a suggestion and blow it all out of proportion. When he did reach her, his ex would want to know what their son was doing with his summer so far. Noelle might be highly focused on her career, but she was also a fiercely devoted, often overprotective mother. He wanted to be able to reassure her Rory’s job was safe and his employer reliable. She, too, would want a background check on Samantha Weston.
While driving back to headquarters, he phoned Noelle. Surprisingly, she picked up immediately. “Garrett, hello. I was expecting your call. Is Rory okay?”
“He’s fine. For the most part.” He tried to choose his words carefully. “He seems to think boarding school is a done deal, however, and he’s not happy about that. I can’t say I’m too pleased about it, either. You could have consulted me.”
“I threw out the idea of Harpswell, among others, to get Rory thinking about the broader possibilities in his future.”
“Broader than?” Garrett didn’t trust the implications of the broader concept. Not long after they’d married, Noelle had begun to chafe under what she considered their constricting life in Applegate. “He’s going to be an eighth-grader. How much broader than decent grades, friends and an interest in the world around him—animals, for instance—does his life have to get?”
He could hear her sigh from clear across the Atlantic.
“Less restricting than North Carolina,” she said at last.
“Are you moving?”
“I didn’t want to discuss it with you or Rory until I had something solid to add to the list of possibilities. But, yes, a move might be in the future. I’m here interviewing for a position—a promotion—in our London headquarters.”
He had to pull his cruiser to the side of the road. Had to tamp down his rising anger. “And you want to put our kid in a boarding school so you can take a job overseas? What’s wrong with the possibility of letting him live with me?”
“That would be one of the choices. As is boarding school. But I was really hoping you’d support me in trying to convince Rory it would be a wonderful experience to live in London. It would be an education in itself.”
“You want to take him with you?”
“Of course. But I want him to want to come.”
“Even farther away from me.”
“You would have summers together. That wouldn’t change.”
But how much would Rory change in a year’s time? Garrett didn’t want to be a stranger to his son.
“Besides, there’s e-mail and the telephone,” Noelle insisted. “Letters even. And you could always fly to England.” She made it sound so simple. Made him sound so provincial for not immediately embracing such simplicity.
“The three of us need to discuss this.”
“Absolutely. But don’t jump the gun. I haven’t been offered the job. Yet.”
With her talent and drive, he had no doubt she would be.
“I have to run.” Her voice was charged with the thrill of a challenge. “Wish me luck.”
“Luck,” he replied without enthusiasm, wondering, sourly, if wanting to have a good, solid father-son relationship here in Applegate meant limiting Rory.
He and Noelle hadn’t even talked about how happy he was to be working at Whistling Meadows.
THE ROCKBROOK VAN departed as Red’s pickup, the bed loaded with bulging garbage bags, arrived in the barnyard. Rory got out, but Red leaned through the driver’s window. “I’m hauling this to the landfill,” he said, then added with a nod to Rory, “The kid can work.”
“So I see,” Samantha replied, surprised Rory had pulled Red out of retirement.
“Someone dumped all this in the pasture by the road.” The boy wrinkled up his face. “Who would do that?”
Red smiled. “I tried to tell him some kids around here think summer activities mean dumping garbage, smashing mailboxes and toilet papering the trees along Main Street. Seems they do things differently in Charlotte.”
“You might have a dog problem, too,” Rory said. “We walked the fence line and saw signs of digging.”
Red’s smile disappeared. “Most likely those would be Tanner’s dogs.”
Samantha didn’t like the sound of that. If dogs got in the pasture, they could wreak havoc with the llamas. “Isn’t there a leash law?”
“You’d need to ask the sheriff,” Red replied. “If there is, no one pays attention to it. I’ll stop by Tanner’s on my way to the dump and talk to him about keeping his hounds on his own property.”
“No,” Samantha said quickly. From experience in the hotel business, she’d come to realize the importance of being an upfront neighbor to those already in the area. “I’ll talk to him.”
“I don’t know if that would be a good idea.” Red seemed just as adamant. “Tanner isn’t what you’d call open to suggestion.”
“We’ll do fine.” At the Singapore Ashley, she’d dealt with everyone from architects to contractors to lawyers to local officials and merchants. Tanner Harris couldn’t be more difficult than any of them. “I’ll bicycle over right now.”
“I’ll go with you,” Rory offered. “I don’t know Red’s nephew, but I know dogs.”
Red eyed the two of them. “As long as you both remember the cur you have to watch out for is Tanner.”
Samantha checked that the inner pasture gate was latched—the llamas, released from their packs and tethers, were already letting off steam, chest butting and rolling in the dust—then wheeled her bike out of the barn.
Rory joined her. “How was today’s trek?”
“It was the beginner course. Just a few hours of hiking up to Lookout Rock and back with some trail mix and sports drinks thrown in for good measure. But the girls had fun.”
“They were noisy.”
“They were okay on the trail. I think the giggling beforehand was mostly for your benefit.”
She hadn’t meant to make him blush, but he did anyway, then sped up ahead of her.
Following him to her neighbor’s property, she turned in at the corner of the fence where her pasture gave way to a woebegone yard. There, three hulking teenagers worked at building a trailer of sorts from lumber and spare parts. An all-terrain vehicle and two dirt bikes were parked nearby. Four large dogs lay chained to a tree. Rory stopped at the edge of the road and warily eyed the scene.
“Hello!” Samantha called out. “Is your father home?”
“No,” came a mumbled response before the dogs clambered to their feet and began a raucous baying. The three young men worked on without looking up.
Not
