“Flea beetle,” she said, opening another gardening book.
“A flea? Ugh.”
“No, not a flea. It’s not related to real fleas. Dog fleas. It’s a beetle. But it hops like a flea.”
Paul had left her to her books and gone out to his car to get his cell phone. He came in now, talking animatedly to Josh Mickel. Dormet Vous had reorganized Cal4, and this Josh was Paul’s boss now. Correction, his “mentor.” Dormet Vous Lustre management believed in mentoring, not bossing. Of course, you were expected to do whatever your mentor told you to do. Minor detail. But Paul seemed to like Josh okay. And didn’t seem to mind that he was expected to be on call 24/7 in case his boss wanted to talk shop.
♦ ♦ ♦
“Yeah, she can work with that,” Paul was saying. “Pop that collateral into the regions and our numbers will dance, man.”
He rounded the corner into the kitchen which, thankfully, put a wall between Libby and his voice. Not that his work wasn’t important.
She sighed.
“What are you going to do?” Maisey said.
“I don’t know. It says here that they go after members of the cabbage family.”
“Is Tatsoi?”
“Yes.” Tatsoi is in the cabbage family. So is wild mustard. And guess what. Those fields of hers that lay fallow, that hadn’t been plowed—there was wild mustard growing everywhere. It was in bloom, brilliant yellow, everywhere. And Libby had been thinking how pretty it looked, all bright in the May sun.
Her little plot.
Surrounded by prime flea beetle habitat.
“If I replant, I’m going to have to treat the plants. Dust with diatomaceous earth, I guess, or pyrethrum maybe.” She’d have to pick something permitted by the organics certification regs, obviously.
She wondered how much she’d need and how much it would cost.
Maisey lowered her voice. “Whyn’t you ask your fairy what to do?”
Libby shot her a sharp look. “Watch it,” she said. “Paul . . .” She listened a moment. He was still talking on the phone.
“Paul doesn’t . . . ?”
Libby shook her head.
Maisey’s eyes widened and she nodded to let Libby know she understood, then leaned toward her aunt and lowered her voice. “What’s that stuff he said to plant? Is that cabbage?”
Libby pursed her lips.
“Is what cabbage?” Paul’s call was over, apparently. Libby didn’t dare shoot eye daggers at Maisey again, but boy did she want to.
“I was considering planting something else, a salad green. Lamb’s lettuce.”
“I wanted her to do it,” Maisey broke in excitedly. “Tyler did, too.”
It was her idea of covering up her near-blunder.
Paul, of course, suspected nothing, but he did know Maisey was hardly qualified to offer gardening advice. “Oh good. Blind leading the blind,” he said and snorted and then cracked a smile.
Libby wasn’t really one to lose her temper. But this was too much. She clapped her book shut. “Excuse me?”
“What?”
“What did you mean by that remark?”
“It was a joke, Libby.”
Maisey opened the field guide again and started looking at the colored plates of butterflies.
“It was not a joke. It was an insult.”
“Geez, Libby, take it easy. You’re a beginner, that’s all. You’re bound to make mistakes—”
Except that she couldn’t afford to. And not just for financial reasons.
“You have never believed this was a good idea. You know you haven’t.”
“Well, look at this, Libby!” He gestured around the room. “You’ve got a beaten up old farmhouse out in the middle of nowhere, you move out here all by yourself, you think you’re going to turn it into a working farm? Well, it was a working farm, once, and what happened? Where did they go? You ever think there might be a reason it wasn’t a farm anymore when you got here?”
Because it had been a dairy farm, she could have said. Because small, family farms are so easily crushed by forces they can’t control: the economy, the perversions of modern age markets . . .
But she didn’t want to argue. She couldn’t argue. Because it wasn’t about the farmers who’d lived here once before. And they both knew it.
“Hey. Tyler’s home!” Maisey hopped up and ran from the room.
“You ought to be supporting me . . .”
“I do support you, Libby,” Paul said. “I saved Skin Tones, remember?”
