Steam rose from Kelly’s coffee cup, swirling around his brother’s face before disappearing into the cold kitchen air. “What’s up with you and Max?” Trey knew it was stupid to ask, stupid to be jealous of Kelly, especially as Trey would never mean more to Max than the man who ripped her land away from her. But he asked anyway.
“Gay men can’t have female friends?”
Trey ran his hand over the back of his neck before saying “That’s not what I meant.” Which was true. But if Kelly had asked him what he meant, Trey wouldn’t have had an answer. All he knew was that for the rest of the year, Kelly would get to spend time with Max while Trey was busy selling her hard work to a developer from two hundred and fifty miles away.
“Never mind.”
Kelly made a face as he took a sip. “It’s a wonder Max has any taste buds left. She makes terrible coffee.” When he drained the last of his coffee, he shook his head as if he needed the extra help to get the beverage down. “Are you ready to go find the will?”
No, but he didn’t say that. Trey would rather be with Max, even if she contemplated his death the entire time they spent together. But they needed to either find the will or determine to Kelly’s satisfaction that it no longer existed. And Trey wanted to do that as quickly as possible.
“Sure.”
* * *
B
Y
FOUR
O
’
CLOCK
they’d been through every box in the attic and had not found a will. His father had apparently boxed up and saved all his
Playboy
magazines and they’d found letters from long-dead relatives his mother must have kept, but the single document they sought was nowhere to be found.
Trey sat back on his heels and rubbed his face, wishing he’d shaved this morning. All this crap belonged to him and he wouldn’t be able to sell the land until he cleaned it out. The developer wasn’t Max; he couldn’t leave the stuff in boxes in the attic for the magical time in the future when he was ready to deal with it.
“Do you want any of this stuff before I finalize the sale?” he asked Kelly.
“You’re still going through with it?”
“You can only contest the will so long as it’s reasonable to think a new one might be stashed somewhere.” Trey gestured to the boxes, some still open, scattered around the attic. “I’ll even grant you that Dad made a new will, but he didn’t stash it anywhere. He probably tore it up during some drunken rage.”
“Dad had quit drinking.”
“That’s what he claims, but hitting a tree in daylight on a road he’d driven at least twice a day since he was tall enough to reach the pedals? You can’t tell me he was sober.”
Kelly looked at Trey like
he
was the confused one, not Kelly. “He wasn’t drunk. Dad had a heart attack.”
Aunt Lois had said the same thing when she’d called Trey to tell him his father was dead. “Not you, too. The man’s dead. We don’t have to tiptoe around his pride anymore.” Trey’s laugh was hollow.
“Dad stopped drinking when Mom got sick.”
Trey laughed harder, the air coming out of his throat in painful gasps. During their mom’s illness, he’d also believed their father when he said he was sober. The constant smog of stale booze that had surrounded his old man for as long as Trey could remember was gone and his father’s face had lost some of its fleshy redness. But...
Trey had to wait until he’d gotten control over his guffaws before he could speak again. “He was drunk at Mom’s funeral.” He took a deep breath. “It’s nice that Dad died in a car accident so we don’t have to pretend it wasn’t liver failure, but he broke that promise
again
. And had so little respect for Mom that he broke it at her funeral.”
The second round of the laughter wedged in his throat at the pity on Kelly’s face.
“Maybe it’s easier to cleave yourself from this land if you hold on to lies, but do you think I could stand coming around the farm if Dad was still a drunk? It took him thirty years, but he kept this one promise.”
The stale air of the attic bore down on his shoulders. Before he suffocated, Trey stood and went downstairs. Back in the woods, nature having almost taken over, were the falling-down shacks laborers had used before he was born. Trey had hidden from his father’s lies in those houses all through his childhood. Feeling like he was nine years old again when he still believed in miracles, he left the farmhouse for the shacks and whatever black widows lurked inside them.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
M
AX
ADDED
HORSE
manure from a nearby stable into one of her compost windrows, even though this windrow wouldn’t be ready for use before she had to leave the farm. She backed her tractor up and added another scoop of manure, noting on her clipboard which pile she was adding it to and how much of it she was adding. Habit more than anything else kept her noting how many turns she gave each pile and checking the number of turns against the National Organic Program stipulations and her recipe. No one would be on this farm to use the tended compost. The developer wouldn’t care that she’d managed the compost heaps with the same amount of attention a vintner gives his wine; he’d see piles of rotting shit and do away with it.
