A Walk in the Sun

by Michelle Zink

  She walked over and put her arms around him. “It’s okay, Dad. We have Bodhi here to help out around the farm. I just miss you, that’s all.”

  It wasn’t the whole truth. Not really. She was drowning in the responsibility his depression had placed on her shoulders. But she couldn’t stand to see him so sad. Sad and sorry at the same time.

  “It’s not okay, Rose. I know it’s not okay. I’m going to get it together, I promise.” He tried to smile. “I’ll be riding Mason right next to you by the end of summer.”

  A knot of dread formed in her stomach, and she wondered if it was because she didn’t believe him or because the thought of still being in Milford at the end of summer, doing the same things over and over again, made her want to scream.

  “It’s fine,” Rose said.

  He pulled away and smoothed the hair that had escaped from her braid. “Do you mind if I leave you and Bodhi to dinner? I was going to watch some TV upstairs.”

  She forced a smile. “Sure. I’ll save you some leftovers.”

  He took his plate and left the room. She listened to the sound of his feet on the stairs, then turned to unpack the groceries. When she had everything laid out on the counter, she took a deep breath and reached for her mother’s cookbook before she could change her mind.

  She thought it would hurt. That she would be hit with something powerful, a reminder of her loss. But it wasn’t like that. The memories weren’t in the book after all.

  She put potatoes on to boil and went to work breading chicken like her mother had taught her. While it fried, she roasted garlic to mash with the potatoes and sat at the kitchen table, snapping the ends off the long beans she’d pulled from the garden that morning. She threw a batch of cornbread in the oven while the beans steamed, then went to work cleaning up the table, changing her mind three times about which dishes to use. She didn’t want to look like she was trying too hard, like this was something special she’d done just for Bodhi, but she did want it to be nice.

  She thought about her conversation with Marty. She’d already decided to steer clear of Bodhi romantically. Hadn’t she? Then again, just because she was making him dinner didn’t mean she wanted to marry him or something. She was just being hospitable, like Marty had told her to do.

  The timer buzzed on the oven and she took out the cornbread, turned off the green beans, and removed the last piece of chicken from the oil. She put everything in serving dishes and almost jumped out of her skin when she turned to take everything to the table.

  Bodhi leaned in the doorway, his face already tan from the sun, his arms pulling against the fresh white T-shirt stretched across his chest.

  “Oh my gosh!” Rose took a deep breath. “You scared me half to death.”

  The corners of his mouth turned up in a slow grin. “Sorry. I should have said something.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  He shrugged a little. “I guess I was too busy watching you.”

  She let that sink in before she crossed to the table. “Irrigation repair sucks,” she said, setting down the dishes. “I thought you might want something besides a casserole.”

  He was still smiling when she dared to look back at him. She licked her lips, floundering for something to say.

  “Want some lemonade?”

  His grin got bigger. “Love some.”

  She pulled down a glass and went to the fridge. When she turned back around, he was mercifully looking not at her, but at all the food spread out on the table.

  “Wow,” he said. “This looks great.”

  She put his lemonade on the table. “It’s probably not as good as my mom’s, but everything’s from her recipes. And my grandmother’s,” she added.

  He sat down and took a long drink of lemonade before digging into the serving dishes piled with food. She wondered what he was waiting for when he didn’t immediately start eating, then realized he was waiting for her. She picked up her fork, and a few seconds later, he did the same.

  They spent the beginning of their meal in silence. Bodhi demolished his first plate of food and immediately started dishing more. She felt another twinge of guilt watching him eat. He was obviously way overdue for a real meal, but he’d never once mentioned it.

  “How’s Buttercup?” she asked him as he started on his second plate.

  “Better, I think. She took some milk from the bottle today.”

  Rose smiled. “That’s great!”

  He nodded. “We’re not in the clear yet, but it’s a good sign.”

  She didn’t want to jinx it, but she couldn’t help feeling a little relieved. One less crisis to deal with, for now at least.