“That’s not what I’m taking about.”
He didn’t understand what it meant, to want so badly to have a solid foundation under your feet, and to know, at the same time, that it was an illusion—that the foundation was strung together by the most fragile of threads. So fragile that a beetle the size of a millet grain could destroy it in a matter of hours.
Paul looked at her a second. Then he moved over and put his arms around her. He smelled sweaty from the walk, but not strongly so, and the familiarity of his smell calmed Libby down in spite of her anger. “Look, Lib. I’m sorry,” he said into her hair. “I didn’t mean to piss you off.”
“It’s just a setback, Paul. I . . . I need to do this. It’s important. Just like your job is important.” She stepped away and looked him in the eye. “You’re always saying that we need to tie our dreams to something big, to helping others. This is my way of doing that.”
He wasn’t convinced. She could tell. But good old Paul, he nodded anyway. “I’ll try, Libby, really.”
She rubbed the back of her neck. “Thanks. Now let’s please go get some lunch, okay?”
They passed Maisey and Tyler on the way to Paul’s car, and she noticed the two of them exchanging glances.
Curious, Libby supposed . . .
17
Losing her tatsoi caused Libby problems in more ways than one. Not only did it set her back as far as potential income, and puncture her pride But worse. The organic certification inspection people like to see crops actually growing when they do the on-site.
The inspection was suppose to happen in two days.
So she had a decision to make. Let the scheduled inspection go forward. Or call and tell them what had happened and reschedule.
She decided to reschedule. The person she spoke to at the certification outfit didn’t sound very happy. But what could she do? Her growing beds were bare. Bare. It would be a good month, now, before there would be anything actually, you know. Growing on them.
♦ ♦ ♦
“Replanting?” Dean said.
She hadn’t seen him coming, but she looked up when he spoke. Which was a good thing, because she had time to brace herself before Bo reached her. Being goosed by a 140 pound dog isn’t quite so unsettling if you see it coming. Libby was able to break her fall before her face hit the dirt, anyway.
“Bo!” The dog turned his giant head and watched Dean trot up. “That’s enough, Bo. Sorry about that, Libby.” He extended a hand to help her regain her feet.
“Haven’t you taught him ‘shake’?”
“Well, yeah, but he only does it for dog biscuits. Not to say hello.”
“Hey, keep him off the beds, okay?”
The earth on the beds was still soft and loose, and the mastiff’s paws were sinking a good two inches into the ground. Dean took the dog’s collar and guided him back onto the path between the beds. Libby started tamping seeds into the soil again.
“Lost your first crop, then.”
“It’s not that big a deal.” She stood up. “How did you know? Did Maisey tell you?”
She watched his face for his response.
But he shook his head. “No. It was pretty obvious. There wasn’t much left.”
So, he had been coming by her place. Just not to the house.
He watched her work for awhile.
“About Maisey,” she said after a minute. “I’ve told her not to bother you.”
“They don’t.”
&n
bsp; They? Libby raised a corner of her mouth. Tyler must be joining Maisey’s little jaunts, too. Well. As long as Dean knew she had nothing to do with it. Although it did annoy her. For some reason. “Look, I don’t mean to be rude . . . but I have to get this done.”
“Can I help?”
“No!” Came out a bit louder than she’d intended, but at least he didn’t ask again. Only, he didn’t go away, either.
“I wanted to say that I appreciated the note.”
Libby felt a slight blush and ducked her head a bit lower over her work to make sure he couldn’t see her face. He meant the thank you note she’d sent him. It had been awhile ago, a few days after she’d moved back to her place. “You’re welcome. It was very nice of you to take me in like that.”
She moved down the row again. Out of the corner of her eye she saw him take a few steps, too.
“It was nothing . . . have you, uh, seen your little people again?”
Her face flushed hotter. She really needed to do something about her little loose lip problem. “No. No, I haven’t. Well, once, I guess.”
“Have you thought about asking them what to plant?”
