Chapter 6: The Offer

The line behind him had gone quiet.

Forty people holding tomatoes, waiting to see what the greenhouse girl did with ninety thousand dollars.

I looked at the tomato start he'd put down.

He'd bent the stem.

"That's very generous," I said.

"I'm a generous man."

"Your daughter's friends just threw twenty-four basil plants in a fountain."

He smiled.

"Kids."

"They're twenty-two." I picked up the tomato and straightened the stem against my thumb. "So am I. That's old enough to say no thank you, Mr. Ogden."

His smile didn't move.

His eyes did.

"Ninety thousand is a lot of money for a girl from Scranton."

So he'd looked me up.

"It is," I said. "And the garden's not for sale. Not to the college, not to you, and not for a job in Hartford mowing lawns around office parks."

Somebody in the line said, "Damn."

Somebody else started clapping and then stopped, embarrassed.

Marshall Ogden looked down at the cash box, and then at Linc in his wet boots.

"Lincoln," he said. "Give my best to your father. We'll see you both at Founders' Day."

"Both?" I said.

But he was already walking away across the quad.

Ainslee came down off the library steps to meet him.

She took his arm.

The words drifted after them.

[her dad is so classy, she'll regret that]

[ninety k and she said NO? delusional]

Linc stood very still beside me.

"What does he mean, both?"

"Nothing," he said. Then he caught my face. "I don't know yet. That's the truth."

I let it go.

I shouldn't have, but I had eighteen thousand dollars to count.

On Monday, between my six a.m. shift and my studio, my phone buzzed with an email.

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