For a moment, she looked like she was going to argue with him, but stopped herself. “Okay. What first?”
“Both your friends said making a budget and asking for the right amount was important. Get out your little notebook and let’s create a budget for this barn. You know how much the last one cost, right?”
“I have some idea. This barn is in worse repair and your dad covered a lot of the costs of the other barn.” His disbelief must have been clear on his face, because she continued, “It was part of your mom’s wishes.”
Trey had to be still so that what Max was telling him could sink in. His mother crafting a more elaborate plan for farming than just “rent the land to this farmer I picked out,” fit about as well with his memory of the worn-out woman as his father’s care of the chickens fit with his memory of the drunk.
“I wish I could have known your mother. She seems like such a strong woman. I interacted with her a little via email, but she’d died by the time the lease was finalized and I couldn’t make it to her funeral. She had such great plans for the land. I think she’d have been pleased with this Kickstarter idea.”
He’d come down to visit his mother a couple times when she’d been sick, and she’d gone from diagnosed to dying so fast that he hadn’t felt like he had time to do more than just tell her he would miss her. She’d said she had this great idea and that they should get together as a family to talk about it. The thought of sitting down to talk with his father about
anything
had convinced Trey that he shouldn’t keep visiting.
Suddenly, the bright spring sun seemed to darken and remorse took the place of its comforting warmth. In his determination to avoid his father, he’d missed out on getting to know his mother at what might have been her finest moment. He couldn’t look back and see the woman with strength and vision the way Max could. And probably Kelly, too. He could only see the woman trapped in a loveless marriage by poverty and kids. What else about his family had he missed?
He smiled at Max, but those thoughts didn’t fully go away. “Note my mom’s wishes in your notebook and let’s make sure that gets included in your video.” He wasn’t sure if doing that was capitalizing on his mom’s memory or abusing it, but at least brainstorming pushed the thoughts of his mama into the background. “Right now it’s budgeting time. Think big. If you could make that barn into the best intern housing available, what would it look like?”
CHAPTER TWENTY
T
REY
TURNED
INTO
the farm’s driveway at ten in the morning on the next Saturday. To say his boss had been upset that he wanted another weekend off to drive to North Carolina was putting it mildly. After much arguing, they’d finally come to a compromise. Trey could have the Saturday off, but he had agreed to attend a dinner last night and was scheduled to play golf tomorrow. He’d promised Max that he’d give her the whole weekend to come down and plan the Kickstarter with her and her interns, but now that promise was only worth about half of what it should be.
He opened the car door and looked at the looming white memories of the farmhouse, dusted with a heavy coating of yellow pine pollen. Another weekend and he was here instead of in D.C. But he was only here for a day—no sleeping over. No waking up in the middle of the night with Max curled up in his arms and her hair in his nose. The only thing on the agenda today was getting Max one step closer to feeling comfortable buying the farm and him one step closer to cutting his ties with Durham.
When he’d emailed her about his change of plans. Max had said she was sorry but that they could reschedule, since they had until September when the Northern Piedmont Farm Tour was happening to plan the Kickstarter. But Trey had promised, and so here he was. The clouds were spitting into the chill of a cloudy spring day, threatening to do worse.
He reached over to the passenger seat and grabbed his umbrella, then started through the drizzle to the front door. Once inside he wove his way through to the kitchen, where Kelly and the angry intern were sitting at the trestle table. The intern—Trey had no interest in calling the man by his name right now—ignored him. Ashes greeted him with a wag of his tail, though didn’t move from his adoring pose at the intern’s feet. Trey got grudging affection from the dog; the angry drunk got worship. Kelly greeted him with a cold “Hello,” and gestured to the pot of coffee.
Trey let both slights roll off his shoulder. Kelly shouldn’t be getting involved with a drunk. But if Kelly wanted to stick his head in the sand and let his ass hang out to be kicked, Trey couldn’t stop him. His brother was a grown man.
“Where’s Max?” Trey asked when he sat at the table with his cup.
“She’s at the farmers’ market selling,” Sean replied, with a derisive rise to his eyebrows. “It’s how she makes her money. Selling produce.”