Libby stood up again, and this time she looked at him. His face looked more tanned than it had in April and his hair curled down over his ears. He was still holding Bo by the collar.
She knew exactly why she felt so unnerved having him standing there. It was the topic of their conversation. That was it. Talking about those fairies, it made her uncomfortable. She crouched back down, moving her hands over the soil.
“Ah,” he said. “I see.”
“Sorry?”
“You’re doing it now—planting what they told you to plant.”
Libby bit her lip. “I’d really—it’s not a subject I’m comfortable with.” She stood up and took a couple of steps down the row.
“Sure.” He took a few steps, too, again. “You’re . . .” He cleared his throat. “You’re welcome to stop by sometime, for dinner, or something.”
Stop by? For dinner?
She brushed the hair back out of her eyes. “Thanks,” she said. “But I’m sort of busy. Maybe . . . maybe in the fall.”
“Sure,” he said. “Okay.” And he turned away, guiding Bo as he walked so the dog would stay off the beds.
She turned her head and watched as they stepped over the stone wall and disappeared into the woods.
♦ ♦ ♦
There was an empty Squirt can on the desk next to her computer keyboard.
Libby doesn’t drink Squirt.
She picked up the can and marched downstairs to the living room. Maisey and Tyler were sitting next to each other on the couch. Their heads were pressed together so they could listen from the same IPod earbud.
“Excuse me?”
They sat up, startled, the earbud freefalling onto the couch between them.
“Has someone been on my computer?”
They exchanged guilty looks.
“Me. I have,” Tyler said.
Libby sighed. “I told you guys. That’s my work computer. It is not a toy. It is most especially not a communal toy.”
“He’s not using it for a toy,” Maisey said. “It’s not like that.”
“Yeah, Aunt Libby,” Tyler joined in. “I’m sorry. I was updating my Myspace page is all.”
“I asked you guys not to use my computer. Please?”
“We’re sorry, Aunt Libby. But Tyler needs his MySpace page for his job.”
“Jobs,” Libby answered dryly, “are those things with paychecks at the end of the week.”
“Oh no, Aunt Libby! He gets paid!”
Libby gave them both a “yeah, right” look.
“Really!” Maisey said. “He runs a blog and sells ads on it, right, Ty?”
Tyler shook his head. “I get, like, 500 hits a day, Aunt Libby. I put up these Google ads, and people click on them, and I get money. Yeah. I like, get paid.”
“It’s how he earns a living, Aunt Libby!”
Libby kept her skeptical expression firmly in place, but on the inside, she realized she may have misstepped.
“So you see, he needs to be able to get online, Aunt Libby—”
“Yeah, Aunt Libby. You stop updating your MySpace and blog and stuff, you lose your readers, like, overnight. And then, pbbbbt—” He gave a thumbs-down. “There go your ad revenues.”
Ad revenues.
Libby sighed again. “I suppose it’s too much to suggest you get your own computer?”
“Sure thing, Aunt Libby, I’m working on it. But it’ll be a few more weeks.”
Must be the ad revenues weren’t exactly in the six figures.
“Pleeeease, Aunt Libby?” Maisey looked at her anxiously.
“Okay. A few weeks. On the condition that you’re working on getting your own computer.”
“Thanks, Aunt Libby,” he said, grinning. He wasn’t a bad kid. “I’m sorry I didn’t say anything—I forgot you’d said—”
Libby held the Squirt can at arms length. “And please don’t leave your stuff on my desk.”
Tyler jumped up from the couch and took the can. “Thanks, Aunt Libby,” he repeated, grinning a charming grin.
Libby didn’t smile back. She wasn’t in a smiling frame of mind. Story of her life. They’d figured out how to get around her. She was doomed and she knew it.
18
“Okay. I planted lamb’s lettuce,” Libby said aloud.
It was just past sunset. It had been another warm day and she could feel the currents of warm air coming off the earth. A cardinal whistled from the edge of Dean’s land and a car shushed by on the road.
