Phoebe turned to Noah. “Just leave the mint in the back room, out of any sunlight. It’ll be fine.” She smiled. “Or it won’t be fine and we’ll toss it into the compost bin. Anyway, I should go. I have to be at the library soon.”
“Weren’t you two planning a picnic lunch?” Brandon asked mildly. “You know Maggie. She’s always got food figured out.”
Phoebe scowled at him. “Our morning didn’t go quite as planned.”
He shrugged. “You could always leave the food for your poor starving brother-in-law.”
“It’s still in the van,” Phoebe said, as if that explained everything.
She glanced at Noah, then left without another word.
Noah stepped onto the stone terrace. He didn’t know if he should follow Phoebe out to her sister’s van and see them off—or if he was supposed to take her retreat as her wish that he stay away. Dylan would know. Noah had no illusions that he was particularly good at figuring out what people were trying to say. Much easier if they just said it.
Brandon picked up stray mint leaves off the terrace table. They heard the van start up out front. “Fast exit,” he said.
“Time got away.”
“Yeah. That must be it. Did you just spend the morning picking mint?”
“I walked Buster, too.”
The big dog opened one eye from his spot under the table, as if he knew that life was rough for his dog sitter.
Brandon grinned. “Time to go back to San Diego?”
Noah didn’t answer as he went into the kitchen, grabbed two beers out of the refrigerator and brought them outside. “It’s now officially after noon and I have nothing to do, so I can have a beer. If you’re on the job—”
“I’m not. I’m taking the afternoon off. Maggie’s dropping off Aidan and Tyler after lunch. We’re hiking up Carriage Hill, then camping out at Dylan’s place.” Brandon uncapped his beer. “Maggie’s giving them instructions on spotting deer ticks. She’s paranoid about Lyme disease. I guess that makes sense.”
“I hadn’t thought about Lyme disease,” Noah said, then grinned. “Now I will.”
“Going out of your mind in our little town?”
“It’s only been a few days. I can do anything for a few days, but I’ve discovered that Knights Bridge is more complex than it might seem at first, despite the absence of traffic lights.”
“I used to think it’s isolated. It’s really not. It’s just small. It does help to have a driver’s license if you’re going to live here.” Brandon dragged out a chair and sat down heavily, as if suddenly he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. “You and NAK—did you ever expect it to take off, get as big as it did?”
“I worked toward that. It’s the outcome I wanted.”
“There were setbacks?”
“Inevitably.” When Brandon seemed to be looking for more, Noah added, “We took steps each day, assessed, made adjustments, managed risk and learned to cope with uncertainty.”
“No crystal ball?”
Noah smiled. “No crystal ball.”
“Maggie never used to mind taking a few risks. She jumped into catering with both feet, moved back here without a real plan, but she doesn’t see it that way because it’s her hometown. Her sisters are here. Her mother.” Brandon drank some of his beer. “It’s me she wants to be practical.”
“I think you can be practical and still take risks. You just want to be careful about not risking more than you can afford to lose, and you have to manage the uncertainties and unpredictability of the future.”
Brandon glanced back toward the kitchen, as if he were thinking about his estranged wife and their two young sons. He seemed to give himself a mental shake. “Going public involved uncertainty, didn’t it?”
“It still does.” Noah sat down, drank some of his beer. “I didn’t consider what I’d do after NAK went public as carefully as I could have.”
“So that’s why you’re here dog sitting.”
“Maybe so.”
“Any paths not taken that you can take now that you can be free of the day-to-day running of your company?” Brandon seemed to want to add something but was silent a moment. Finally he said, “I suppose we all have paths not taken.”
Noah hadn’t considered his situation in quite that way. “I suppose so. What about Phoebe?”
Brandon narrowed his gaze on Noah. “What about her?”
“Her father died when she was in college and she stayed in Knights Bridge.” Noah spoke carefully, aware that Phoebe was Brandon’s sister-in-law, a woman he’d known since childhood versus a few days. “Was that always her plan, or is there a path not taken?”
“More like there’s a guy who took off to Orlando without her. He wasn’t from here,” Brandon added quickly, as if that were a significant fact. “They were at UMASS together. He was a senior and she was a junior when her father died. This guy didn’t like sharing Phoebe with her mother and sisters on a good day.”
“You met him?”