Page 25 of What Maple Heard

“I can do it,” I said.

Three heads turned.

Nancy. Marcus. Maple.

A pause of about two seconds.

Then two of them started laughing. Not polite laughter. Actual, helpless, full-body laughter. Marcus made a sound I had not heard from him before. Nancy put her head down on the table. Maple stayed still with an amused look on her face.

“Are you sure?” Maple asked.

“What’s not to be sure of?” I said. “It’s a fairy. I can do a fairy. How hard is a fairy?”

“You haven’t seen the costume,” Nancy said. She still had tears from laughing.

“How bad can a fairy costume be?”

Turns out?

Pretty bad.

***

Chapter 8

Maple

I could not figure out what Cade Sonnenberg wanted from me.

That was the thing driving me absolutely insane. He wanted something. People always wanted something. That was the fundamental rule of Maple Brooks’s life, established early and confirmed repeatedly: nobody showed up for free. There was always a price tag. Always a reason. You just had to find it.

So what was his reason?

I had given him every hint available. I had told him directly, on multiple occasions, in clear sentences using small words, that we were done. I had given him a broom. I had spilled coffee on his freshly mopped floor. I had agreed to give him the role of Aurelia Maplewood, Keeper of the Autumn Leaves, despite knowing what exactly that entailed. And I was determined to make a few changes to the character of Aurelia. Maybe I’d give him a few more lines to work with, add a few moves for his character, and make him twirl a little. Afterall, he volunteered for the role. How could I disappoint him?

I told Cade I would be making a few changes to the character of the Oak Fairy, and instead of worrying about how much more embarrassing it would become, all he had to say was — “Whatever needs to be done, Maple.”

Why was he acting so nice? What did he want from me?

The only explanation I could land on was that he realized I was such a great fuck that he didn’t want to lose it. Not to brag, but we were genuinely very good together in bed. Like, remarkably good. Like, the kind of good that could make a man temporarily lose his grip on reality and convince himself he had feelings when really he just had a very good thing going and didn’t want to lose access to it.

That had to be it.

Because the alternative — the alternative where he actually meant the things he was doing every day and it wasn’t a strategy and he genuinely, actually loved me — that alternative required me to trust something again. And I had tried that. I had let my guard down for the first time in years, and I knew exactly how that had ended.

I was not doing it again.

What I was doing was making absolutely sure that this fairy costume reached its full devastating potential. Because if Cade Sonnenberg wanted to insert himself into my professional life and my children’s festival and my every single morning, then he was going to do it as Aurelia Maplewood, Keeper of the Autumn Leaves, in front of the entire town of Chestnut Ridge. Including, I had recently learned, his parents, who were back from the Middle East and were the guests of honor.

Excellent.

“Okay,” I said to the kids. “Today is Aurelia Maplewood’s first costume fitting.”

Eleven faces turned to me with immediate, complete attention. This was the most engaged the group had been since the first day.

“The costume is on the table,” I said. “And I need it dusted with glitter.”

Devon’s hand shot up. “How much glitter?”