(During the course of his life, Will had learned that he needed external voices of reason. He’d been born without one of his own.)

“Well,” Ms Tricia said, “it’s possible Jason isn’t coming today.”

Will blinked slowly. “Oh. Did I get confused?” Sometimes he got confused. Maybe he’d come on the wrong day? Maybe he’d misunderstood on the phone. “I thought you said Jase was—”

“Abigail,” Ms Tricia interrupted. “I said Abigail was coming today.”

Will opened his mouth, closed his mouth, looked at Ms Tricia very hard, and tried to figure out why the nice old lady who used to pick him and the Farrell kids up from school every afternoon would lie to his face like this. Because information often fell out of Will’s head, and he frequently made ditzy mistakes, but he knew one thing for absolute certain: he would never, ever, forget or mistake or misunderstand even the barest mention of Abigail Farrell’s name. Never.

Before he could think of a way to sternly interrogate a woman who’d once caught him drinking squeezy honey from the bottle, the sound of a car engine came from outside. He and Ms Tricia turned toward the window. Ms Tricia’s ancient border terrier, Haddock, remained uninterested and unconcerned in his dog bed. Will wondered if it might be worth gifting Ms Tricia a guard dog for her birthday, now that Haddock was getting on in years. Surely it wasn’t good for an older lady to be alone in the middle of nowhere like this?

Then something clicked inside his head. “Wait. If Abbie is coming today—is that Abbie? Outside? Right now?”

“Maybe. Likely. Yes.”

Shit.

Will rocketed to his feet. This wasn’t ideal. This wasn’t remotely ideal. For one thing, he hadn’t run his plan by Jase. The whole thing could be a wash, and he would have no fucking idea because he hadn’t run his plan by Jase.

Second, the house wasn’t ready. He hadn’t had a chance to put up the rest of Ms Tricia’s Christmas decorations, the ones that required power tools or stepladders. The house was barely festive at all—there weren’t even any lights outside—which meant there was zero evidence of his many practical talents to overwhelm and impress Abbie with.

Although… it suddenly occurred to Will that Abbie didn’t care about lights. Or practical talents. And now he was wondering why lights and practical talents had ever featured in his Very Important Plan when he knew very well that Abbie cared far more about pizza and sarcasm. Fuck. He’d already miscalculated somewhere. The plan was flawed. This was why he had to talk to Jase about things, but now Abbie was here and it was too late and—

And, third disaster of the day: like the house, Will wasn’t ready.