He spent twenty minutes trying out the different models before he chose a pair of sturdy but reasonably priced Ariats. He paid for the boots, but a look at his watch told him it was only three thirty, so he wandered the store for a bit, stopping to pet a group of rescue kittens housed in a wire cage. He was heading toward the front of the store when he spotted the girl, head bent to a shelf full of calving supplies.
He stopped in his tracks. There was something familiar about the bend of her neck, the long copper braid snaking over one shoulder. He knew this even though he was positive he’d never seen her before. She was biting her lip, reading a box in her hands like it held the key to the universe, and for one crazy minute, he thought she might hold the key to his.
Seven
Rose was glad to be inside Tractor Supply. This was familiar ground. Cattle and chicken feed. Galoshes and all-weather gear. Pitchforks and hay rakes. There were no big questions here, not unless you counted which brand of milk replacer to buy or whether to take advantage of the sale (buy one get one 50 percent off) on calf bottles.
She was reading the box on the nipples they used to bottle-feed, wondering if maybe there was some kind of advice she’d missed that would make it easier to feed Buttercup, when she heard the voice on her right.
“Sometimes they don’t like those.”
She looked up and was surprised to find a guy around her age standing at her shoulder. His voice had been deep, and she looked past him for a second, half believing someone older had spoken. But it was just him.
“What do you mean?”
He tipped his head at the box in her hands and a lock of dark hair fell over his forehead. “Not sure how much experience you have bottle-feeding calves, but the opening in those is too big for a lot of them that have trouble feeding.”
She felt her face flush, though she couldn’t be sure if it was because he was sticking his nose in her business or because he was staring at her with eyes the exact color of the soil on the farm, rich and warm in the summer sun. It didn’t help that he was tall, taller even than Will, with lean, compact muscle that pulled against the sleeves of his T-shirt even though he was just standing there.
“Well, we’ve been in the business over a hundred years,” she said. “How about you?”
His grin was lazy, and he didn’t seem at all put out by the challenge in her voice. “A little less than that.”
She nodded and immediately felt foolish. Why did she feel satisfied putting a total stranger in his place?
“I’m just saying,” he continued, “a lot of times when the calves have trouble feeding, it’s because they don’t like the rush of milk. A smaller nipple might be less intimidating, although depending on the animal’s age, you might have to undo some of its conditioning. Might not want to feed on anything now.”
The guy sounded like he knew what he was talking about, but he wasn’t the one who’d brought Buttercup into the world, who’d lost sleep worrying about the calf all these months. Plus, he had a kind of drawl to his voice, not quite southern, but not from around here either. What made him think he knew better than her?
“It’ll be fine,” she said.
He shrugged. “Just trying to help.”
His easy manner got under her skin. Here she was, all flustered and annoyed, and he acted like she’d actually asked for his advice, like he had every right to bust in and force his opinion on her.
“Well, I appreciate it,” she said, grabbing three more of the boxes in the same size, “but I think I’ve got it under control.”
“If you say so,” he said. She was almost to the register when she heard his voice behind her. “Nice meeting you.”
She dumped the boxes on the counter and chatted with Ed, the manager of the store, while he rang her up, forcing herself not to look back and see if the stranger was watching her. She paid with the credit card her dad had given her to buy things for the farm and picked up the paper bag with her purchases.
When she got to the glass doors, she looked at the reflection to see if he was still there. He was gone.
Eight
She was still a little flustered when she got to Aunt Marty’s house. The stranger’s appearance had set her off-balance, and everything she’d said after that had seemed to come from someone else’s mouth. She wasn’t used to anyone telling her what to do, and definitely not someone her own age, someone who wasn’t even from Milford. Sure, she sometimes asked Will for advice, but the Breiners had been running their dairy farm almost as long as the Darrows had raised cattle. And Will was a friend. He knew Rose, knew the farm and how hard she worked on it.
This guy was like one of those hippie types from the college town across the river. His hair was a little too long for him to be any kind of local, let alone one who knew how to raise cattle. Plus, he’d had a backpack, one of those big ones people carried when they were traveling on foot. He was probably some Kerouac wannabe whose cross-country road trip was funded by his parents. So he was good-looking. So what?
She parked in Aunt Marty’s driveway, got a box of strawberries out of the back of the truck, and headed for the house. It was small, more of a cottage, really. Marty had only been living in it since she’d returned from Thailand five years ago, but it was perfect for her. Set outside of town halfway up the mountain to Warrensville, it was situated on two acres that backed up to a wooded preserve. It was quiet, rare even to hear a plane fly overhead. A river ran behind the house, and Rose loved sitting outside with her aunt in one of the big Adirondack chairs, listening to the water rush past as she and Marty talked about everything from school to the farm to books they read. Sometimes they didn’t talk at all. Then Rose knew they were both thinking of her mother, remembering all the times they’d spent outside together.
The door was open, the unlatched screen fluttering a little in the afternoon breeze. Rose pulled it open and stepped into the house.
“Hey, it’s me!” she called out.
“In the office.”