  “Think we’ll get rain soon?” she asked.

  “Anything’s possible with the weather, but I don’t think it’s likely. National Weather Service is calling for a dry summer, and the Almanac backs that up.”

  “That’s not good,” Rose said.

  Bodhi finished chewing. “At least you have a lot of hay stored for the herd.”

  “Yeah,” Rose said, “but that’s supposed to be for sale. It’s going to hit our profit margin to use it as feed for our own animals.”

  He nodded slowly, and she thought she saw surprise in his eyes. “You know a lot about running the farm.”

  “More now than I used to,” Rose confessed. “To be honest, until my mom . . . Well, I was just like every other teenage girl. On my phone and computer, listening to music, reading . . . My dad took care of the farm with help from the Breiners, and occasionally someone local to help out with hay season or vaccinations.”

  “And now?” he asked.

  She thought about it, not wanting to seem like she felt sorry for herself. Things weren’t easy, but they could always be worse. “Now I’m focusing on the farm until my dad gets back on his feet,” she said. “What about you?”

  He reached for the bowl of mashed potatoes and piled another heap on his plate. “What about me?”

  “You seem to know a lot about farming. Do you like it?”

  He seemed to think about it. “I do. It’s the only place I’ve ever felt at home. I mean, every now and then I think it might be nice to take a break, see something new . . .”

  “Why don’t you?” she asked.

  He hesitated. “Never found the right time.”

  “Is there anything else you think you’d like to do for a living?”

  He grinned. “Are you asking me if I have any hobbies?”

  “Maybe,” she said, laughing.

  “Not really. I like to read and learn. Maybe I’ll go to school someday, but I think I’ll always come back to farming.”

  She nodded. “I know what you mean. Even when you want to escape it, it’s hard to imagine really leaving it behind. I guess it’s in my blood.”

  “Mine, too,” he said quietly, looking into her eyes. “You don’t read anymore?”

  “What?” She was still thinking about how weird it was that they could feel the exact same way about farming. Will couldn’t imagine doing anything else, and Lexie couldn’t imagine farming even for a day. She thought she was the only one who had mixed feelings about it.

  “You said you used to read. You don’t do that much anymore?”

  “Not really.”

  “Too busy?” he asked.

  “That, and too tired.” She smiled. “During the school year I was getting up at four to take care of the animals, then with school and homework and everything . . .”

  “But now it’s summer,” he said. “And I’m here.”

  He held her gaze, and she suddenly found it hard to breathe, like her body was so busy dealing with the butterflies in her stomach that it couldn’t remember how to take in oxygen.

  “Yeah,” she said. “You are.” She finally blinked, breathless, and got up to clear the plates. “I should have made dessert. My mom makes . . .” She froze as she set the plates in the sink.

  “What?” Bodhi said softly behind her. “What does she make?”

 
; “She made the best peach pie.” She turned around. “Actually, I think it was her mother’s recipe, but it was always my favorite, especially when she used peaches from the orchard.”

  “That dinner was pretty amazing,” Bodhi said. “No reason you can’t make a pie.”

  “I guess not.”

  He finished clearing, then stood next to her as he opened the dishwasher.

  “What are you doing?” she asked him as his hip brushed hers.

  “You cooked. I’m on dish duty.”

  She laughed. “No way. You were working all day. I went to Marty’s and sat by the river, cooked a little.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “A little?”

  “Okay, more than a little. But I got the dishes.”

  “We’ll split it,” he said. “You put the leftovers away and keep me company while I load the dishwasher.”

  She smiled. “Deal.”

  Thirty-Two

  Bodhi pulled into the parking lot in front of the consignment store and reached for the cookies Rose had given him for Maggie Ryland. He caught a whiff of them from the container and Rose immediately drifted through his mind. That was her: vanilla and brown sugar, plus the sweet grass and clean water of the farm.

