Total pages in book: 63
Estimated words: 60487 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 302(@200wpm)___ 242(@250wpm)___ 202(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 60487 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 302(@200wpm)___ 242(@250wpm)___ 202(@300wpm)
“Thanks, Jason!”
Carl swallowed a sigh. “Let’s go, kiddo.”
“Mum works late today so I’m going to Under the Raindough. What’s that sound?”
That sound was Carl’s phone vibrating against his keys. He fished it out of his pocket and answered the Unknown Caller. “Hello?”
“Oh, Jason dear. It is you.”
Um . . . who was this?
Luckily, he didn’t have to ask. She continued, “It’s Linda. We met at the Street Greet.”
“Linda, of course! The pretty smile.”
“Flatterer. My son arrives tomorrow, and my granddaughter loves to play the piano. You so generously offered to tune it for me. I was hoping you might come by tomorrow morning?”
Carl froze mid-step; Leo lurched to a puzzled stop beside him and looked at him with big eyes. “I’d love to help, Linda, bu—”
“Thank you, deary. See you at number three around ten.”
Carl blinked at the phone screen after the call cut out. He groaned and tapped the end of the phone against his forehead. How would he get through this one? Confess and let a nice old woman down? Or figure out a way to get the piano tuned?
Surely keeping the elders happy was the overall better thing to do?
“What’s the matter?” Leo asked.
“Sometimes I am really stupid.”
“That’s okay!”
“It is?”
Leo nodded with big, earnest eyes. “You don’t have to be smart. All that matters is you’re happy and you’re a good person!”
A load slid off Carl’s shoulders at these innocently uttered words. He fondly rubbed the top of Leo’s head. “Aren’t you the little philosopher?”
“That’s what my mum says.”
“Sage words.”
“Hey, that’s funny.”
“I was trying.”
They walked against a heaving wind to the bakery, where Carl spotted Sage through the windows, sitting at a table plugging things into a calculator, surrounded by paper. Leo knocked on the locked door, yell-laughing “Mum!” and she bubbled into a smile and rushed to greet her son. Paper flew off the table in the gust that came through the door and Sage momentarily winced before crushing Leo into a hug, pecking kisses on top of his head.
Carl slunk away, but the image formed a sweet, achy knot in his chest. His cousin-slash-real-mum must’ve been as young as Sage was when she became a mother. Sage had chosen to be Leo’s mum despite how young she was. Cora claimed only to be Carl’s cousin. They were close, they talked every other day, laughed over their horoscopes, hugged and even had a special handshake. But Carl couldn’t shake the feeling he was missing something. Something like pecks on the top of his head. Something like yelling “Mum!” with a huge smile.
Carl traipsed past the pub, paused, and backtracked. Grayson was working the bar, in Carl’s flannel, surrounded by groupies, and . . . what the heck. Carl joined them. He squeezed to the front and Grayson’s gaze snagged on him immediately. “You okay?” he mouthed.
The man’s intuition! Spot on. “Came for help,” he mouthed back.
Instantly, Grayson shrugged out of his apron and yelled for someone to take over. He grabbed a jacket from a hook on the wall and nodded for Carl to follow him outside.
Not far from the pub was a public bench with planter boxes either side; Grayson snagged Carl’s sleeve and towed him to it. When they were seated, slightly angled, knees bumping, Grayson draped his jacket around Carl’s shoulders, which was weirdly chivalrous—and Carl didn’t dislike it—and looked at him, waiting.
Carl felt something slightly bulky bulging from the inner pocket of the jacket around him. He instinctively plucked at the soft wadded material. “I’m, ah, coming to you for help.”
“I’m here. I can listen.”
“Oh, I won’t be trying to perform anything.”
Grayson’s brow crunched.
Carl continued plucking—at the soft material stuffed into the pocket, and at the conversation. “I need your help on deciding if and how I should help Linda tune her piano? She kind of expects me there at ten tomorrow.”
A blink. “What?”
Carl blinked back. “You said to come to you for help?”
“Help when you’re having sad thoughts. Not help with—what?”
Sad . . . What? Thoughts? Carl plucked the soft material free and it spilled onto his lap.
A scarf.
A familiar scarf. One he’d once tried to make out in the dark. He’d thought the print had been fish, or birds, but it turned out the soft silvery fabric was patterned with hundreds of little silver mice.
Carl lifted it and stared. Understanding hit him with a giant jolt through his middle, making him jump on the cold seat. His gaze snapped from the scarf to Grayson, who was frowning beyond it. His rescuer from the cliff, after he’d had too many beers. The rescuer who had heaved Carl to safety after he’d slipped. Who’d told him off for drink-hiking. Whose cold fingers had carefully checked his injured ankle. Whose broad back had carried him down the hill.
Good thing I caught you, Grayson had said this morning.