Izzy took a deep breath on Sunday before she picked up the phone.
“I can stay—if Marta lets me,” she’d said to Beau on Saturday night, like it was no big deal, like it was a foregone conclusion that Marta would let her stay here longer and work with him on his book. And now she had to get Marta to let her.
She wanted—dear God, she wanted—to send an email about this. In an email, you could spend minutes, hours, laboring over each phrase, making sure you worded everything just right. In a phone call, who knows what you would say? But Marta did everything important over the phone. She dialed Marta’s number.
“Isabelle.”
Marta always answered the phone like that, with just the name of the person calling her. It had been so disconcerting at first.
“Hi, Marta,” Izzy said. “Sorry to call you on a Sunday, but, um, I think I’ve been making some progress with Beau Towers. The tricky part is that he wants me to stay longer. For a while, I mean, to help him with his book. I think he’s been having a really tough time, and it seems like it’s helped him to talk it through with me.” Ugh, she was babbling. She’d already said help twice. She should have written down a script.
Marta huffed. Was she running? Or skiing? Knowing Marta, she was probably, like, running in the snow.
“It might be time for us to cut our losses on this one,” Marta said. “Throwing good money after bad isn’t going to magically get a book out of this guy. I’m glad you’ve gotten him to respond to my emails, at least, but I don’t want to force you to stay in some dinky little town in California for this. I’ll tell him no.”
Izzy thought fast. She had to get Marta to let her stay. She hadn’t realized how much she cared about doing this until Marta was on the point of taking it away.
“Actually,” she said, “I’ve been surprised at how committed he is to this book. You sending me here was just the push he needed.” Yes, make Marta remember it was “her” idea to send Izzy here. “I don’t think he ever would have made any progress on the book otherwise. I can’t guarantee this will work, of course, but I’m pretty sure that if I don’t stay, there will never be a book. And I’ve been able to get all my other work done remotely pretty well while I’ve been here—the isolation is good for reading manuscripts.” As was the bathtub, and the sunshine, and the reduced stress from not having to walk into that building every day, but she didn’t need to say that part.
“Hmm.” There was a long silence on the phone, and Izzy forced herself not to fill it. A technique she’d learned from Marta herself. “Okay. You have a month. Don’t let me down.” And then Marta hung up the phone.
Izzy let out a deep breath. She’d done it. Now she had to do something almost as hard: tell her parents she was staying in California for a month. She hoped they didn’t freak out, but even if they did, she was already on the other side of the country.
Looks like I’m staying for a few more weeks, maybe longer! Getting some great experience and really good work done here, but I miss you guys!
Obviously, they didn’t know she was living alone in a house with Beau Towers. Yes, she was an adult, but that didn’t mean her dad wouldn’t flip out about that. It wasn’t like she’d lied to them, she’d just…implied it was more like corporate housing.
Sounds great, honey! Glad they have so much faith in you! Can’t talk now, but we’ll call you later!
Well, that was uncharacteristically…chill for her dad. Okay, then. She really was staying here.
So at three on Monday afternoon, Izzy walked into the kitchen, the notebooks and pens that she’d picked up at the stationery store on Sunday afternoon in her hand, her phone in her pocket, and butterflies in her stomach. She hoped this worked.
Michaela was pouring hot water into a mug. “Hi, Izzy. Tea? I heard you’ll be here for a while longer.”
Michaela looked pleased about that. Good—Izzy had been worried that it would be more trouble for her.
“Yeah, it looks like it. And no thanks, for the tea, but maybe later, if you’re still around when we’re done?”
Michaela smiled at her on her way out of the kitchen. “Sounds good. See you later, then.”
After a few more minutes, Izzy turned and looked at the clock on the oven: 3:05. Maybe he wasn’t coming? Maybe he’d changed his mind? That “don’t let me down” from Marta rang through her ears.
“No pressure,” Izzy muttered.
“What was that?” Beau asked as he walked into the kitchen.
“Oh! It was nothing.” Izzy forced herself to hold back her sigh of relief but apparently not well enough.
“Did you think I wasn’t coming?”
Beau didn’t quite look at her.
She shook her head, then nodded. What was the point of pretending? “I thought, just maybe, you’d changed your mind about this.”
He walked over to the snack cabinet. “And blow off the snack cabinet? Never.” He threw the doors open. “What are you thinking for today? Something cheesy, or something spicy?”
Izzy surveyed the options. “Why not both?”
His face relaxed into a smile. “A woman after my own heart.” Before she could figure out how to react to that, he’d walked over to the fridge and grabbed that tray again. “I’ll get us an assortment.”
Izzy wondered where they were taking all these snacks. She’d assumed they’d work here in the kitchen. They were probably going to the TV room. That wouldn’t be her choice for the best place to get work done—too many distractions, plus the coffee table was an awkward height for working on a laptop, but she’d let Beau have this one.
Beau piled the snacks on the tray, along with a stack of napkins and some drinks from the fridge.
“Do these drinks work for you?” he asked her. She glanced at the tray. He had two cans of seltzer, two Diet Cokes, and two bottles of that “green” juice stuff that was always in the fridge. It was really more of a greenish gray. She didn’t know what was in it, and she didn’t want to know.
“Okay, out with it,” he said, before she could say anything. “Why are you making that face?”
Oops. She was usually better about masking her facial expressions.
“If both of those bottles of that juice are for you, that’s fine, but please don’t make me drink it.”
Beau laughed. “Oh, come on, it’s not that bad! Have you ever tried it?”
Izzy made a face. “No, and I don’t plan to. It looks disgusting. I have teeth, I can chew my vegetables just fine.”
Beau picked up the tray and walked to the door of the kitchen. “Sure you can, but you ate that soup the other night and liked it, didn’t you? There was no chewing involved there.”
“That was different,” she said as she followed him. “First of all, it’s soup! Everyone loves soup. It was a cold and rainy night, the soup was nice and warm. Secondly—”
“Okay, today is a bright sunny day, the juice is cool and refreshing,” Beau said.
“Secondly,” Izzy said, “the vegetables in the soup were cooked before they were all blended up. These vegetables are all just, what, put into a blender raw? That sounds very indigestible.”
Beau turned back to look at her. “Did you ever read that book about the green eggs and ham when you were a kid? That’s what you sound like right now. You’re just talking about what you think the green juice is like, and not what it’s actually like. Try it, try it, then you’ll see.”
Izzy scowled at him. “It’s very cruel of you to quote one of my favorite children’s books at me to try to get me to do something I don’t want to do.”
Beau laughed as he walked past the door to the TV room. Where were they going?
“Aren’t we…?” Izzy gestured back at the TV room.
Beau kept going. “Oh. No. I thought we’d have more room—and fewer distractions—in the library.”
Of course. The library. Obviously a house that had gardens and cellars would also have a library.
Izzy followed Beau down the hall to those big wooden doors he’d told her were off-limits during the tour. He transferred the tray to one hand and threw the doors open. Izzy walked inside.
“Oh. The library” was all she could say.