Bittersweet

by Sarina Bowen

  Kyle shot us a quizzical look, but Jude just pressed his thumb over the mouth of the hose and turned the full force of the water on the next barrel. “Good to know.”

  “Very funny,” I mumbled as he led me toward the edge of the orchards.

  “Baby, I don’t joke. No sense of humor, right? You said so yourself.”

  Fuck me, I had. “Where are we going?” I asked to change the subject. Row upon row of apple trees greeted us in long, orderly lines.

  “Hiking,” he said. “Your idea.”

  “But… Really?” Me and my big mouth.

  He laughed. “I just want to show you the Blue Pearmain trees. Come on. Down here.”

  We turned, passing dozens of apple trees, their branches full of greenish fruit with just a hint of ripening blush. “Wow, Griff. Good harvest.”

  “Bite your tongue,” he said. “It’s not a harvest until it’s in the bank.”

  “Sorry. But there are a lot of apples on these trees. What are those?” I pointed.

  “Honeycrisp. We put ’em here because that’s what the people who come to pick want first. They’re trendy for a reason. Great texture and flavor. They ripen slowly, though.”

  “Is it a drag having people crawling all over your property every weekend?”

  He shrugged. “That’s how it’s been since I can remember. And they bring their checkbooks. We sell a lot of fruit that way, and it picks itself. If we didn’t have the U-pick operation, we’d need to hire more day laborers. Speaking of which…” As we crossed a break in the trees, a group of men and women came into view. They were all wearing a kind of nylon bag on the fronts of their bodies, picking apples off the trees and placing them into the bags. There was a big wooden crate in the middle of the row, half full of apples.

  “Afternoon!” Griff waved to them and got a few waves back.

  “Hey.” Zachariah came jogging into view. “You need something?”

  “Nope,” Griff said. “Just taking Audrey for a hike before lunch. Because I like her a lot. Even when she’s talking.”

  Zach’s eyebrows shot upward. “Um, okay? Is that all?”

  “Lunch in a half hour,” Griff said. “Audrey will be there, because…”

  “Griff!” I smacked his elbow.

  “What? I’m just telling it how it is.”

  “No. Now you’re teasing me.”

  He shook his head. “Tough crowd here today, Chewie. See you at lunch.”

  “Sure, Han.”

  We walked on in silence, passing rows of apple trees. From the house and the cluster of farm buildings, it was hard to see how big the property was. But after walking past apple trees for a good ten minutes, the true scope of Shipley Farms became apparent. “You weren’t kidding about the hike,” I said, panting. It didn’t help that we’d been walking uphill the whole way.

  “I don’t kid.”

  “Right.”

  “We’re almost there, city girl. At least you’re wearin’ real shoes today. New kicks?”

  Busted. “I bought them at Farm-Way.” Tired of trudging around farms in my sandals, I’d wandered into a sprawling store in the little town of Bradford. That’s where I’d found a pair of pink hiking shoes and some footie socks.

  “What did you think of that place? We go there all the time.”

  “I thought it was hysterical.” They sold shoes and clothes. And horse tack, chicken feed and wood fencing. “Where else can you buy a riding crop and local maple syrup? The place is like a Vermont BDSM supply shop.”

  Griff laughed and took my hand again. “Except the riding crops they sell are actually used on horses.”

  “That’s just wrong.” I sniffed. “Those horses need a safe word.” Griff laughed again.

  Onward we climbed. Just when I was about to start whining, Griff pointed at a group of trees. “Those are the ones. All the oddball trees are up here. My grandpa was the one who started putting in heirloom trees, and my dad added more. These are the Blue Permains. Those four.” He pointed at some rather large trees. They had numbered tags hanging from them. All the trees did.

  “How many varieties do you have, anyway?”

  “Fifty-three.”

  “You have them all memorized?”

  “Pretty much. There are a few lady apples—those are the little ones—I don’t know which one is which unless I look ’em up. But those all go into the cider press so I don’t really need to know.”

  I was out of breath when Griff finally stopped walking. I took a close look at the apples on the tree. Indeed, their skins had a cool, dusky hue. “When do they ripen?”

