Heartland

by Sarina Bowen

  And I’m ashamed to say that I actually looked forward to this annual humiliation. Because it was an honor to be chosen to serve. I was first picked to serve at fourteen, and then again at fifteen. I was so proud. And for what?

  My only reward was attention. The whole time I circled that table with my icy water pitcher, refilling their cups, they eyed me the same way they looked at the food. The same way they eyed the fattened steers on the way to auction.

  Hungrily.

  Seven

  Chastity

  “Oh my God. Is your seatbelt on?” I ask Dylan. I’m gripping the steering wheel of his truck with two slightly sweaty hands.

  “I’m locked and loaded over here,” he says from the passenger seat. “Let ’er rip, Chass. It’s only four miles.”

  “Okay.” I take my foot off the brake and tap the accelerator gently. “For the record, this was all your idea.” I turn out of the gas station and point Dylan’s truck uphill.

  This must be how a criminal feels when she’s driving the getaway car. I’ve stolen Dylan away from Kaitlyn, at least for the weekend. For some reason Dylan decided I should practice my driving. I have a license but no car, so I’ve barely driven at all after passing the test. He offered to let me do some highway driving, too. But I refused.

  Dylan looks completely relaxed, singing along with the radio as I drive us the last few miles toward home.

  In the cupholder, his phone lights up with a text. Again. His phone is full of texts from Kaitlyn. She’s pissed off that Dylan left town a day early. Every time his phone lights up, I feel a shimmy of victory, followed immediately by discomfort.

  Because I told a lie. And I got away with it.

  Dylan doesn’t even glance at his phone, though. That’s just his way. He’ll get to you when he gets to you. But when you have his attention all to yourself? There’s nothing else like it.

  “Are we going to make caramel before dinner or after?” he asks me now. “You said it takes a while.”

  “Before,” I say, steering carefully around a curve.

  “I hope this isn’t a disaster.” He laughs. “Because when I told Griffin what we were trying to do, he got all excited. He wanted to know the cost of every ingredient by weight.” Dylan shakes his head. “I told him that you were the numbers man in this business venture.”

  I still can’t believe we’re doing this. I nearly chickened out yesterday instead of sharing my idea, because I hadn’t wanted to get shot down. But I’d still been hungover and still angry at Kaitlyn.

  I hadn’t felt like I had anything to lose. And there had been no mistaking Dylan’s spark of interest. The unsold goat’s milk was a problem.

  Still, I didn’t have to tell him that Friday was the only day available to us. I’d surprised myself by lying. Kaitlyn’s awful excuse for a note pushed me over the edge, though. She’d known exactly what she was doing when she’d left me sitting in the library like a loser.

  I’m aware that it’s a shallow victory. Dylan is still hers. But this is the only time I’ve ever had something she wanted—a night in Dylan’s company. I don’t really deserve it. Yet here we are.

  I make the last turn, and then we’re cruising down the dirt road to our neighboring farms. The Shipley Farms sign comes into view first, its posts decorated with a scarecrow and a collection of pumpkins. By nine o’clock tomorrow morning, tourists’ cars will be parked all over this road. They’ll come in droves to pick apples, ride in the wagon, and buy cider.

  Leah and Isaac are almost two miles past the Shipleys’ driveway. “Next-door neighbor” means something different in Vermont than it means elsewhere. We pass a cow pasture and then row after row of the Shipleys’ apple trees. Eventually, these give way to a little bungalow where Griffin Shipley lives with his wife and baby boy.

  The Abrahams’ place is just beyond. Leah and Isaac bought their farm five or six years ago now. It was in foreclosure, which is why a couple of runaways from a cult could save up enough money to afford it. They made their escape a few years before that, because they wanted to marry each other, and they weren’t going to be allowed to.

  By the time I got here, it was already a small but thriving farm. The Abrahams grow vegetables and raise a few dairy cows. But the big cash crop is Leah’s artisanal cheeses. They retail for twenty-four dollars a pound.

