Snow Falling on Bluegrass by Molly Harper Page A

‘Teamwork,’ ‘Achievement,’ ‘Positive Thinking’—I get to burn all of them. Particularly ‘Positive Thinking;’ that smiling kitty-cat in the bow tie annoys the hell out of me.”
    â€œI’ll take that bet.” Jacob stretched out his hand for a manly shake. “Because I am positive I can grow a better beard than you in just a few days.”
    â€œBy Friday?” Tom pumped Jacob’s hand, sealing the bargain. “You’re on.”
    This conversation was eerily reminiscent of the wager that Josh and Sadie had made when Josh was first hired, over who would come up with the better marketing campaign for the state fair, and that resulted in poor Josh having to work all day in a University of Louisville cheerleader uniform. A female cheerleader’s uniform, complete with pigtails in little red bows.
    This could lead nowhere good.
    â€œCould we please focus on the work we’re actually being paid for, instead of your facial hair?” Sadie yelled in a voice so shrill even Tom and Jacob looked chagrined. They settled into their seats and opened their retreat binders, pretending to be good little boys.
    I hid my smile behind my own binder. Since I’d helped Sadie design her presentations for this weekend, I knew this morning’s opening session was just an intro and a review of the previous summer’s activities. But still, I pulled out my trusty organizer and legal pad for notes. I never knew when Sadie was going to get an idea. I was arranging my index cards, Post-it notes, and highlighters in their special alignment around my space when someone slumped into the chair next to mine.
    The familiar green-tea-and-spice fragrance rolled toward my seat. I looked over to see Charlie seated next to me, reviewing his meeting materials. I knew I shouldn’t have been surprised. Sadie had marked his seat with her special sparkly cards, after all. But he acted as if it was the most normal thing in the world to be sitting next to me. I mean, it would have been, before, but now that I knew how his hand molded itself around my ass? I couldn’t breathe for a second. I felt my heart flutter. There were actual flutterings near my aorta.
    And I was still staring at him.
    Right. That was weird.
    My eyes darted back down to my binder. Sadie was in full meeting mode, though a slightly more prehistoric version of meeting mode. As the already weak winter afternoon sun filtered through the windows, Sadie had to use the Coleman lanterns to provide enough light to read by. She kept reaching back to point where the Smart Board we normally used to display meeting notes would be. And she seemed to resent having to jot her thoughts on index cards instead of her iPad. Clearly she had not adjusted to running a meeting without electricity.
    But, still, she spoke with enthusiasm. She waxed poetic about the moment of anticipation as the horses trot up to the starting gate at the Derby, that moment your teeth break through the crisp shell of a funnel cake at the state fair, that moment a middle-aged man runs his fingers along the body of a coveted classic sports car at the Corvette Museum in Bowling Green.
    â€œJust imagine the poor bastards out there who have never come near Kentucky’s borders,” she said. “They have no idea what we have here, no clue what they’re missing out on. So we have to save them. We have to save them from their fourth trip to the same old theme park. We have to save them from the same bed-and-breakfast where they have tried to recapture the magic of their early married days over and over and it’s never quite worked out. We have to save them from the same old boring beach vacation that they’ve already taken ten times, the same restaurants, the same museums, the same lame mini-golf courses that they forget each year how much they hate until they get stuck behind another family that can’t get their balls into the