  “October. Your overlords will have to wait a bit. How are they going to get all this produce, anyway? A few bushels of fruit from twenty different farms sounds like a pain in the ass.”

  “I don’t know,” I said, fingering one of the apples. “With help from their minions, I suppose? These are so pretty.” They were still hard as rocks and mostly green. But there were dozens. Hundreds, maybe. The tree was just bursting with potential. If it wouldn’t have made me look like a fool, I’d have taken a selfie with it, captioned: close, but not quite. The title would refer to me as well as the tree.

  “Turn around. You haven’t even seen the view.”

  When I looked back the way we’d come, I nearly gasped at the vista laid out before me. In the distance the Green Mountain range stretched across my view, their peaks looking slate-green and purple against the sky. But Griff’s farm was the real stunner. The rows of fruit trees seemed to go on forever, orderly lines of fluffy green trees with thick grass between them.

  “Wow,” I said stupidly. “You must have spent your entire teenage years mowing.”

  “That is true. We let the grass stay pretty long, though. It cushions the apples when they fall. The best cider is made from ripe apples that have just fallen or are about to fall.”

  “It’s so big,” I said, trying to see the whole farm at once and failing.

  “That’s what all the girls say.”

  I punched him in the arm. “I’m serious. How do you keep all this up?”

  “By never sleeping. Although I do have help.”

  Still. Griff wasn’t even thirty. Until I’d stood here, I don’t think I realized what a big job he had. “I’ll bet you miss your dad,” I blurted out.

  “Every day.” His voice became gruff. “I used to stand up here with him while he talked and talked about apples. He’d point at the rows and tell me all his plans, and I thought he’d be around a really long time to finish all of ’em.” He lapsed into silence for a moment. “Now every day there’s some small problem that makes me want to ask his opinion. Or I’ll find some interesting thing out in the orchard and just want to show it to him, because I know he’d like to see.”

  Oh, man. My throat got tight. Here was Griff, a giant. A tough guy who worked all day for his family’s dream. And he just wanted a chat with his dad. “He’d be so proud of you,” I whispered.

  Griff was silent, and the two of us looked at the vista for a moment. Then he took my hand in his and gave it a squeeze.

  I squeezed back.

  “Time for lunch,” he said, his voice rough.

  I followed him down the hill in the sunshine.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Griffin

  When we got back to the house, lunch was set up underneath the canopy in the backyard. During picking season, we didn’t fit around the table anymore.

  Mom didn’t call us out for being a few minutes late, because these outdoor lunches were a little more casual. Also, Gramps pulled up on his golf cart at the same time we arrived, and Mom never chided Gramps. He got a free pass.

  “How are you, August?” my grandfather asked, clapping me on the back. He always called me by my true first name.

  “Good, Gramps. And do you remember Audrey? I like her a lot.”

  “You like her bra? You say stuff like that and you’ll get slapped.”

  Audrey snorted beside me.

&nbs
p; “I said… Never mind. Let’s have a hamburger.”

  The three of us queued up at the grill, where Dylan was flipping burgers. “Who wants cheese?” he called cheerfully.

  “I do!” Audrey volunteered. “I like everything.”

  “I’ll have cheese,” I agreed. “Which I like, but not as much as I like Audrey.”

  “You’re laying it on pretty thick,” she muttered, laying out three paper plates and putting a bun on each of them.

  “This one is for Audrey,” Dylan said, shifting a burger from his spatula to a burger bun. “It looks like the best one. You can’t serve a chef just any old burger.”

  “You are adorable,” she said, ruffling his hair. Dylan would probably slap anyone else who did that. But he was eating it up. “This all looks wonderful.”

  “Your family must feel a lot of pressure at the holidays,” my mother said, standing by with a bowl full of potato salad. “Who wants to cook for a trained chef?”

  Audrey snorted. “My mother has never made me a meal in her life. She thinks cooking is for losers. When I was nine, all I wanted for Christmas was an Easy-Bake Oven. I knew she’d never let me use the real one.”

  “Did she get you one?” I asked.