  We roll past six greenhouses with solar panels on their roofs. Greenhouses are the only way to get a reliable tomato harvest in Vermont. Every time Isaac can save up enough money, he builds another greenhouse.

  Leah and Isaac are amazing people. They ran away with nothing but huge plans. And the farm isn’t even the end of it. Leah is all fired up about starting a nonprofit to help other women and men who leave cults. They’ve helped me and Zach get on our feet, and now they want to help more people, too. So Leah spent the summer learning all she could about charitable fundraising.

  If they get their nonprofit off the ground, I’ll be first in line to help. They say that the best revenge is living well. If I can help some other girl with scars on her butt get out of that hellscape where I grew up? That’s a double victory.

  “Nice job,” Dylan says as I slow down to turn into the driveway. I pass the greenhouses and roll up to the farmhouse on the left.

  On the right, there’s a small dairy barn, and also the state-certified Creamery Kitchen where Leah makes her cheeses.

  “Oh, man,” Dylan grumbles.

  “Did I do something wrong?”

  “No way! You did great. But Griff is here.” He points at another truck parked beside Isaac’s greenhouses. “I’m sure he’ll find something to nag me about.”

  It’s not very unusual for Griffin to stop by. Our two farms are intertwined in so many ways. The Shipleys sell cow’s milk to Leah for cheese. And when there’s a big job to do—like a sudden harvest or a greenhouse to raise—we barter our time. Dylan says he spent many of his teenage hours weeding peppers and lettuces for Isaac. And Isaac helps Griffin make cider after the veggie season is done.

  I open the truck door and hop out just as Griffin comes out of the farmhouse. “I thought I heard the Ford,” he says. “The engine is still knocking?”

  “I’ll get it looked at,” Dylan says gruffly, hopping out of the truck.

  “You missed the afternoon milking,” Griffin says. “How convenient for you.”

  “It’s my fault,” I say as I open the back door of Dylan’s truck to collect my stuff. “He had to wait for me to get out of class.”

  “Likely story.” Griff bites into an apple he’s holding.

  “Got more of those?” Dylan asks. It’s almost dinnertime, and he’s always starving.

  Griffin reaches into his jacket pocket, pulls out two apples, and offers one to me before tossing one to Dylan. “You’re milking in the morning, right?”

  “Of course I am. Sunday morning, too. But we head back around noon.” He bites the apple.

  “Did you declare a major yet?” Griff asks.

  Dylan actually grimaces. “Did you think I’d have a different answer than when you asked me ten minutes ago?”

  His brother just shakes his head. “Drive the horses for me tomorrow, would you?”

  “Sure,” Dylan grunts. “Whatever you need.” His words are helpful, but his expression is shuttered.

  “Good deal. Your goat’s milk is in the creamery fridge,” Griff says, pointing. “I got dibs on the first batch of caramels.”

  “A smarter man would put dibs on the third batch,” Dylan says.

  “But if you get it right the first time, there won’t be a third batch,” Griff says. “Besides, how bad could a caramel be?”

  “Curdled?” I suggest. “Burnt? Don’t jinx us.”

  Griff makes a comical grimace. “Yikes, kids. I hope this doesn’t end badly.”

  You and me both.

  “Where’s the girlfriend? What’s her name—Kimberly?” Griff asks.

  “Kaitlyn,” Dylan grumbles. “She’s going to a poetry r
eading, and she’s pissed I’m not there.” He reaches into the truck for his phone and then closes the door with a bang.

  “Poetry?” Griffin pronounces the word as if it’s poison. “Bullet dodged, bro.” He hurls his apple core over the chicken fence, and the hens go running for it. Dylan does the same with his, and now there’s clucking and competition. “Thought maybe you were going to say you broke up.”

  “Why would I say that?”

  “Because you never spend more than a single night with anyone.” Griffin laughs.

  He isn’t wrong. I kick a pebble with my shoe and try to appear disinterested in this conversation. As if.

  “Can’t you grill me on my personal life later?” Dylan asks his brother. “What are you doing here, anyway? Besides giving me a hard time.”

  “Helping Leah with some paperwork for her nonprofit.”

