When Libby Met the Fairies and her Whole Life Went Fae (26 page)

“You look great,” Howie said in a reassuring voice. “It won’t take long.”

Libby shifted her weight from one foot to another.

“Fifteen minutes, tops, and you’ll be on your way.”

Paul was going to find out about this. “Okay. I guess.” At least this way, she’d have a chance at retaining her dignity. Maybe.

“You have a farm, right?” the camera man asked. “Where’s the crops? How about we set up by your crops?”

“They’re this way,” one of the campers called, and they started up the hill toward her growing beds.

♦ ♦ ♦

It aired at 5:26 p.m. in an “Our Community” feature that should have been titled “Local Weirdballs.”

Paul and Libby watched it at his house. They’d had to change their dinner plans and do take-out instead, of course, because the 15 minutes had turned into over an hour, and they’d missed their 5:30 reservation.

Libby only glanced at Paul once while they watched.

He looked pretty angry. His mouth was set hard and his knuckles were white where he gripped the arm of the couch.

And of course they’d edited out the parts where Libby had said that she’d never intended for this to become public. They used a clip where she said, “Fairies have been with us forever” but edited out the beginning of her sentence where she’d said, “Stories of.” Stories of fairies have been with us forever. The edited clip made it sound like she was claiming seeing fairies was normal, or something, which couldn’t be further from the truth.

Then they knitted together some bits where she’d talked about her encounters to make it sound like that’s all she did, hang out communing with supernatural beings. Then a couple of clips from the campers. One gushed about the high vibrations and another one said she’s pretty sure she almost saw a glimpse of one of the fairies.

No interview with Gina, so that was something positive, anyway.

Then it was over, except the lingering smirk on the face of the anchor when the camera cut back to him, sitting behind his desk.

Paul shut off the television.

“I’m sorry,” she said for about the eightieth time.

He slumped down a bit further, not looking at her.

“I’ve left a voice mail for my realtor. The property will be sold by fall, easy.”

Still no answer.

“You never know. Maybe this will make it more valuable. Maybe I’ll make a real estate killing.”

“Who’d want to own a property crawling with side show freaks?”

Flare of anger. “Are you saying I’m a freak?”

“I didn’t mean you. I meant your fans,” he said, and she let herself be convinced.

She even ended up spending the night, although it didn’t feel quite right . . . on balance she felt more anger at Paul than love at that point.

36

She called Candace, her realtor, again the next morning. Still no answer. It went to voice mail, and this time her message said she was on vacation. For three weeks.

She’d recorded the number of an associate you could call “if this is an emergency.”

But Libby didn’t take down the number. This was okay, she decided. Kind of nice, in fact, to have a slight reprieve. She needed a chance to think things over. Not her decision to sell. That was a done deal, as far as she was concerned. But about what she was going to do in the meantime—whether she was going to maintain the farm as a farm through the rest of the season. Or as much of the season as she was still there.

She spent awhile proofing the new issue of
Skin Tones.
Then,
when she’d finished and emailed it off to Paul, she knew what she wanted to do. Keep on working the farm. Partly because she’d bring in a little more money that way. But partly because, although she was ready to let go of the property, she wasn’t ready to let go of the rest of it . . . the idea of organic farming. And if anything, knowing that her first year would also be her last made it that much more precious.

So she dialed Susan and told her she’d be there next Saturday morning with a load of shell beans.

♦ ♦ ♦

One of the things about organic farming, because it’s so small scale, you have to come up with produce people can’t normally find in the supermarket. That was Libby’s reasoning, anyway, behind planting shell beans. So that next Saturday, 8:00 in the morning, she sat in Susan’s kitchen with a box of plastic zipper bags, a basket of shell beans, still in the shell, and a pile of summer savory—which is a different herb than the winter savory you usually see in the store, by the way, but is a terrific seasoning for this type of bean.

She had a little assembly line going. Several handfuls of the beans—still in their pods—couple sprigs of the herb, and then, on the top, a slip of paper with the cooking instructions and a little piece Libby had written up about shell beans, and how nutritious they are, that sort of thing.

Susan was in the kitchen too, prepping green tomatoes for green tomato jam. Her house was a farmhouse, like Libby’s, only less shabby, and her kitchen was now full of drying herbs, which Libby could smell as she sat there, especially the thyme. Some neighbor kids had already come over to play with her kids—they had a game of kickball going, and were shouting, and every once in awhile a kick would go awry and the ball would
thunk
the side of the house, and Libby was feeling suddenly horribly nostalgic for her own childhood, for what it felt like to wake up on a summer day and the first thing you think of was
let’s get outside and play
, just gulp down some Sugar Pops with cold milk and you’re ready for your day.

“Here,” she said to Susan. “I’m putting aside this batch for you and David to try.”

Susan smiled. “Thanks.”

“Maisey and I had them the night before last. They were delicious.” Libby had cooked. Sautéed shell beans, steamed carrots, and grilled marinated chicken thighs. Heavenly.

Gina hadn’t eaten with them. She’d been off somewhere. With Jade, probably.

Susan put the pot of tomatoes on her stove to start them cooking down and sat opposite Libby at the table, looking at her friend over the pile of unpackaged shell beans.

“So, Libby,” she said. “This whole thing has to have been hellish.”

Libby nodded. “Yeah. But go ahead and put it in your newsletter, Sue. Really. I don’t mind.” Susan and David passed out a newsletter with their weekly deliveries, and her customers had been asking about Libby and the fairy thing. Naturally. Since it had been on television, everybody in Western New York knew about it.