Could she take the compost with her? Assuming, of course, that she had somewhere to go, which she didn’t.
Her father’s farm was always available to her, but she wasn’t interested in conventional farming. It was a science and she preferred the art. She also preferred working a farm where birds felt safe to nest amongst her trellises. Her mom was a closer refuge. Her mom would tell her that embracing the experience would make her a stronger person, but Max didn’t have the patience for that right now.
She had plenty of farmer friends who could take her compost, if she could get it to them and figure out the regulations that applied to moving compost from one farm to another—because there were sure to be regulations. And come the end of summer, what else would she have to do but haul truckloads of compost off to her friends?
Had she already given up? Max stopped her tractor midturn. Did she continue with the meticulous record keeping and work of farming or did she call it quits?
The wind shifted directions. She could tell by the scent the breeze carried on its back that the compost was maturing well. When she finished turning all the piles, she’d stick thermometers into them and record their temperatures into her little book. At night, it would just be her and Ashes and she’d transfer all that information to her Excel spreadsheet, where she had five years’ worth of composting data. If she didn’t do it for the future of the land, she’d be doing it for her own satisfaction.
Mother Nature had originally drawn her to organic farming, and she wasn’t about to shirk the woman because some man threatened to take the dream away. With the finality of that thought, Max shifted the tractor back into gear and turned the pile again.
* * *
T
REY
WAS
WAITING
for her when she got back to the packing shed to park the tractor. For the first time since she’d met him, he looked dirty. Trey had packed up Hank’s filthy house and not gotten a spot of dust on his nose but now—Max blinked—he had red clay on the knees of his jeans and the ball of a sweet gum tree stuck in his hair. He was leaning up against the wall of the shed, his knee bent and foot flat against the wood. Stick a piece of straw in his mouth and cowboy hat on his head and he’d look like an escapee from some cowboy movie. He already walked like he’d been on a horse for too long.
She ignored him and her negative thoughts as she walked around to unhook the front-end loader attachment from her tractor. Trey didn’t really walk like he’d been sitting on a horse for too long. Just because she wanted to shove a stick up his ass right now didn’t mean she didn’t like the way he walked. And just because she liked the way he walked didn’t mean she couldn’t dream of dropping the front-end loader on his head.
“I was watching you,” he said as he pushed off the wall, “as you did whatever it was you were doing with the dirt.”
“Compost. I was turning the compost.”
“You stopped for a long time, then started again. Why?”
She didn’t trust him. “Thirsty.”
“You didn’t drink anything.”
“Hungry.”
“You didn’t eat anything.”
“I had to pee.” She enunciated each word, in case he missed the irritation on her face.
“Did you have a thunder jug in the tractor and I missed you using it? Because while I’m not into that sort of thing, I’m really curious about the physics of it.”
Max felt her face go hot and knew she was fifteen colors of red, seventeen if she included her freckles. “What I really mean to say is that it’s none of your business.”
“Do you believe in God?”
Honestly, if he wasn’t the most calculating person she’d ever met, she’d say he was nuts. “I’m sure that’s
not
any of your business, either.”
“What’s important to you? What will you swear on?”
She opened her mouth to tell him to piss off then noticed the intensity of his eyes. “Those compost piles are important to me. The garlic I’ve got in the ground and am waiting to sprout. The plants slowly unfurling in the greenhouse.” This time her face was hot from anger rather than embarrassment and her blood boiled and rolled through her body to match. “This whole damn farm is important to me, which you know and you’re selling it anyway.”
He shook his head and Max couldn’t tell if the rise of his mouth was irritation, amusement or both. “If piles of rotting shit are what you want to swear on, you can swear on them. Did my father drink?”
“If he did, he hid it well. I never saw him.”
“He’d never hidden it well before. I don’t know why he would start.”
“I know Hank was an alcoholic. He never made a secret out of it and he warned me no alcohol would be allowed on the property if I wanted to farm it. As far as I know, neither of us ever broke that rule.”