  Not that he needed a reminder to think about Rose Darrow. In fact, she was pretty much all he’d thought about in the two weeks since they nursed Buttercup through the night. And he might be wrong, but he imagined Rose might be thinking about him, too. It was in the way she smiled at him now, minus all of the guardedness she’d shown in the beginning. Like maybe it would be okay if he really knew her. He saw it in the way she stepped into the barn in the morning, like she wanted to be there. Like maybe she even wanted to be there with him.

  She’d started getting up early again, and they fed the animals and brought them out to pasture while the sun was still just a violet streak in the east. They herded like they’d been doing it together for years, then spent the rest of the day riding to the property’s perimeter to repair the fences or walking the fields to repair the broken irrigation pipes. Sometimes they talked, easy now, without all the careful sidestepping that had gone into their early conversations. But just as often they didn’t say a word. Sometimes Bodhi would find that a good hour had passed with them working in comfortable silence. Other times, he’d look up to find Rose staring at him. At first, she’d blushed and looked away. But lately she just smiled, like she knew he’d caught her and didn’t even care.

  They ate lunch together in the kitchen, working their way through the casseroles in the freezer. Rose entertained him with tales of the families who had cooked the food, and slowly, Bodhi started to feel like he knew them. After lunch they parted ways until it was time to bring the animals back in. Bodhi didn’t think he’d ever looked forward to the end of the day like he did now, when he and Rose finished up outside and then ate dinner in the kitchen. Rose’s dad joined them every now and then, and once, Marty, but most of the time it was just the two of them.

  He smiled to himself and shook his head as he stepped out of the truck. He was halfway to the consignment store’s door when a voice stopped him in his tracks.

  “Bodhi Lowell.”

  He turned to find Will standing there, holding a bag from the pharmacy next door. “Hey, Will. What’s up?”

  “Not much,” Will said. “You?”

  Bodhi shrugged. “Paying a visit to Maggie Ryland.”

  “That’s neighborly of you.” Will’s eyes dropped to the container in Bodhi’s hand. “And you didn’t come empty-handed, I see.”

  “Can’t take credit for that. They’re cookies from Rose.”

  Will nodded, then took a deep breath. “Listen, I meant what I said when we first met.”

  “What’s that?” Bodhi asked, searching his memory.

  “Rose is family,” Will said. “My family. I’m not going to tell you to stay away from her. I know I don’t have that right.”

  “That’s true,” Bodhi said, bracing himself for a fight.

  “But I hope you’ll think of her,” Will continued. “She’s been through a lot, and you’ll be leaving at the end of summer. I don’t want to see her get hurt.”

  “I would never hurt Rose.” The words emerged a little too fiercely.

  Will took his hat off, studied it in his hands. “The thing is, I know you wouldn’t mean to. You don’t seem like a bad guy. But I imagine you have plans after summer, and that means one way or another, you’ll be leaving. It’ll hurt her to get attached to you, and I know Rose; she’s had about all the hurt she can take.”

  The anger that had been seething under Bodhi’s skin left him. Will wasn’t the bad guy here. He cared about Rose, and he was right. There was only one way for this to end, and that was with Bodhi leaving.

  He nodded. “I appreciate the advice.”

  “So you’ll steer clear?” Will asked.

  Bodhi was a lot of things, but he wasn’t a liar. “Didn’t say that. But I’ll think about what you said.”

  Will nodded and put his hat back on before turning for the parking lot.

  Bodhi stood there for a minute, fighting the sinking feeling in his stomach, before continuing to Maggie’s shop.

  “Hey there, stranger!” Maggie greeted him when he found her at the back of the shop. The smile fell from her face. “What on earth’s the matter?”

  Bodhi tried to smile. “Nothing. I was in town running errands and Rose asked me to drop these off to you.”

  Maggie took the container of cookies out of his hand. She studied him with narrowed eyes. “Follow me.”

  She led him to the front of the store and pulled out a chair, then gestured for him to sit while she took two bottles of lemonade out of a little refrigerator behind the counter.

  “I’m just here to drop off the cookies . . . ,” Bodhi started.