  “No—she bought me a business suit and a scientific calculator. I wasn’t even a little surprised. But I’d also told my grandmother what I wanted, and she got it for me!” Audrey grinned. “And she gave me a big supply of the tiny cake mixes you use in the little pan. It was heaven for about six months. But that summer my mother sent me away to math camp for three weeks. And when I got home it was gone. She threw everything away. All I had left was the weird little measuring spoon that came with it. I keep it in my jewelry box.”

  Audrey delivered this story while spooning condiments onto her burger. So she didn’t see the shock on my mother’s face. I saw Mom open her mouth and then close it again, at a loss for what to say about Audrey’s so-called mom.

  “Who wants ketchup?” Audrey said, holding up the dish.

  “I do,” I said quickly. “Have a seat, princess. I’ll bring you a drink.”

  “Thank you, Griffin.” She gave me a quick smile and walked away.

  “I really like that girl,” my mother said.

  “That’s my line.”

  Mom gave me a curious look, but then one of our day workers asked her for a Band-Aid for a scratch on his ankle. So she went to fuss over that instead of over me.

  Fair enough.

  I got two glasses of iced tea and joined Audrey at a picnic table. “Want to go to a movie later?” I asked.

  Her burger paused on the way to her perfect mouth. “A movie? Where?”

  “There’s an old drive-in theater in Fairlee. I could see what’s playing.”

  “Sure, Griff. That sounds like fun.” Her gaze had snagged on something over by the grill. “Griff, is your mother limping?”

  “What?” I looked at Mom. She was indeed favoring her right leg. I took a bite of my lunch and watched her try to serve potato salad while balancing with her hip against the serving table. Hell. That did not look right.

  I waited until the throng died down to ask her about it. When my plate was empty, I took it up to the bin where dishes were to be stacked for washing. “What happened, Mom? Something’s bothering your foot?”

  She made a face. “It will be fine. I ran into the house for a Band-Aid. I shouldn’t have been dashing around like a chicken, I guess. Tripped on the boot brush and twisted it a little. I’ll ice it after lunch.”

  When the meal was over, I stuck around to help carry things into the house, and Audrey pitched in, too.

  “Omigod—Griffin cleared a dish!” my sister Daphne crowed. “Alert the media!”

  I gave Daphne a swat, and my mother frowned at me. “You can go out with the day workers, Griff. I’m okay.”

  She wasn’t, though. I helped her to the den and then went to find an ice pack. When I came back and rolled up the linen pants she wore, I found her ankle had swelled to the size of a cantaloupe. “Mom, this looks bad. What if you broke something?”

  “I didn’t break anything,” she insisted. “Just twisted it.”

  “Someone should look at it,” I insisted. When I probed her ankle, she winced.

  “But what if it’s nothing? Why ruin an afternoon for nothing. Besides, I have two pork shoulders to braise.”

  “May can do it,” I argued.

  “Your sister went to Boston to visit Lark before classes begin again,” my mother reminded me.

  “I’ll do it,” Audrey said from the doorway.

  “Honey, you don’t have to…”

  “I want to,” Audrey insisted. “Let me help. Whether you have your ankle x-rayed or not, you should put your feet up.”

  My mother looked as if she wanted to argue. Mom was Ms. Capable, and I knew that sitting around while someone else cooked dinner would practically kill her. But Audrey wasn’t wrong, and Mom knew it. “Thank you, honey,” she said with a sigh. “I can still shell peas, as long as I’m sitting down.”

  “Of course you can,” I said quickly. “And tomorrow, if that swelling isn’t down…”

  “I’ll have it looked at,” my mother promised.

  “How do you like your pork shoulder?” Audrey asked. “Spice rub? Teriyaki flavor? Chipotle lime? Let’s see if I’ve bookmarked any recipes…” She whipped her phone out of her back pocket.

  There was nothing more I could do to help Mom, and I had to get back outside and take care of some business. “I’ll, uh, see you later?”

  Mom, Audrey and Daphne looked up from Audrey’s phone. “Bye,” Audrey said with a shy little smile that went straight to my dick.