“You’re sure?”

Libby laughed ruefully. “It’s funny. I’d have been mortified a month ago. But now that I’ve been humiliated on local television, an article in a CSA newsletter barely registers.”

“I can imagine.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about it a long time ago.” Libby dropped another package of shell beans into the basket on the floor. “I was really hoping it would just go away . . .”

“Have you considered the possibility that the national press will get wind of this and show up, too?”

Libby nodded. “That’s one reason I decided to sell the place.”

Susan grimaced. “Are you sure you want to do that?”

Libby knew why she asked. The idea of doing anything else but farming was anathema to Susan. But of course, she and David had been doing it for much longer. It was their life. As for Libby—she hadn’t even put real roots down. Not really. Well. Itty bitty shallow ones, maybe. Easy enough to yank out.

“It’s all for the best, Sue.”

Steam started to trickle upwards from the pot of tomatoes. Susan stood up and stirred them with a long handled wooden spoon and Libby caught a whiff of the tomatoes’ sour, pungent greenness.

“Okay,” Susan said. “But there’s something else you should know.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s nothing bad. In fact, I thought it was going to be good news, before you told me you wanted to get out.” She tapped the spoon on the edge of the pot to knock the last drips of hot tomato juice from it and set it down on the stove. “You know the Bedlows? They have that CSA out in Hamlin?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, they’re retiring. Moving to Virginia to be closer to their son.”

Libby knew immediately what this meant. Come next summer, their subscribers would be looking for a new farm to join.

“We’re already getting calls from their customers, asking if they could join our farm next year. And, you know we can take a few. But we could take more if you were going to stay in it.”

“That’s awfully nice of you,” Libby whispered.

“It would probably be enough that you could scrape out a living. Or close to it.”

Thunk.
Ball hit the house again.

“Well, thank you, Susan, for offering. But I’ve made my decision . . . it’s really for the best.”

Libby’s cell phone rang.

“Hi, Gina.” Only her sister could phone her cell, long distance, from her own home phone, so that she’d be charged twice for the same call.

“Is Maisey with you?”

Libby’s stomach was already tight. Now it tightened some more. “No. Why?”

“She’s gone—she’s not here. And all her stuff is gone. Well. Not all of it. But a lot of it. Her clothes.”

Susan had caught on that something was up and was watching Libby’s face. Their eyes met. “Have you talked to Tyler?” Libby said into the phone.

“That’s where she said she was going. Last night. But now he says she left before dinner and he hasn’t heard from her since.”

Left before dinner? Only Gina and Jade had been at Libby’s house when the television crew had shown up . . . which meant Maisey, Tyler, and Alex had been off somewhere . . . Libby wondered what had happened. Had Maisey confronted Tyler, or Alex, or both of them? Were Maisey and Tyler officially done?

“Are you there?” Gina was asking.

“Yeah.” She just had to figure out what to say to Gina about all this. Because while Gina was busy assembling her New Age empire, her daughter was de facto cast off on her own to struggle through a particularly sticky emotional thicket. And Libby was pretty sure Gina was oblivious to it all. So would mentioning it be doing Maisey a favor—by maybe engaging her mother in her emotional life, a little bit? Or would it amount to violating a confidence?

“Look.” Libby spoke glibly to hide her indecision. “I’m sure she’s fine. I’ll be home in about an hour and a half, okay? And we’ll figure out what to do.”

“I’m sure she’s fine,” Gina echoed. “Oh, and a producer has called from some cable talk show. They want to have you on, they think you’ll—”

Libby groaned. “Don’t talk to them, Gina. Don’t talk to—you stop answering my phone. I mean it.”

“They called my phone. My number’s on the website, remember? Since you wouldn’t let us—”

The website. “I can’t believe you sometimes.”

“I told you, Libby. You can’t run away from it.”

Libby’s answer was to hit the “off” button on her cell phone.

Susan gave her friend a wryly sympathetic smile. “She’s certifiable, isn’t she?”

“She’s all over me for running away, as she puts it. Meanwhile, Maisey is having boyfriend troubles and has gone missing.”

“Oh, dear.”

“Yeah.”

“So where’d she go? Do you know?”

As a matter of fact, Libby had a pretty good idea where she’d gone. All she needed to figure out was how to get to her without Gina figuring it out, too.

37

Even though she hadn’t done it lately, Libby was still pretty good at climbing out of her dining room window. It helped that it opened a bit farther than the first time she’d used it. Plus she’d stashed a little stool on the ground below. So when she dangled from the window, she searched for the stool with her feet before she let go. A lot easier than dropping into thin air.

Once she was outside, she stood for a moment, listening.

Crickets, again. There were tree crickets now that it was past midsummer, trilling musically, with the field crickets playing percussion. And faintly, the sound of the campers talking around their bonfire in the front yard.

It was also late enough in the summer that the nights were getting chilly. Too late, Libby realized she probably should have brought a jacket. But climbing back into the window was a lot harder that climbing out, and more likely to make enough noise that she’d wake Gina.

It was bad enough that Libby had to wait well past midnight for her sister to turn in. Gina was worried about Maisey, she said. Odd, considering that she made it a point never to worry about Maisey. But Libby guessed Gina liked the idea of being worried.

Libby started up the hill, and on cue, her heart began to pound. The truth is, she didn’t relish the thought of making her way through the woods, at night, by herself. But she had no choice. If she tried to go down by the road, she’d have to pass the campers. She had no choice.

Ahead of her, a three-quarter moon was untangling itself from the treetops so it could head up the eastern sky.

♦ ♦ ♦