  “Sit.”

  The tone in her voice didn’t leave room for any argument, and he took a seat in the wing chair while Maggie handed him one of the chilled bottles and opened the cookies. She bit into one of the cookies before leaning against the counter.

  “Now what’s going on? You look like you just lost your best friend.”

  He thought about Rose. About her smile and the way the sun made her hair shine like pennies at the bottom of a fountain. About their conversations and their silences, too.

  “That’s kind of inevitable,” he said, staring at the bottle of lemonade in his hands. “And I think I just realized that.”

  “You’re talking about Rose,” she said softly.

  He nodded. “I’ve been fooling myself, acting like we have all the time in the world, like this is just the beginning, when we’re well on our way to the end.”

  “Because you’re moving on after the summer?” Maggie asked.

  “That’s the biggest problem, yes.”

  “And is that set in stone?” Maggie asked. “Because I’m sure the Darrows would love to keep you on, and you could always put down roots here, get a place of your own. There are other farms in the area.”

  He thought about the plane ticket in his backpack. He could stay, but somehow that didn’t feel right. He finally had a plan to leave, to make a break from the past that always seemed to be snapping at his heels.

  “I have someplace I have to be at the end of August,” he said.

  “I see,” Maggie said. For a minute, neither of them spoke. “So you’re thinking to protect Rose from the inevitable?” she continued. “Stop your . . . friendship before she can get too attached? And you, too, I imagine.”

  “That’s about right.” He was surprised to hear her laugh. “Something funny?” he asked.

  Maggie sighed and took a drink of her tea. “Can I ask you something?”

  “I guess.” He was agreeing, but he was already nervous.

  “You think Rose is weak?”

  He shook his head. “I think she’s the strongest person I’ve ever met.”

  “You think she’s feebleminded then?” Maggie asked.<
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  “Feebleminded? No,” Bodhi said.

  Maggie gave his arm a slap. “Then why on earth would you think it’s your business to make this decision—any decision—for her?”

  He rubbed his arm. “I just want to protect her.”

  “Does she act like she needs protecting?”

  He shrugged. “She acts . . . sad. I just don’t want to make her sadder.”

  Maggie leaned in. “And what if you didn’t? What if you made her happy instead? What if you made her happier than she’s been since her mother died?”

  “That sounds real nice, but then she’d be sad when it was over, and so would I.”

  “Ah, so now we’re getting to the meat of it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just that maybe Rose isn’t the only one you’re trying to protect,” Maggie said. He was getting ready to protest when she moved away from the counter. “Stay here. I want to show you something.”

  She returned a couple minutes later with a photograph. She handed it to him, and he saw that it was old, the colors fading, the edges turning yellow. In it a young man and woman stood with their arms around each other on the deck of a sailboat. The woman was blond and trim, her face turned up to the man, who stared down at her like he saw the moon, sun, and stars in her eyes.

  “This you?” Bodhi asked.

  She smiled and nodded. “Me and David.”

  “Was he your husband?” Bodhi asked.

  “Oh no,” Maggie said. “Never got that far. We only had the one summer on the Cape. Then he went to Vietnam. Didn’t come back.”

  “I’m sorry,” Bodhi said. He looked at the man, trying to see his impending death. There was nothing there. Just a man, barely out of boyhood, on a boat with the girl he loved.

  Maggie looked down at the picture. “It’s okay. I made peace with it a long time ago.” She smiled. “I’ll never forget that summer. We laughed and swam and walked on the beach until all hours of the night, talked about everything, and . . . well, you know.” He heard all the things she didn’t want to say in her laugh. “Then we said goodbye and he died, and I thought I might die, too. Except I didn’t. I lived, and the more I lived the more I realized that David—all the beauty and loss of him—was part of that living. I married a wonderful man, had two children who drive me crazy to this day.” She smiled into his eyes. “But do you think a day goes by when I wish I hadn’t had that summer with David? When I would trade the pain I felt after he died for everything I felt while he was alive and we were together?”