“I’ve heard a lot about you,” he said, grinning as he shook my hand.

“Likewise.” I grinned back, tugging on his hand until I got close enough to hug him. “You’ve been putting it to my best friend for months now, so you’re required to hug me.” Surprised but willing, he hugged me back, wrapping his strong arms around me.

“Watch it, that’s my guy,” Roxie warned from the corner.

“Nice,” I replied, slipping out of the hug but still keeping hands-on. I squeezed his biceps a bit. “Very nice.” Leo’s eyes twinkled down at me, and I just shook my head. “You’re lucky I didn’t meet you first.”

“Seriously, still in the room,” Roxie repeated, and I finally released Leo. “And this munchkin is Polly.”

I stuck out my hand for Polly to shake. “As in Pollyanna?”

“Well, I wasn’t named after a polynomial,” the kid said, her eyes as green as Leo’s but much more appraising.

I laughed. “It’s nice to meet you, Not a Polynomial.”

Polly grinned up at me. “Smells good in here, what’s for dinner?”

“Polly, we just got here. Maybe ask Roxie if she needs any help?” Leo said, ruffling up her hair. “It does smell really good.”

“Do you need any help, and what’s for dinner?” Polly asked, and I retreated to my kitchen stool, hands raised, knowing full well that the person who was actually in charge had just arrived. I was just hoping she’d let me have some of her spaghetti and meatballs . . .

“So you’re here to figure out how to get more people to Bailey Falls, right?” Leo asked, buttering a piece of bread for Polly and putting it on the side of her plate. She was trying to twirl her pasta on a spoon, just like Roxie. Her little tongue poked out of the side of her mouth while she concentrated.

“Kind of. I’m here to get the lay of the land, so to speak. My firm got an email from Chad Bowman—you know him?” I forked up my own bite of pasta, and my goodness was it good. My girl could cook.

“I do. He and his husband are members of the farmshare program we offer to locals; they’re great guys.” Leo smothered a laugh when Polly’s spoonful nearly went flying. “Want me to cut it up for you, make it easier to get on the fork?”

“Roxie says to never cut pasta,” Polly said with a serious look on her face. “It disrupts the integrity of the noodle.”

“That seems like exactly something she would say,” I agreed. Roxie was coughing into her napkin in a very timely fashion. “So tell me about the farmshare program.”

As Leo talked, I began to get a better sense of what he’d created over at Maxwell Farms. The more I heard about it, the more eager I was to see it. “This seems exactly the kind of thing that could make this town even more inviting. Norman Rockwell charm meets local sustainable agriculture, which everyone is interested in now. You give tours at the farm, right?”

“Every day,” Leo said, “Two on Saturdays.”

“Perfect. Can I come by tomorrow?”

“You got it. We’re moving some of the animals tomorrow for rotational pasture grazing, so it’s a good day to come by. Lots of activity,” he answered.

Roxie turned from helping Polly with twirling her pasta. “Moving any dairy cows tomorrow?” she asked, trying to sound nonchalant but failing. I looked hard at her, but she seemed very interested suddenly in a loose string on the end of Leo’s T-shirt.

“Yep, we’re moving them up onto the east pasture. Why, what’s up?” Leo asked, tucking into another meatball. “Watch what you’re doing there, Sugar Snap, don’t unravel one of my favorite tees. I only saw the Pixies play live once.”

“I was just thinking it might be fun for Natalie to see that, to watch you moving the cows,” Roxie answered, still picking at his T-shirt. Leo absently put a hand over hers, stopping her from unraveling the whole thing. I couldn’t blame her; what a grand sight that’d be.

“Sure thing, you want to come tomorrow around noon?”

“And get the opportunity to say I literally saw the cows come home? I wouldn’t miss it.” I turned toward Polly. “I’m going to meet a moo cow tomorrow, want to come along?”

“They’re not moo cows, they’re Guernseys and Brown Swiss.” She blinked. “And I have school tomorrow.”

“Ah. Of course,” I replied. Speaking of schooled . . . “Okay, so tomorrow I’ll swing by the farm after my meeting with Chad. Sounds like a plan.”

“Sounds great,” Roxie said, grinning broadly.

Chapter 6

Anyone who tells you a good night’s sleep in the country is a cure for all ills has never actually slept in the country.

Between the crickets, the owls, the wind howling, the trees scraping against the windows, and the creakiest, squeakiest bed in America, I barely slept a wink.

And just when I’d gotten the tiniest bit used to the cacophony of sound going on outside in the Wild Kingdom, everything stopped. The wind died down, the trees stopped scraping, the crickets and owls agreed with each other that it was time to take five, and it was like the world outside went on permanent mute.

The world inside dwindled down to the occasional creak from my bed, the ticktock of a grandfather clock downstairs, and my breathing, which sounded loud in the silent room.

Where was the hustle? Where was the bustle? Where were the sirens and the horns honking and the people, for Christ’s sake, that you could always count on for background noise at all hours of the day and night?

Silence pressed in on me from every direction, convincing me that Roxie had faded away and it was just me left alone to battle the shadows from a thousand nearly empty trees outside, silhouetted by an angry pumpkin moon gazing down on this land that time forgot.

When it’s quiet in the country, it’s all too easy to imagine a man in a plaid shirt striding out of the woods. Peering at your farmhouse from across the field, wondering if there was a buxom city girl curled up in a squeaky bed upstairs, too pretty to be killed off at the beginning of a horror movie, but kept alive for something truly terrible somewhere near the end of the third act.

Yeah, sleeping in the country isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

“How’d you sleep?” Roxie asked brightly as I staggered downstairs the next morning, following the smell of coffee that beckoned like an olfactory pied piper.