  Hell, I had it bad.

  Hours later I sat down in a dining room that smelled like a four-star restaurant. I think I heard every stomach rumble in turn as Zach, Jude, my cousins and my brother took their seats.

  “Wow,” Dylan said, eying a platter the size of a small canoe. There was a mountain of pork so tender it was falling apart. And a heap of vegetables that smelled far more exotic than the fare that usually graced our table.

  “Does everyone have a beverage?” Audrey called from the kitchen. I saw her dart past in an apron, her hair up in a knot on top of her head, tendrils framing her face. She must have felt eyes on her, because she looked up quickly and caught me staring.

  Busted.

  I got up again and went into the kitchen. This meal deserved a bottle of wine, so I grabbed two bottles out of a high cabinet and tucked them under my arm. The world’s prettiest girl came zipping over to where I stood. “Take this,” she commanded, thrusting a big bowl of rice into my free hand.

  “This smells like…” I inhaled. “Coconut?”

  “We’re doing a little Thai thing tonight,” she said, giving me a nudge on the bottom. “Put that on the table.”

  She followed me into the dining room, where my mother was just limping toward a chair to seat herself. I hated the sight of her discomfort.

  “Hi Mom,” I said, setting the rice down on the table. “I like Audrey. A lot.”

  “This again?” Audrey mumbled, darting back into the kitchen.

  “We all do, dear. Though your sentiments would be more convincing when you’re not drooling into her cooking, though. That’s just a tip for you.”

  My grandfather walked in just in time for dinner, as always. He claimed a seat as my mother asked the inevitable. “How about tomorrow for moving into the farmhouse?”

  “No thanks,” he said, shaking out his napkin.

  I went over to the cabinet where we kept the stemware. “Who needs a wine glass? Gramps? Mom?” I handed them out, putting glasses down for Audrey and all the guys except for Jude. When he’d first come to stay with us I’d offered him a beer and he’d told me that alcohol violated the terms of his parole. He’d said, “And even if it didn’t, a drug is a drug. Alcohol was never my drug of choice, but I’m staying away from it.”

  Since then I’d a
lways felt a little guilty about drinking in front of him. So we didn’t do that very often.

  Audrey came back with yet another giant platter of food, this one for the other end of the table.

  “You’re sitting here,” I said to Audrey, patting the chair next to me. She raised an eyebrow, but then accepted the seat I pulled out for her.

  Daphne bustled in with a giant bowl of salad. “That’s the last of it!” she called. “Someone say grace because I’m starving.”

  “Why don’t you do it, dear?”

  Daphne bowed her head and said a nice, quick little prayer. And then we fell like wolves onto Audrey’s cooking.

  After the whole cherries-in-barbecue-sauce revelation, I knew to pile the food on my plate like a champ. The pork was delicious and flavored entirely differently than Mom’s. It tasted of lime and basil and cilantro. The coconut rice was spicy and wonderful. But the vegetables amazed me more than anything. There was wilted spinach with a whiff of soy and ginger. And thinly sliced carrots that had been cooked quickly and then tossed in some sort of zesty sauce. I actually got hungrier with each bite I took.

  Last time our family table was blessed with a sample of Audrey’s genius, everyone moaned and carried on with loud praise. But this time everyone absorbed the bliss in relative silence. There were a few quiet words of thanks to Audrey, but nobody wanted to gush over food that poor Mom had wanted to cook for us in a more ordinary way.

  As I glanced around the table, I saw Zach and Jude and Dylan shoveling it in almost guiltily.

  That’s when Mom threw down her napkin. “I would injure myself more often if it meant I could eat this. Well done, honey. Boys—it’s okay. Be honest.”

  There was an immediate chorus of moaning and several offers of marriage. I think one of them came from me.

  “God gave me another day on earth just so I could eat this,” my grandfather crowed. “No offense to Ruthie.”

  “None taken,” my mother said quickly.

  Beside me Audrey gave a shy smile and blushed as the praise piled even higher. “You guys are fun to cook for. So I’ll invite you all to my restaurant opening. Make sure to sit near the critics and enunciate clearly.”