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“I’m in place,” Shane whispered into the walkie talkie clipped to his trenchcoat.
“You can see them?” Marnie asked through the walkie.
Shane jumped. He had forgotten to turn the volume down. As he twisted the dial, he looked up to make sure he hadn’t been caught. It appeared that the cacophony of late night crickets had covered his mistake, but he berated himself for it anyway.
From his place in the bushes, he could see two figures spread out on a picnic blanket, laughing and chattering.
“I can see them,” he confirmed. His eyes snapped to a bottle that sat on the checkered blanket. “I think they have wine. Should I go in?”
“No!” Marnie hissed. “They’re eighteen, Shane, just as long as it doesn’t get out of hand.”
Shane huffed, lifting the binoculars to his eyes. “False alarm,” he whispered with relief as the bottle came into focus. “It’s just soda.”
“You are gonna get yourself in so much trouble with that girl,” Marnie chuckled.
“Oh fuck off, Marn, you bought the walkie talkies,” Shane sneered, clicking the walkie talkie all the way off and angling his binoculars to focus on Jas’s face. She was blushing and grinning. She looked as happy as Shane had ever seen her. Marnie was going to be furious. He didn’t care.
It made his stomach twist with anxiety. He made a promise to Jas’s parents long ago to protect her always, but how was he supposed to protect her from potential heartbreak? How could he tell her that young love never worked out, that this was almost certainly destined to end in pain and suffering?
He looked at Jas’s fellow picnicker: Eloise, the farmers’ oldest daughter.
When Evan and Jane had moved to Pelican Town to take over Evan’s grandfather’s farm, they brought their four kids along with them. Eloise was Jas’s same age, and Shane had thought how nice it would be for Jas to have a friend.
He didn’t know that, six years later, Eloise would evidently be much more than a friend.
So now here he was, hiding in a patch of tea bushes at the edge of the farm in a trenchcoat, ugly fedora, and sunglasses, a pair of cheap binoculars he had appropriated from Haley’s things smashed to his face.
He had not let Haley catch him creeping out of the house dressed like that. She would have given him the roasting of a lifetime, and then moved on to telling him off for spying.
No, this was between Shane and Jas, even if Jas didn’t know it. She was his goddaughter, it was his responsibility alone to make sure she was always okay.
“Shane?” A soft voice came from behind him. He jumped, almost toppling sideways into a bramble.
“Oh, Yoba,” Shane groaned inwardly, looking back and meeting Evan’s eyes.
The farmer looked perplexed, standing there awkwardly in a straw hat and overalls, looking for all the world like a movie scarecrow. “Are you spying on the girls? Seriously?”
Shane scrunched up his face, embarrassed to have been caught out. “Well, you see, I just wanted to make sure everything was going okay, and—”
“Give me the damn binoculars,” Evan said, holding his hand out. “You look like a moron. Why would you wear that as camouflage on a farm? You’re in a fucking field, not at a school shooter convention.”
Mortified, Shane placed them into his hand, feeling like a little kid who got caught doing something wrong. He expected a reaming from the farmer, but instead, Evan crouched down, putting the binoculars to his face.
“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me this was the plan,” Evan grumped. “I always make a point to watch out for Ellie on first dates. You never know what kind of nonsense kids are going to try to pull.”
“Jas knows better than that,” Shane defended through his surprise, yanking the brim of his fedora down over his eyes.
“So does Ellie,” Evan said, not taking his eyes off of them.
“So why are we out here, then?” Shane asked, crouching back down to Evan’s level, or rather, a little below Evan’s level. He was stupidly tall.
“We’re dads,” Evan sighed, passing the binoculars back to Shane. “I think it’s just what we do.”
Shane pressed the lenses to his face, watching as Jas threw her head back in laughter with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in her hand. He was happy to see her happy, but the feeling of unease wasn’t going away.
He was a dad. That’s just what he did.