The Hardest Cut by Jamie Bennett (book club recommendations .TXT) 📕

triumphantly as when I had waved goodbye to my dad and ridden out, after I had graduated as valedictorian at our high school and left for college in the big city to make my mark.  And I had been on my way to making it, I felt, when I had dropped everything and headed back here to this corner of northern Michigan, back to my dad and the tiny town where I’d grown up, back to the place I hadn’t thought I would ever permanently put my feet again.  I’d had things to prove, to myself and to everyone else, but I hadn’t done it yet.

That was what I was still mulling over a few hours later, sitting on the porch at my great-grandparents’ old cottage on the lake and well into a large piece of cake that I was eating with my fingers.  Because, ok, it had been a while since I had done the dishes so forks were scarce, and also cake with fingers was where I was emotionally at the moment.  Yes, I was crying and eating dessert with my hands, alone except for a raccoon that I could hear scrabbling in the darkness close by.  It was probably giggling about how last Saturday night, I had fallen face-first on the driveway after failing to chase it away from my garbage and had scratched up my leg and stomach.  Grace was not my middle name but there was no reason for mockery by animals.  I picked up a rock and threw it as hard as I could toward a stand of pine trees to scare it off.

There was a satisfying thud as I thought I hit a tree trunk, but that noise was followed immediately by: “Ow!  What in the hell was that?”

I leapt up, my dessert falling off my plate and onto the deck at my feet.  “Hello?  Who’s there?” I yelled back.  Oh no, that had been the last of the cake!

A large, shadowed figure stepped out of the trees where I had flung the rock.  “Did you just throw something at me?”  It was a man, and he was rubbing his shoulder like it really hurt.  “Did you just throw a rock at me?”

“No!” I protested.  “I threw a rock, but—what are you doing on my property, anyway?”

He stepped forward and I saw that he was absolutely huge.  Huge and blonde, and really, really frowning.  “This is my property.  I just bought the Feeney place.”  He pointed back over his shoulder.

I knew the house, of course, but I hadn’t known that it was for sale.  The Feeney place was a horrible monstrosity that had been thrown up a few years before, when some people from downstate had razed what had been the Solomons’ cottage.  The sweet 1920s architecture had given way to Lib and Ron Feeney’s huge, hideous, style-free dream house.  My dad had mocked it endlessly.

“You’re trespassing,” I told the big man flatly.  “This is my house.  Those are my trees.  This is my property.”  Maybe I wouldn’t have the bookstore anymore, but I had this cottage.

He kept rubbing his shoulder.  “Couldn’t you have said that, instead of throwing a rock?”

“I didn’t hit you on purpose.  I thought you were a raccoon!”

He looked down at himself, at his long, broad body.  I swallowed.  No, he didn’t look much like a small, furry animal.  “I didn’t mean to trespass,” he said.  “If I am.  The realtor told me that these trees are mine.”

“Nope,” I answered.  “Mine.”  I felt a surge of fierce possession and stepped toward him angrily.  I thought of who would soon possess my store.  Probably some other jerk from downstate, like this guy, who wouldn’t care at all about our town or anyone in it.  Just like the frowning man didn’t currently care about the trillium plants he was trampling beneath his feet.  “You summer people can’t come up here and flash a wad of money and think that everything belongs to you, and then ruin it.  You can’t have it all.  Not everything has a price!”

Even in the semi-darkness, I could see his eyes widen.  “I’d been wondering about my neighbors,” he said.  “Nice to meet you, too.”  He shook his head.  “We’ll probably run into each other again, and if we do, no rocks, please.”

I nodded curtly.  I had just realized that I was now standing in the cake I had dropped.  “I really didn’t mean to throw it at you.  I’m sorry about that.  And you are trespassing.”

He shook his head a little more and turned back into the trees—my trees.  I could see a cell phone screen illuminate and then move higher, like he was trying to hold it up to get a signal.  That was probably what he had been doing, wandering around to try to use his phone.  Good luck on that!  There was no service out here, not unless you went into town.  I chortled inwardly until I looked back down at the squished frosting and chocolate crumbs beneath my tennis shoes.  Darn it.

With the cake gone, I moved to my dad’s old bottle of scotch.  He’d liked to have what he called a snort now and then, sometimes to celebrate, but more when he’d missed my mom.  I hosed the frosting off the porch to keep the raccoons from sniffing around and then poured a small snort for myself.  My parents’ wedding picture hung next to the cabinet where we kept the meager liquor supply, and I looked at them, so young and happy.

“Cheers, you guys,” I told them, and they beamed back.  I took a breath that caught, so I swallowed about half my drink.  When it stopped burning in my throat, I told them I was sorry.  “I wish I could have saved it,” I whispered, then I finished what was in the glass.  I wished that very hard as I poured another snort and wandered into my room to lie in my bed and cry.

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