Trey opened his mouth to snap back, saw the pain on Kelly’s face and stopped. Sean’s eyes were bloodshot. His face was puffy and his eyes had the tight look of a man who’d tied on twelve last night—and then tried for a baker’s dozen. Picking a fight with a man in such a state was almost as stupid as picking a fight with a drunk.
They sat around the table in uncomfortable silence until Sean finally stood and said he was going to take a nap. Trey’s better sense told him not to call, “They’re not called naps if you do it hugging the toilet.” Besides, the person Trey really wanted to smack was Kelly; Sean was only in the way.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Kelly asked as soon as the porch door banged shut.
“Me? What the hell do you think
you’re
doing? That guy’s a fucking waste of space.”
“He needed to relax last night.” Trey took a good, long look at his brother. Kelly had puffy eyes and there was still sleep in the corner of them, but he didn’t smell like alcohol. He looked worn down.
“Listen to you, defending that drunk like Mom defending Dad. What’s Sean’s excuse for finishing a fifth of liquor every other night?”
“You tried that argument last time you were here. It didn’t work then and it won’t work now. You don’t really care who I spend my evenings with. You’ve never cared before. Maybe Sean’s only the most recent in a long line of drunks. Maybe I like fucking drunks. Maybe we both have daddy issues.”
Trey smashed his fist into the trestle table. The thick wood had absorbed many fists over the years it had been in the Harris family, and the coffee in his mug barely shimmered. “At least I’m trying to do something other than repeat our parents’ mistakes.”
“Fuck it. I’m not sticking around for this shit.” Kelly pulled a folded piece of paper out from his pocket and threw it on top of the table. “Tell Max I’m sorry I couldn’t be here, but I’ve jotted down our ideas. And Aunt Lois’s.”
Trey picked up the note. “Does Sean even have ideas?” he asked, regretting the words as soon as they were out of his mouth.
Kelly snatched the paper out of Trey’s hand and stomped over to the counter. He grabbed a pen from a drawer and scribbled something on the page, then balled it up and tossed it at Trey. It landed in the middle of the floor. They both stared at it, then their heads shifted in tandem and they stared at each other. Neither moved to pick up the paper.
Kelly blinked first, though he walked past the balled-up paper. He stopped at the table.
“Don’t forget that you’re playing the benevolent landlord and lover to the cute farmer today—the last Harris generation to own this farm and
so
happy to turn the farm over to new hands. Give the farm new life and all that shit you don’t really believe in. Make sure you’ve got that anger boiling up inside you buried deep enough that it doesn’t explode. Wouldn’t want Max to see through the facade to the scared little boy cowering in a corner.” Then his brother walked out the door.
Trey waited for the sound of a car starting that never came. His brother had gone back to the barn to be with his drunk.
Trey stood, got himself a second cup of coffee and picked up the paper on his way back to the table. The scribbled item was to “highlight the land’s farming tradition.” He snorted. If growing beer cans in the woods was a farming tradition, then Sean was following fine in Trey’s father’s footsteps.
Aunt Lois’s idea was to show parts of the house and farm “where history had happened,” as if this was Bennett Place and Confederate troops had surrendered to the North en mass instead of Hank Harris’s farm, where beer cans had been the only thing to fall in the line of service. History had definitely happened here and was repeating itself.
Trey should get himself a calendar and circle the date when he was able to sign the land over to Max and never have to worry about it again. He took his cup of dusty, oily coffee outside and sat in one of the rockers on the front porch. The sun was breaking through the clouds, but another storm was threatening on the horizon. There would be rain for his drive home. He took a deep breath. The spring chill cooled his lungs and his anger, but he wished for the silence people imagined in the country instead of the drone of insects and birds. The country was never silent.
The refrigerator truck came into view. Max was home. She turned down the drive. He couldn’t see her face for all her hair and he didn’t think she noticed him sitting in the shadows of the porch as she drove the truck around to park it by the packing shed. He set his coffee on the floor and walked to meet her. When she caught sight of him, a smile burst out on her thin, pale lips. Suddenly, the farm felt like a different world. The house was no longer a place of angry drunks with good Southern heritage, but a fairyland where a Midwestern sprite transformed water, dirt and sun into food.