Libby had decided to speak pretty much on impulse. Until now, she’d never initiated a conversation. So she had no idea if it would work.
Truthfully, she wasn’t sure if she wanted it to work. She was in a miserable spot and she knew it. If this little farming venture of hers turned out to be an utter failure, well . . . she didn’t know what she was going to do. Crawl back to Rochester with her tail between her legs and marry Paul, she guessed . . . and damn, that thought sounded awful, to put it that way—it’s not that they wouldn’t be married at some point eventually. She was sure they would be. She just wanted to make this organic farming thing work for her, in the meantime.
Because it meant a lot to her, this dream of hers to build a working, profitable market farm. She’d turned it over so many times in her mind. She’d become so invested in it. And not only because having crossed that certain point in her life, age-wise, and being divorced . . . it wasn’t that her options had started to look a bit limited. Because as grim as it was, knowing she’d never be young again, starting out all fresh again . . . there were ways to salvage it. So she was, like this, trying something on her own, taking a chance on something without depending on some other person to cushion her if she stumbled or to shield her if she suddenly realized she’d made herself too vulnerable.
See, she had married pretty young. All her choices—her college major, her career, even the decision not to have kids—they were all joint decisions.
She’d always shouldered only half the risk.
But not anymore. Not with this farm. Now the whole thing was on her shoulders. To carry off as gracefully as she could.
And so far, she wasn’t carrying it off very well at all.
Like picking tatsoi to grow. It had had looked like such a perfect idea on paper. Fast growing, nutritious. Met an established demand. Yeah, it had been perfect, except for the part about being a big fat stupid mistake.
Which left her standing in the evening chill, hoping an imaginary being would give her some more free advice so that she wouldn’t make another big fat stupid mistake tomorrow.
“Are you there?”
Clouds had been moving in from the west for the past hour. As they thickened overhead it hastened the growing darkness.
“I need some free advice. That doesn’t suck. Hey. That could be your marketing slogan. Free advice that
doesn’t suck.”
“It helps if you’re relaxed.”
Libby turned around but didn’t see a thing. “Hello. Are you there? Would you mind—”
“And less . . . hostile.”
Argh.
She considered quitting, right then and there. Quitting everything. Just walk down to the house, Libby, phone Paul to tell him you’re wrong, he’s right. Put the place back on the market. Clean out half the closet, honey, I’m moving in.
She unclenched her jaw. “It’s hard to be relaxed when I’m talking to a disembodied voice. If you don’t mind.”
“Give us a moment.”
Us. Libby stared at the direction of the voice, trying to make out the form of a little person. Or little people.
After a moment there was a brush of movement in the darkness and there he was, standing about 10 feet in front of her.
“We don’t meet in a physical location so much as a mental one,” he said. “If you’re a bit more open, it’s easier for me to find the juncture.”
Well. It’s hard to be unhostile when the supernatural creature you’re talking to is talking nonsense. “I’m sorry. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
He was carrying a little staff, this time, and now he shifted it from his right hand to his left and thrust it against the ground. But not impatiently. Deliberately, like the gesture would help make a point. “Can you dream while you’re awake?” he said.
Libby felt her eyes narrow slightly. “Are you saying this is a dream?”
“No. But it has elements in common. So it helps if you’re a bit more relaxed.”
Yeah, well, this is helpful, she thought. After all, you’re here now, aren’t you. And I’m not exactly relaxed now, am I.
She caught herself. She needed to be cooperative.
She took a couple breaths from her diaphragm and dropped her shoulders a bit. There. Relaxing . . . if this . . . dream-thing could help her she supposed the least she could do was to play along.
“How’s that?” she said.
He didn’t answer, so she decided it was okay to move on to more important topics. “I’ve planted the lamb’s lettuce. I was wondering if there’s anything else—” Good grief. This was really too ridiculous . . . “Uh, if there’s anything else that, you know . . . I need to do.”
When Libby Met the Fairies and her Whole Life Went Fae Page 9
