Max knocked on the barn door. Ashes sat at her feet, his tail swooshing on the wood of the barn’s porch, and looking at the door with a big, doggy grin. Sean was one of Ashes’s favorite people. Though when the door opened, even her dog looked shocked. Months’ worth of sun couldn’t cover up the sick pallor of Sean’s skin, and his entire body had the tightness of someone trying desperately to pretend they didn’t feel like shit.
She and Ashes both sniffed the air, though for different reasons. Whatever her dog smelled, he’d keep to himself, but she didn’t smell any alcohol. “Can I come in?” she asked.
He nodded once then stepped back. She hadn’t been in the barn since March. When she’d lived here, the barn had been spare. Now it was Spartan. The same furniture she’d used was in all the same places, but any softness was gone. Sean had no decoration, no photos of his family, no detritus lying around the house. Everything was neat as a pin and just as comfortable looking.
He collapsed into the recliner, his body contracting like he wanted to curl up into a ball, but he straightened himself out and managed to look like he was sitting normally—if she ignored the strain that sitting obviously caused him. He shivered in the warm room, but didn’t get up to get a sweatshirt or pull a blanket over himself.
“I have to poke around for alcohol.”
He nodded again, still not having said a word since she’d knocked on his door. And she did feel bad. Everything about Sean bawled out sickness, but she needed to make sure. After all, hangovers were a type of sickness, too.
Ashes came over to her intern and rested his chin on the man’s knee, both in support and in hopes of a pet. He reached out his hand as if to scratch behind Ashes’s ears, but the effort seemed to be too much. His hand fell through the air, smacking her dog on the forehead. Ashes grunted, but didn’t yelp. He moved his head back and forth under Sean’s hand, content to pet himself.
She opened cabinet doors and the refrigerator, rummaged around in both the kitchen and bathroom trash and went upstairs to the loft to look around. It didn’t look like the bed had been slept in, but that didn’t surprise her. The bathroom was downstairs, and when she’d been sick in this barn, she hadn’t wanted to risk the stairs, either. She didn’t see any evidence of alcohol, nor did she smell booze lingering in the air. When she came back down the stairs, both Sean and Ashes had their eyes closed, though Sean’s were closed in pain and Ashes’s in contentment. Somewhere, her intern had found enough energy to move one finger and scratch behind the dog’s ears.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
Sean didn’t open his eyes. “Stomach flu, I guess.” Normally, his voice was quiet. Now his voice was weak.
“When did you get sick?”
“Last night.”
“Have you had anything to eat?”
“I couldn’t keep anything down.”
“What about something to drink?”
“Water.” It looked like it took effort to open his eyes. “I couldn’t keep that down.”
“What did you eat?”
“The only thing I had.” He gave her a little smile, then stopped when it clearly pained him. “Pringles. Sour-cream-and-onion flavor.”
Her sympathy came out in a shudder and a laugh. “That must’ve been terrible when it came back up.”
His answering laugh came out like a cough and his body contracted on the recliner. When he recovered enough to straighten himself out he said, “It wasn’t great.”
“I have ginger ale at the house and some crackers. I don’t think I have saltines, but oyster crackers should do. I’ll bring those over. Can you make it upstairs to the bed?”
He nodded weakly.
“You head up there. I’ll bring what I’ve got over and get you a trash can. Then I have to finish the onions.”
“If you bring some here, I can help.”
“And get your sick self all over my produce? No, thank you. Plus, the smell would make you barf faster than anything.”
His smile was more robust than any response she’d gotten from him so far. He pushed himself out of the chair and shuffled past her to the stairs. Ashes followed. “Do you mind if I keep the dog?” he said, one hand on the banister and one on the wall. He swayed a bit, but didn’t fall.
“Keep the dog. I’ll come over before lunch to let him out and check on you.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
MAX STOOD AT the crest of the hill behind the farmhouse and looked over her drowning fields. Two weeks ago, Sean had been sick. Two weeks ago had been their last sunny day. The rain dripping off her hood obscured her vision, but she didn’t need to see the fields to know what they looked like.
Her first field had two inches of standing water. At least that field was plowed under so she didn’t also have to see her plants dying.
Rot crept up the stalks of her tomato plants in her second field, turning leaf after leaf yellow. The tomatoes fought the rot, producing what fruit they could, but the basil had simply folded and died. The squash and melon fields were no better. There the rot spread like the vines of the plants—not up but out until her field was gold instead of green. Any fruit those plants produced grew soft before collapsing altogether. Only the peppers seemed to be enjoying the wet.
She’d had to cancel two weeks of her CSA because she didn’t have any produce to give out. They’d tacked those two weeks onto the end of the season and she had to hope the weather dried out enough for her to plant greens and other cool-season, quick-growing vegetables for her members. If it didn’t, well, she didn’t know what she’d do.
Standing around the fields all day in her rain gear was boring. Preparing a field for planting only to have the rain swamp it for a week so they had to prepare it again was disheartening. Watching her plants die in the fields was painful.
