doorway to let Rhanna in. “I was starting to think you weren’t coming.”
“I said I would, and here I am, keeping my promise.”
Lizzy reached for Althea’s remedy book and flipped to the page she’d marked several days earlier. “That was quite a show you put on for Evvie,” she remarked finally. “For a minute there, I thought she was going to swat you with the frying pan.”
Rhanna’s smile wavered. “She doesn’t like me.”
“She doesn’t know you. All she has to go on is what she’s heard.”
“Well, then. I’m doomed.”
Lizzy thought of her own first encounter with Evvie. The unspoken disapproval. The wary distrust. “Evvie’s big on loyalty. Especially when it comes to Althea. You have to earn your way in with her.”
“Three thousand miles,” Rhanna said softly. “Most of it on foot. Does that count for anything?”
Lizzy studied her. She looked young in her bare feet and braids, startlingly vulnerable. “It does, actually. Or it will, in time. She needs to know that she can trust you. So do I, though I’m not sure that’s actually possible.”
“You can trust me, Lizzy. I know it’s hard to believe, but it’s true. Before, when I said I owed a lot of people—I was mostly talking about you. I’m not asking for anything but a chance.”
“And you’ve got one,” Lizzy said evenly. “But only one. Screw up and you’re gone. Now, let’s get this show on the road. I’m tired.”
They worked in silence for a while, divvying up the various parts of the process and settling into a rhythm. Lizzy measured out the sodium hydroxide, then held her breath as she stirred the crystals into a beaker of distilled water, eyeing the thermometer as the chemical reaction between the two began to generate heat. Rhanna melted the shea butter on the hot plate, then measured out the oatmeal, vanilla, and lavender oil.
Lizzy couldn’t help stealing an occasional glance while she waited for the lye solution to cool. In a million years she couldn’t have imagined working side by side with Rhanna to