  “Cool,” Dylan says lightly. “See you in the morning, then?”

  “Yeah, go on,” Griff says, waving a hand toward the creamery. “I brought down three gallons of goat’s milk for you. Nobody will be happier than me if you can use that stuff. Jacquie jumped the fence three times today! I spent lunchtime chasing her around the fucking orchard. Now there’s a good time.”

  Dylan scowls. “Did you see how she got out?”

  His brother shakes his head grumpily.

  “I’ll look at the fence tomorrow,” Dylan says. “Maybe the water bucket—”

  “It wasn’t the fucking bucket,” Griff snaps. “Learned that lesson already.”

  “They can’t fly, Griff,” Dylan returns. “It has to be something.”

  “Then figure it out. I got other things to worry about. Are you coming home for supper?” Griff looks at his watch. “You don’t have a lot of time.”

  “I cooked!” comes Leah’s voice from inside the house. “Dylan can eat here. Homemade mac and cheese and chicken cutlets.”

  “Score.” Griff claps him on the back. “Good luck with the candy. Be in the barn at six tomorrow morning. Don’t forget to set your alarm.”

  “I won’t. Jesus.” Dylan rolls his eyes as his brother climbs into his own truck.

  Griffin leaves, finally. And Leah gives us a wave hello from the door then disappears as well.

  Then it’s just me and Dylan. Alone. The way I like it.

  Eight

  Dylan

  Even a minor run-in with Griffin puts me in a crappy mood. So I’m standing in the creamery scowling while Chastity unpacks a bunch of ingredients from a grocery bag.

  It doesn’t bother me so much that he calls me kid. And I don’t mind doing farm work. But he’s gotten so pushy lately about what I plan to do with my life. Like maybe he’s hoping I won’t follow through on farming with him after graduation.

  The dude really likes to be in charge. And everyone thinks of me as the fuckup. Maybe he doesn’t think I deserve to help run the place after college.

  And maybe he’s right.

  “You okay?” Chastity asks.

  “Sure. Tell me what to do,” I demand, trying to shake off my bad mood. “We’ll make the first batch small, right?”

  “Yes, and no. We’re going to cook two batches at once. But we’ll pour them off at different times, at different temperatures. After it cools overnight, we’ll decide which batch we like best. I only brought five pounds of sugar so we can’t get too carried away.”

  “Still sounds like a lot.”

  “We won’t need it all.” She looks up at me with those clear blue eyes of hers and tilts her head to the side. “Ignore Griffin, okay? This is going to be fun.” She plucks an apron off a row of hooks on the wall and places it in my hands.

  “Don’t let me screw it up,” I grumble. I seem to do that a lot.

  “You can’t,” she says. “Caramel is just basic science. You have sugar and fat. We’re boiling the water out of the milk, and then the temperature keeps rising until things start to caramelize. Which has something to do with carbon. The only variable is how high to go, and when to stop.”

  “How do you know all this?” I ask, looping the apron over my head.

  “YouTube. And the people in those videos didn’t look any smarter than we are. Find the heaviest pot, would you? Look in that drawer.” She points. “We’ll start with two quarts of goat’s milk. I had to get vanilla extract because I couldn’t afford a vanilla bean.”

  “That’s okay. We don’t need to be so fancy, right?” I open the drawer and take out the largest pot. “Making money on food is all about walking the line between premium and too expensive.”

  “True. You can rein me in if I get too ambitious.” Chastity lifts her eyes to mine, and I smile for nothing. I always have fun with Chastity. She just gets me. She doesn’t look at me and see broken fences and unmilked cows and a guy who’d rather mess around on his fiddle than make a five-year-plan. She isn’t always trying to change me into someone else.

  Even as I form this thought, my pocket buzzes with a text. When I pull out my phone, I see Kaitlyn’s name next to a long string of messages. I tuck the phone away again. I’ll deal with her later. Maybe if I take her out to dinner on Sunday night she’ll get over her snit.

  If I’m honest, hanging out in a kitchen with Chastity is a better Friday night than listening to hipsters try to sling poetry. I like poetry just fine, but I like it to be good.