The geese didn’t seem to mind the weather. They waddled through her fields, squawking and pooping. Ashes had declined to come out in the rain with her. And Max didn’t have the energy to chase them away from fields that weren’t productive anyway. Next year, maybe all their extra manure could simply be plowed into the dirt for richer soil and better vegetables. Next year, maybe it wouldn’t rain so much.
And next year, maybe she wouldn’t have a farm. Buying the land in December was getting riskier and riskier as her cushion got smaller and smaller.
Trey was coming down today to make her part of the video for the Kickstarter, which had seemed like such a good idea all those months ago. Now, instead of her coffers growing from market sales, they were shrinking. And to make matters worse, it was supposed to rain all weekend. She’d be standing out in the fields in the rain asking people to give money to renovate a barn when she didn’t know if she’d have the money to buy the land the barn was standing on.
Mustering the energy or excitement for the video was a bit like plowing the hard, unworked clay that the soil had been when she’d taken over the farm five years ago.
She turned from her sodden fields to slug her way through the mud back to the farmhouse to find something to wear.
* * *
“OH, THIS LIGHT will be great for the video,” Kissa, the college student Trey had found to do all their videos, said as she set up her camera on the front porch. Her straight black hair was in a bouncy ponytail and her dark brown eyes were as eager as always, despite the continuing threat of rain. The girl was going to be a senior at Carolina next year, majoring in journalism, and Trey had found her through a friend of his from high school. She’d been willing to tape and edit all the videos free of charge—experience, she said—but Trey was paying her anyway.
Trey had been at the farm when he’d called Kissa to negotiate the contract. The memory of him arguing with her over the phone still made Max smile. “If you’re going to produce something of value, make people pay for it. You can donate your time and expertise when y
ou’re not a starving college student.” Apparently, she’d then counteroffered with a quote that had made Trey balk, and he’d had to negotiate her down, with Kissa using his own advice against him. Kissa’s fresh, eager face probably fooled a lot of people into thinking she couldn’t be a shark if she needed to be.
When they’d originally planned to do the video, Max was supposed to be standing on the top of the rise with the farm, in all of its fecund green glory, behind her. However, most of her plants were yellowing and dying, and the only thing bountiful was the grass between the fields, which she couldn’t mow down because the ground was too wet. So they’d set up on the front porch and changed the script a little.
“Are you sure you don’t want to mention the bad weather on the video?” Trey asked.
“I don’t want donations because I’m struggling. I want donations because I will be successful.” They’d had this argument many times since Trey had learned how bad a season the farm was having. He thought they could get more money by pulling on heartstrings; Max had no interest in pity. Farming was dependent on the weather, and if she couldn’t handle a bad year, then she didn’t deserve to have the land.
“I think you should use all the weapons at your disposal, but it’s your farm and your Kickstarter, so I’ll support you no matter what.” He leaned down to kiss her cheek near her ear. “It’ll be great.”
Kissa directed Max through her video, filming her saying the same lines on the front porch, in the packing shed, in the greenhouse and over by the unrenovated barn. As they dashed through the rain from place to place, the mud reminded Max of how stuck in her situation she was. Her reserves hadn’t started shrinking—yet—but they weren’t growing. Every penny she earned was going back into the farm and there was none left over for investment. Soon the farm would start cannibalizing itself. And she still had to fork over all of her savings as a down payment on the land.
Trey hadn’t mentioned extending the lease for another year and Max hadn’t asked. On the few sunny days they’d had this summer, when Max and all the interns were working from dawn until dusk and moving twice as fast as normal, buying the farm seemed like a possibility. On rainy days when she had nothing to do but brood, putting all her money toward buying the farm seemed a sure way to get herself bankrupt in three years.
Lois and Garner said they’d never seen a summer like this one, so the odds were good that next summer would be sunny and hot and perfect for growing vegetables. But what if it wasn’t? After buying the land, she wouldn’t have enough reserves to sustain her through another bad year.
Standing under an umbrella in front of the barn, Max talked about the benefit of being able to provide housing for another intern, how it meant she could widen her pool of applicants, how she could have two interns over the winter and provide a winter CSA and sell for longer at the market. She talked about some of the visions she had for her farm—grape vines, fig trees and blueberries.
By the time Max was done, the rain had stopped its downpour and the clouds were now spitting out the last of their water—until they could build up their reserves again. Max felt their desperation. And yet, as she watched Kissa and Trey set up for his part of the video, she didn’t wish to change her situation. She wished it wasn’t the wettest summer in decades. She wished she felt confident in her finances. She wished she’d been able to provide her CSA members with the abundance of tomatoes they’d come to expect from her. But if everything went as planned, she would own this land next year and there would be housing where a falling-down barn had stood.
And she couldn’t regret that.