Trey turned from her and walked away. She went back to her tasks in the packing shed, certain he was leaving, when she heard his voice again. “I’ll sell you the farm.”
“In three years?”
“No. Kelly said Dad quit drinking and I believe him and you, but I still don’t want to own this farm any longer than I have to. When your lease is up, I’ll give you right of first refusal.”
Max thought about her compost piles and the investment they were to the future of the land. And she wished they were the kind of investment that she could cash out. “Even if I do get a mortgage, I won’t be able to afford to pay you what the developer can offer.”
“I’m not asking for you to match their offer. We can figure out what a fair market value is.”
She put her hand on her chest and leaned against the wall, decisions pounding in her ears. Her heart alternated between racing for some unknown starting gate and slowing down to a crawl as she debated whether this was good or bad news. Planning and working for the farm only to have it not happen might be worse than planning to pick up and move in December. Not just a dream deferred, but a dream ripped out of her grasp because she didn’t have the strength to hold on.
He walked toward her with the slow, purposeful stride she had admired. The clay mud patches on his jeans had dried and they cracked with each step. Her eyes traveled up his body, noting each imperfection in his clothing that hadn’t been there this morning.
She didn’t know how someone should react to the news that their father had stopped drinking. Trey had apparently reacted to it by falling to his knees in prayer. Or sliding down a hill.
After pausing to wonder how he was going to get the pine needles out of his sweater, she met his gaze. Like this morning, his eyes were dark and steady.
“I’ll think about it,” she finally said.
“Think about it?” Now his face showed a reaction and it was easy to read. He was angry, though he had the same tight control over his voice that he’d had over his eyes. “This morning you were begging me to sell you the farm, and now you’ll think about it?”
“If you had looked at the spreadsheets this morning, you’d have seen I have a plan and it doesn’t have me buying the farm for another three years. I’m not sure if I can afford it by December or if I’ll even get close enough to qualify for a mortgage. Before I promise either of us this solution, I want to run the numbers.”
Her words washed the anger off his face and he nodded. “I’ll help you.”
“Run the numbers?”
“Find a mortgage. Manage your money. Whatever it takes so that you can afford the farm by December.”
She knew how to manage her own money, but the help would be nice. When harvesting started, she would barely be awake long enough at the end of each day to record everything in her spreadsheets, much less spend the time looking for a mortgage. Passing on that burden would be a relief.
“Why? Why did you change your mind?”
Trey looked away and Max didn’t think he would answer. When he began to talk, the crack in his voice was the only indication that he felt anything. “When I was kid, all I ever wanted was for my daddy to quit drinking. I made regular deals with God about what I would do if he stopped. Each time I learned about a different religion, I made a bargain with their god, too, just in case. Once, when I learned what paganism actually meant, I made a bargain to become a farmer and worship Mother Nature if Daddy quit drinking.” He looked at her—through her—and his eyes were hot enough to make her shiver. “The time for me to be a farmer has passed, but it seems like I would still be keeping my promise if I sold you the farm.”
Max searched his face for sincerity. She found it, but she didn’t know how much to trust it. Still, this was a gift horse and looking it in the mouth would be stupid. If he wasn’t sincere, she wouldn’t be any worse off and maybe she could use the time to convince him of the farm’s worth.
“I’ll still need to look over my finances before I agree.”
This time it looked like he was assessing her face for sincerity. Whatever he found made him nod. “Okay. I’ll even give you a week to fully explore your options before telling me yes or no.”
A week to research other financing options and then nine months to buy the farm. She could do this. It wasn’t in her plan, but she could still do this. She marched over to be directly in front of him and stuck out her hand. “Done.”
When the side of his mouth kicked up this time, she knew it was with pleasure. He looked her straight in the eye, took her hand in his firm grip and gave a steady shake. “Till next week, then.” Despite the jolt his hand sent down her spine, she was also shaking on the finality of a relationship based on anything other than friendship. It was simpler this way, less risky.
Trey turned back to the woods, to whatever path had brought him to her packing shed, leaving Max with the uncomfortable feeling of missing the warmth of his hand in hers.