Her aunt’s voice carried from the back of the house, and Rose set the strawberries in the kitchen before heading to the tiny room her aunt called an office. She found Marty sitting at the old farm table she used as a writing desk. She was leaning forward, peering at her laptop screen, her long red hair trailing down her back.
“What are you working on?” Rose asked, leaning down to kiss her aunt’s cheek.
Marty pulled off her glasses and looked up at Rose with a tired smile. “That article on expats in Chiang Mai. The time difference is killing me.”
Rose nodded. Her aunt lived simply on the interest from her savings and the freelance writing work she picked up from various travel magazines.
“It must be nice to talk to old friends, though.”
“It is,” Marty agreed. “I forget how isolated I am here sometimes.”
Rose heard the note of wistfulness in her aunt’s voice and felt a moment’s panic. Marty didn’t like staying in one place too long, and she’d already been back in Milford for five years. How long would it be before she moved on? And what would Rose do if yet another person left her alone?
“It would help if you didn’t live out in the boonies,” Rose said.
Marty laughed. “Everything here is out in the boonies.” She stood up and stretched, and Rose was struck by how young her aunt seemed. She was only two years younger than Rose’s mother, but her skin was completely smooth except for a few fine lines around her eyes that made her look like she was always laughing. She had the Jacobsen hair and the Jacobsen freckles, all of which only added to the feeling that she was a kid trapped inside an adult’s body. Today, like most days, her slender feet were bare under leggings and one of her patterned tunics. “What did you bring me?”
“Strawberries,” Rose said. “There will be blueberries in a few days, and the early tomatoes are almost ready, too.”
“Great.” Marty slung an arm around Rose’s shoulder. “Have time for iced tea?”
“I have to feed the anim
als,” Rose said. “But I can stay for a few minutes.”
They talked about graduation as they headed to the kitchen. The ceremony would be outside, weather permitting, and Rose was worried about walking to the stage in heels. How did girls do it without the pointy parts sinking into the grass? She wondered if she could get away with wearing her boots, or even her tennis shoes. She’d have the graduation gown on anyway.
Marty poured them each a glass of iced tea and they sat at the tiny kitchen table. Rose watched as Marty traced a ring around the top of her glass.
“I wish Nana and Pop were still alive,” Marty said wistfully. “They’d be so proud of you.”
“I wish that, too,” Rose said softly.
Both sets of Rose’s grandparents had passed when she was young, and she watched sadness shadow Marty’s eyes like a swift-moving cloud. She felt suddenly ashamed. Marty had lost every blood relation but her. Rose wasn’t the only one hurting.
“How’s your dad?” Marty asked, changing the subject.
Rose forced a smile. “He’s fine.”
Marty tipped her head, like she was disappointed Rose would even try to pull one over on her.
Rose sighed. “I can’t even answer the question because I hardly see him. He tries to act like he’s been up for hours when I get home from school, but I think he’s still sleeping most of the day.”
“Is he helping out?”
Rose bit her lip. She didn’t want to rat on her dad. Rose’s mother had been the love of his life. They’d been high school sweethearts right here in Milford. Their families had been friends, and they’d fallen in love in and around the Darrow farm. Rose didn’t blame him for not wanting to see it every day. Rose could hardly stand it herself, and she had seventeen years of memories with her mother instead of the thirty her dad had to live with.
“He does what he can,” she answered. “I’m managing the rest with some help from Will.”
“Having Bodhi Lowell around this summer will help.” Her aunt met her eyes. “But honey, it can’t go on like this. You’re young, you have your whole life ahead of you. It’s not fair for you to give that up.”
Rose rubbed at the condensation on her glass. Bodhi Lowell. The intruder. Rose was barely keeping up pretenses with Marty, with herself. How would she do it 24/7 with a total stranger?
“I’m not giving it up,” she said. “I’m just putting it on hold.”
Marty reached across the table for her hand. “I’m going to tell you something no one else will: a lot of life is about momentum. You let yourself stand still too long, you get stagnant, forget there are other places to see, other ways of thinking and doing things. And the worst part is, you start to lie to yourself. Make excuses why it’s just fine to be standing still, telling yourself you didn’t want anything different anyway.” Marty shrugged. “Maybe it’s even true for some people. I don’t know. But it’s not true for me, and it’s not true for you.”
Rose only thought about denying it for a second. Marty would just remind her about her collection of travel brochures and the hours Rose had spent asking Marty questions about Thailand and Indonesia and Germany and Czechoslovakia. It was a losing battle. And Marty knew something about the subject; she’d once been married to Larry Fuller. Larry ran the small engine repair shop in town and had been in Milford his whole life. He and Marty hadn’t lasted three years. Now he had three kids and was married to a nice woman who ran the PTA. Rose could tell he was happy, and so was Marty.
“The farm isn’t your problem. It’ll work out somehow,” Marty said. “Just promise you’ll think about it.”
“I will,” Rose said. “I promise.”