Trey stood in front of the farmhouse and talked about the history of the farm. Some of the historical events, Max was sure, were exaggerated for effect. He talked about how important it was to him and his brother for the land to stay agricultural and how Max had brought new life to the farm. His eyes were bright and encouraging. His face was open, with none of the tightness of anger that he usually wore when talking about the farm.
He was a professional convincer; she couldn’t let herself forget that. As heartbreaking as his anger was, as ruinous as it was, it was also who Trey was at his most honest. Even knowing all this, Max still believed him. Maybe because you want to believe, the doubting voice in her head said.
After all the filming was finished, Trey, Kissa and Max sat around the kitchen table and talked about the final video. Kissa had gotten shots of the farm when it was green and glorious, before the rain had ruined everything, and she talked about how she would intersperse that with Max and Trey talking. The girl sorted through some images Max had of the farm and photographs Trey had of his family and the farm’s history and picked some she thought would make a good backdrop. She gave them a date by which she’d have all the videos finished, said her goodbyes and left.
“I’ll miss the drone of the cicadas,” Trey said, reaching over the table to envelop her hand in his. She closed her eyes to savor the touch.
Max was so used to the cicadas that she didn’t hear their whine unless she stopped to listen to it. The windows were open in the farmhouse and all the ceiling fans were going. The hum of the cicadas underpinned the symphony of the farm. “Miss it?”
She opened her eyes when the table moved a bit because Trey was shifting forward. He kissed the palm of her hand. “Sure.” Then he smiled and there was mischief in his grin. He kissed her fingertips, starting with her index finger and moving down until he wasn’t kissing her pinky finger, but had taken it into his mouth and was sucking it gently. She could feel his mouth in her bones and the depths of her stomach. Watching each finger disappear between his pale pink lips and come out glistening mesmerized her. When he stopped after moving back down the line of her hand, she found herself staring at her hand in his rather than looking at his face.
“Summer doesn’t last forever,” Trey said. She shook her head, whether to disagree with him or to clear the lust-induced fog from her brain, she didn’t know.
He laid her hand back on the table, the mischievous smile still on his face. The fog in her brain was gone, but the lust remained in her marrow, heightening all of her senses. The wood of the table was rough under the pads of her fingertips. The buzzing of the cicadas vibrated the hair on her arms and she could see every uncertainty of her life in Trey’s smile.
“No? Summer does last forever?” he asked at the shake of her head.
“It has to end sometime.” Her voice was light and almost foreign in her ears. “But I find that doesn’t matter.”
She slipped her legs out from under the table and walked to her bedroom, her shoulders back and her head held high, not looking to see if Trey followed her. Though she did stop in the doorway to remove her T-shirt—just so there would be no doubts of her intentions. The way the summer was going, the bedroom might not be hers after December. The man whose footsteps echoed down the hall behind her might not be hers after September. And rather than worry about the uncertainty of it all, she wanted to make use of both the bedroom and the man while they were hers to use.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
MAX SAT AT her computer and pretended to type up language for a brochure to hand out at the farm tour in September. In reality, she was staring out the window through the rain at the dark windows of Sean’s barn. She moved to check her watch on her belt loop, then remembered she hadn’t put it on because they couldn’t be out in the fields today, so she checked the clock on the screen. Eleven in the morning. Sidney and Norma Jean were under the protection of the packing-house roof seeding celeriac. Sean wasn’t needed for anything, but he should still be awake and moving in the barn.
And maybe he was. And maybe he was hungover.
She looked back at the sentence she had typed. “Max’s Vegetable Patch is five years old, started when Max Backstrom moved to North Carolina from Illinois.” A perfectly fine sentence that was too boring to inspire anyone to invest money. Which w
as what happened when you stuck a woman who’d only ever wanted a job outside playing in the dirt at a desk with a blank page.
Why isn’t he awake? Her suspicions darted about in her brain, pirouetting and sticking their pointy, hard toes where they didn’t belong.
The curtains hadn’t so much as twitched in the hour she’d been sitting here pretending to work. And she really should be working, not sitting here worrying whether or not Sean was hungover. Because he probably wasn’t. Since her initial ultimatum months ago, he’d not given her a single indication that he’d fallen off the wagon. And the one time she’d been suspicious, he’d had the stomach flu and been sick for three days.
Can the stomach flu hit twice in one summer? She could go over and ask him if he wanted lunch. She occasionally made lunch for the interns instead of them bringing their own. But then she’d have to make lunch for Sidney and Norma Jean—or at least offer it—and she didn’t have the groceries for lunch for herself, much less four people. And that would be cowardly. She should have enough respect for him to just march over there, knock on his door and be open with her suspicions. He knew he was being monitored. Kelly was probably also watching him with the same guarded eye.
Her mind made up, Max shut the laptop and headed to the porch for her raincoat and galoshes.
When Sean opened the door, she knew she’d been had. He slouched against the door frame, puffy and shit-faced, not even bothering to shield the whiskey bottle on the table. Or the glass with amber liquid in it. He hadn’t just spent last night drinking; he was spending the morning drinking.
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