Only this sprite wasn’t some figment of a drunken peasant’s imagination. Her footsteps kicked up dirt as she walked toward him. Her arms were strong as she wrapped them around his waist. And her lips were warm when he leaned in for a kiss.
When he pulled away, the wind had picked up, speeding in the storm that would hassle his drive north. The small, new leaves on the trees danced in the air. Max’s hair whipped around her neck but didn’t dare cover her face. His sprite controlled the currents of the earth.
“You look pleased with yourself,” he said.
“Where’s Sean?” She looked around, puffed up and excited. “I sold out of vegetables at the market. Sidney and Norma Jean are putting away the crates so I can go account for the money before our brainstorming session.”
“Sean’s in the barn with Kelly.” For one fleeting moment, the temptation to spare Max the knowledge that her employee was hungover when she needed him awake and ready to work passed through his mind. But that would be a momentary kindness, which would exacerbate the problem later. Plus, this Max could take Sean. “He’s sleeping off a hangover.”
A shadow skittered across Max’s face. “He promised me he was cutting back. That it wouldn’t affect his work.”
“You shouldn’t believe the promises of a drunk.”
She made a noise in the back of her throat—of acknowledgment, of agreement, of denial, he couldn’t tell.
“Why are you and Kelly so willing to overlook Sean’s drinking problem?”
“I can’t speak for Kelly, but Sean’s a hard worker. Working the land nourishes him and he nourishes it in return.”
“He’s a drunk. Drunks don’t change.”
The frustration on her face turned to pity when she looked at him. “We all hold the capacity for change, Trey. Some of us just take longer than others.” His arm grew warm as she rubbed her hand against his shirt. “I’ll talk with Sean later. Could you make another pot of coffee? I have some treats from the farmers’ market for us to eat while we’re brainstorming.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
M
AX
GAVE
T
REY
the first-of-the-season carrots to cut while she made a dip for them and the radishes. Neither broccoli nor cauliflower was in season, so her vegetable tray would be on the red side of the spectrum. But that couldn’t be helped. In the winter, when she was sick of greens and sweet potatoes, she’d go to the grocery store for out-of-season vegetables, but not now when she only had to wait another couple weeks for all the spring vegetables and another two months for tomatoes.
She looked out the kitchen window to the willow tree being whipped around by the wind. Another rainstorm. If the storms don’t quit, there will be no tomatoes or squash or eggplant
.
She squelched that thought. Of course it would dry out. This wasn’t Portland.
Trey took the vegetable tray, which also now had apples and grapes on it, and put it on the table. When he returned, Max was cutting up the pastries. “What are those?” he asked.
“Empanadas and pigs in a blanket. Plus some doughnut muffins. I’ve got some cheese, too, and a loaf of bread.”
“All from the farmers’ market?”
“Well, yes. Don’t they have farmers’ markets in D.C.?”
“I’m sure they do.” He looked sheepish for the first time since she’d met him. It was a cute look on him—made his cheeks look rounder and softened his eyes. Boyish, without the anger rolling in him from his childhood. This was how he would have looked with different parents and a different life.
Max pushed those thoughts out of her head, too. While not a religious woman, her mother had always said that God never gave anyone a burden they couldn’t handle, and rather than wasting time wondering if you did the right thing, you should accept the decision and make the best of the future it gave you. Max didn’t have too much argument with her mother’s advice, but accepting past decisions had never been her problem—feeling confident you were making the correct decision in the present was. Like her father, she made pro and con lists in her head. Seemingly unlike her father, Max got trapped in those lists.
Trey had clearly made the best out of his past and he seemed comfortable with the decisions that he was making in the present. To wish a different past on him was to wish a different future on him as well, and that seemed to diminish his successes. Instead, she’d just be glad to catch a glimpse of the boy.
“But you’ve never been to one,” she finished for him.
“I eat out a lot and have never seen the need.”
“You should come to the Durham market with me one weekend.” Max picked up the plate of pastries and set it on the table alongside the vegetables and dip. “See what’s there and how Durham has changed.”
He chuckled. “My aunt Lois sent me an email the other day that said something very similar. She’s still hoping I’ll move back down here. Are you two working together?”