  “Pour in the milk, okay? Two quarts.” Chastity is measuring sugar into a bowl. “And we’re going to need a wooden spoon.”

  “Sure thing.”

  We work in companionable silence for a while, with me stirring the milk over the flame while she adds the sugar and the salt. And then we switch jobs, with Chastity watching the temperature slowly rise on a candy thermometer, while I butter some baking pans and then wash and dry various tools and the surfaces.

  “Does it matter that nothing seems to be happening in that pot?” I ask. It still looks like milk.

  “Just because you don’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not happening,” Chastity says. “It takes time and heat.”

  “Nobody said I was a patient man.” I turn on Leah’s speaker and play some music from my phone. I take another turn at the stove. The kitchen is warm, and the air is beginning to smell sweet.

  Leah pokes her head in the door. “Can you two stop for dinner?”

  “Dylan could,” Chastity says. “But someone has to stir, so it doesn’t scorch.”

  “I could make you both a tray,” she offers.

  “That’s a great idea,” I say, passing the spoon to Chastity. “Let me help.”

  I follow Leah into her farmhouse. “Hi, Dylan!” her preschooler says from her booster seat at the table.

  “Hey, shorty.” I ruffle the little girl’s hair. “How’s business, Isaac?”

  “Can’t complain,” he says from his dining chair. “Awful nice of you to help Chastity like this. We’re grateful for all that you do for her.”

  I just shrug. “You know me, Isaac. I’m not really that nice a person. But I like caramel as much as the next guy.”

  He laughs, but it’s just the truth.

  Leah loads two plates up with chicken, homemade mac and cheese, and salad. And while she does that, she quizzes me. “Do you think Chastity is doing okay in her classes? Can she pass algebra?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “She probably can. It’s all new material for her, but she can get it. And she loves that business class.”

  Leah glances toward the door, as if making sure that Chastity can’t overhear her. “I shouldn’t have pushed her to go full time. If it doesn’t work out, I’ll feel terrible.”

  “It’s only been a few weeks,” Isaac says from the table. “Give it a little time?”

  “I know,” Leah agrees, wiping her hands on a dish towel. “But next semester she has to take five courses to maintain her status as a full-time student.”

  “Because of her scholarship?” I ask.

  Leah’s head bobs. “She can’t get room and board if she’s part time. I shou
ld have steered her toward community college. I just got so excited about the financial aid package.”

  I pick up the loaded tray in two hands. “Thank you for dinner, Leah. And try not to worry, okay? She doesn’t have to make the dean’s list. It’s all good.”

  “Okay.” She gives my arm a squeeze. “You’re a great friend, Dylan.”

  I thank her again and carry the tray outside and into the creamery. Chastity is humming to herself and stirring the pot slowly. It still looks like a bunch of nothing, but I won’t be a dick and point that out.

  I finish my food in record time, but Chastity is still stirring. “Let me do that,” I say. “You eat.”

  She switches places with me and tucks into her food. “Oooh. I love Leah’s cornbread.”

  “Same.” And I knew that already, so I left the bigger piece for her.

  “Would it jinx us to talk about our branding?” she asks.

  “Probably.” I look into the pot of bubbling goo and notice that the color is richening. So that’s something. “What are you going to call this candy empire, anyway?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Naming stuff is the hardest part. How about North Hill Caramels? That sounds a little uptight. Chastity’s Chews?”

  “No!” Her pretty face fills with horror. “We’re not naming them after me. I have literally the least sexy name in the world.”

  I don’t know why, but this makes me snort with laughter. “There’s nothing wrong with your name.”

  “Are you high? Do you know anyone younger than eighty-five named Chastity? It’s a name that literally tells a guy to peddle it elsewhere.”

  And now I’m dying, because Chastity never talks about sex. But she has a good fucking point.

  My phone rings, and Chastity squints at me. “Is that Kaitlyn calling?”

  “Probably.”

  “Answer it,” she says, putting down her fork. “Or she’ll just call back.”