Cream of the Crop by Alice Clayton Page B

time.
    â€œWhen is your train?”
    â€œI’m gonna jump on the 1:43. That puts me in at Poughkeepsie around 3:30.”
    â€œSounds good. When are you meeting with the client?”
    â€œI’m scheduled with the councilman who reached out to us tomorrow at 9 a.m. I figured I’d start with him first, get a feel for what he wants. Then I’m supposed to meet with the rest of the council over the weekend, after my official tour.” I packed up my laptop. “And apparently there’s a barn dance. Can you believe that?”
    â€œHope you packed your petticoat,” he said, chuckling along with me.
    I patted my second suitcase. “You bet your ass I did.”
    â€œYou didn’t,” he said, blinking at me.
    â€œDan. When am I ever going to get the chance to go to a barn dance again? You should see the boots I got to wear with my dress!”
    â€œPlease promise me that someone will be taking pictures. I just need one,” he said, shaking his head. “I still can’t believe you’re going up there. Best friend or no best friend, this just isn’t like you.”
    As I stood in the perfectly modern office in a high-rise with a view people would kill for, a slow smile spread across my face.
    â€œI know.”

    When I was ten years old, my family and I took a weekend trip up to Lake Erie to stay with an old friend of my mother’s. We got a late start out of the city, broke an axle on a lonely country road after dark, and ended up spending the night, and the better part of the next day, in a little town in the literal middle of nowhere, waiting for the one body shop in town to get the part it needed to fix my dad’s car.
    We spent the night at the Greenwood Inn, an old hotel that had seen better days. But while my mother and father complained about the size of the bathroom and the thread count of the sheets, I was fascinated with the bell on the counter downstairs and the fact that there was a potbelly stove in the corner. The next day, while my father dickered with the owner of the body shop, my mother and my brother and I spent the day in town, walking the town square, playing in the little park in the center of town, and feeding the ducks in the duck pond. I watched the little town bustle around me, locals coming into town to pick up some groceries from the mom-and-pop grocery store on the corner, to visit with each other at the café over a slice of pie, or to shop for new school clothes at the one clothing store, over which was Miss Lucy’s Dance Studio.
    My brother was bored. My mother was frustrated. I was enthralled. The little town—and still to this day I have no idea where exactly it was—came alive in front of my eyes, like a walking, talking picture book. We spent exactly seventeen hours in this town, and it forever changed my view of small-town America . . . and was the spark that lit the secret never-to-be-spoken-of-out-loud desire to one day live in one.
    As the train sped along the Hudson, I watched as the little river towns flew by. I took pictures as we zoomed by, the river, the stations, the hills, everything. The train made many stops,and I watched the people getting off. These were people who worked in my city, but chose to live just up the river, in an entirely different world.
    Huh.
    I snuggled down into my seat, wrapping my cashmere cardigan more firmly around my shoulders, marveling at the world that existed beyond the magical land that is New York City. And before I knew it, we were at the end of the line.
    Poughkeepsie Station.

Chapter 5
    â€œW ow. It’s bigger than I thought it would be.”
    â€œSee now, that’s exactly what I said the first time I saw Leo naked.”
    â€œNice.” I slid my hand over for a low five. She slapped it, keeping her left hand on the steering wheel.
    â€œActually, that’s not true,” she admitted, a blush creeping into her cheeks. “I totally