“I’m not...” She stopped herself before she spoke a lie. Was she not trying to convince him that Durham had changed? Even more worrying, was she trying to convince him to move down here? That seemed like a definite no. When he came to Durham, they shared a bed. She enjoyed his company and the decisive way he approached life. She liked how he could walk around her farm in a suit and not get a speck of dirt on him. But their entire relationship was based on his selling her the farm and severing all ties to his North Carolina past.
“Don’t be silly, Trey. Our relationship is temporary—that’s one of its pluses. Besides,” she said, “convincing you to move back to Durham would be self-defeating after I worked so hard to convince you to sell me the farm.”
This time he laughed out loud. “Don’t worry about that. Even if moving to Durham entered my mind, I would never move back to the farm.”
Well, that settles that.
“You should still come to a farmers’ market. At least see the money-making side of this enterprise we’re trying to fund.” She put a light tone in her voice to cover up her irrational disappointment.
A knock on the kitchen door announced the arrival of Sidney and Norma Jean. She gestured at the two interns to sit at the table, smiling and pretending like nothing was wrong.
Nothing
was
wrong
. She had fresh bread, local cheese and her own vegetables to nosh on. Company she enjoyed was seating themselves around a table in a farmhouse that would be hers in December, barring disaster. And they were going to plan a fund-raising campaign so she could fix up the second barn and have two live-in interns through the winter. She’d be able to run a winter CSA and sell at the winter market. Everything was rosy.
“Where are Kelly and Sean?” Sidney asked.
Max checked the watch on her belt loop. “Um. Trey said that Sean needed a nap and Kelly went with him. So I’m not sure if they’re coming back.”
Trey cleared his throat. “That’s right, but I have their notes and ideas here.” He pulled a folded piece of paper from his back pocket and smoothed it out on the table. There were both creases from the folds and creases from where it looked like the paper had been balled up.
She sat at the table next to Trey, trying not to notice the tingle that ran down her spine when his leg brushed against hers, or that their hands grazed against each other when they reached for carrots at the same time. Instead, she got out her pen and concentrated on making sure her notes would be readable later, when she had to turn the brainstorming into something tangible.
Trey repeated what they’d learned from the butcher and the ice cream store owners, both for the interns’ benefit and as a refresher for him and Max. Then he leaned back in his chair and let the interns speak.
Sidney and Norma Jean looked at each other and offered a couple of their ideas for which CSA members might be interested in doing a video. Max took notes and offered her own ideas, but eventually she stopped actively participating and just started watching Trey interact with her two interns.
Despite Sidney being a young woman and Norma Jean being an older one, Max acted as teacher to both of them. Their interaction with Trey was completely different. They’d been hesitant at first, but it didn’t take long for Trey to get them talking. He asked questions, encouraged, poked and challenged and they responded. Max learned more about her interns’ skills outside of farming listening to them talk to Trey than she had in a month of working closely with them.
Norma Jean liked to make woven bracelets on the side and offered some as a gift for donors, which Max thought was a great idea. And Trey pushed Norma Jean even further until she grabbed the notepad from Max and was sketching out how the weaves would reflect the seasons of the farm.
She drew out a pattern inspired by what their squash and melon field would look like in the summer, the vines twining together and little bits of the fruit peeking out from under the large leaves. There was one of the tomato field, with the bright yellows and reds of the tomatoes and purple of the eggplants. And there was one of the fallow field, the crimson clover brilliant in the spring sun. Each bracelet would come with a picture of the farm and a story of the inspiration for the pattern.
The bracelets had been Norma Jean’s idea, but the push for it had come from Trey. Trey had given her intern the encouragement to think bigger and more creatively. To say he was
letting
the interns shine wasn’t accurate, because it wasn’t about them seeking permission—it was about Trey creating the opportunity for success. And he looked pleased with himself, as well.
His shoulders and jaw were relaxed. There was a slight smile on his face that made his eyes bright. He looked like how she felt when she saw the first sprouts of spring, full of the pleasure she experienced knowing that she had created the environment that let the plant do what it did best.
This was not the bitter man of this morning.
This is a man I could love.