Nine
The truck didn’t have air-conditioning, and Rose was hot and exhausted by the time she got home. What she really wanted was a nap, but she had to bring the cows in and get them fed before dinner, so she opted for a quick swim instead. She hurried into the house and changed into her bathing suit, then threw on a pair of worn jean shorts and grabbed a towel on her way out the door.
She crossed the dusty private road that separated the house from the orchard and picked her way across the fallen fruit. The orchard hadn’t been a priority for her dad, who preferred working with cattle, and the trees had grown gnarly and wild without regular pruning. There was still enough fruit for Rose to collect for the farmers’ market, but the orchard wasn’t producing near what it had in its prime. Rose’s grandmother had loved it, and in her mind’s eye, Rose could still see the ladders tipped against the old trunks, disappearing into the foliage as the farmhands plucked ripe fruit from the branches. Her grandmother would can some of the peaches and use the rest for pie and jam until fall, when it was time to harvest the apples and pears. Then there would be tangy applesauce and warm spice cake, pear tart and fried cinnamon apples, sandwiches with ham and sour apple slices.
She continued through the orchard and over the small knoll at the back of the field. The swimming hole glimmered in the early summer sun, and she ran down the hill shrieking like she had when she was a kid. For a few seconds, she forgot about everything: her mom’s death, the farm, her dad. There was just her and the sun and the land she knew like the back of her hand.
Throwing her towel on the ground, she slipped off her shorts and took a running leap from the big rock that was her launching pad, forcing herself not to gasp as the water closed over her head. It was cold, and she was instantly awake. Alive.
She flipped over and floated on her back, her skin turning to gooseflesh as she looked up at the sky and the trees that rimmed the pond, rustling in the breeze like they were telling her a secret. Closing her eyes, she allowed herself to drift, and for once there wasn’t a laundry list of things to do running through her head.
She didn’t know how long she’d been there when a cloud drifted in front of the sun, dimming the light behind her eyelids. She flipped over and swam to the side of the pond, then dried off and pulled on her shorts.
She wanted to walk back slowly, to enjoy the late afternoon sun and the sound of the crickets, already chirping in the long grass, but the farm chores needed to be done, and she wanted to try one of the new nipples with Buttercup before she dealt with dinner. At least school was officially over, and she’d have a break from homework until she started community college in the fall.
Her hair dripped cool water down her back as she made her way across the orchard. She was getting ready to cross the road when she spotted her dad, sitting on one of the tractors in the big garage out back. Looping the towel around her neck, she headed toward him, already worried about what she would find there.
She had only the smallest of hopes that he was working. Mostly, he went to the garage to think about her mother. At first Rose hadn’t understood it. There were lots of places on the farm more steeped in her mom’s presence than the garage. But then Rose had passed by a small picture in the den. It had been shoved back into the bookshelf, almost hidden by the row of Farmers’ Almanacs her dad kept there. Rose had reached for the photograph, pulling it forward, and then she’d understood; it was a picture of her parents, young and smiling, both of them on top of the old tractor that they still used on the farm today. Her dad was sitting in the driver’s seat, balancing her mom on his lap. His arms were wrapped around her waist as she held his face between her palms. Somewhere behind her mom’s hands, they were kissing.
“Daddy?” she said when she got to the big doors of the garage.
He looked up, his eyes glazed, and for one terrifying minute Rose thought that he didn’t recognize her. Then his gaze cleared and he gave her a pained smile. “Hi, honey. How was school?”
“Fine,” she said. “What are you doing out here?”
“Oh, you know,” he said, climbing off the machine, “just checking out the equipment, making sure everything’s running okay.”
She blinked as she looked at him, trying to reconcile the man in front of her with the picture she had of her dad in her head. Usually she saw him in the house,
after the brightest daylight had faded. Then he looked almost like his old self.
But the sunlight, even softened like it was by the hour, wasn’t kind to him, and she noticed that his dark hair had more gray and his face was more deeply etched than it had been before her mom died. His clothes hung on his wiry frame, and his arms, once lean and strong, looked soft and thin.
“Is it?” Rose asked him. “Running okay, I mean?”
“Looks to be.” He patted the side of the tractor awkwardly. “Looks to be.”
She wondered if he would ask about the animals, about the calves or the heifers, the bull they’d paid too much for last year. He didn’t. Just walked over and draped an arm across her shoulders. “Go for a swim?” he asked as they started toward the house.
She nodded.
“How was it?”
“Nice,” she said. “I have to bring the animals in from pasture before dinner. Want to help?”
He hesitated, squinting as he looked out across the fields, like they hurt his eyes. “Maybe I will,” he said. “I just have some things to take care of in the house first. You get started without me.”
She tried not to show her disappointment. It’s not that there weren’t things to take care of in the house. After six months of neglect, there were things to take care of everywhere. It’s just that she knew he was hedging. He wouldn’t be back out to help. He’d go inside, maybe grab a beer, lay on the couch or even go back upstairs to the bed he’d shared with Rose’s mother. He’d lay there while the sun slanted lower and lower in the sky, the window shades swinging back and forth in the breeze. Rose would eat dinner alone at the kitchen table with her book. Maybe she’d see him before bed. Maybe.