CHAPTER THREE
BECKETT
“Can I just say,” Jeremy Roughman leans up against the back of the tractor, sunlight beginning to wink over the horizon. I hear his voice and it’s a challenge for me not to turn around and go right back to my cabin on the edge of the property. “I’m real excited you decided to bring me on as an apprentice.”
I did not decide to bring him on as an apprentice. Sheriff Jones cornered me in the paper products aisle of the pharmacy and lightly threatened me with crosswalk duty for the elementary school until I agreed to take him on. Apparently, Jeremy can’t keep himself out of trouble for more than thirty-seven seconds and if Ms. Beatrice catches him making out with another girl in her alleyway, she’s likely to do something that requires jail time.
“I know his parents would be appreciative,” Dane had said, and I almost flung my body into the paper towel shelf. “He just needs a little direction.”
So here we are, giving direction. Dawn crawls across the sky in bright pink and burnished gold, a brilliant brushstroke of cloud through the center of it. I can still feel the bite of winter this early in the morning and I’m grateful for my thermal shirt and the cat curled up against my neck, dozing with her chin on my shoulder.
I glance up at Barney, perched in the driver’s seat of the tractor—his old, wide-brim hat pulled low over his eyes. He smirks at me around a mouthful of donut.
“Real excited, boss,” he says. He shoves fried dough and powdered sugar into his mouth. “Could hardly sleep last night on account of it.”
I roll my eyes and reach for the shovel propped up against the tire. For all his needling, Barney makes my job easier. He’s a walking encyclopedia of crops and soil, plant-eating diseases and … the 1990 Baltimore Orioles roster. I’ve got no use for the last bit, but the rest of it comes in handy. I’ve been working with him ever since I took over my dad’s shift at the produce farm almost two decades ago. When Stella recruited me and I gave my notice, he gave his, too. Patted me on the back and told me he couldn’t let me screw up a whole new farm by myself.
I hand the shovel to Jeremy and he grips it between thumb and forefinger, holding it away from his letterman jacket. I didn’t even realize they still hand those things out, but Inglewild has always felt a little frozen in time. Prancer echoes a plaintive meow right into my ear and I rub my knuckles over her soft head.
“We’re gonna chisel today,” I tell Jeremy.
“Dude, I can’t chisel something with a shovel,” Jeremy tries to hand it back to me. “I thought I’d like … advise on placement or something. Give you a fresh perspective on the aesthetics of the place.”
I summon my patience.
“The aesthetics of the place.”
He flips his hair back and tips his chin up. “Isn’t that why you brought me in?”
I did not … bring him in. I was conned in front of the paper towels. I fold my arms over my chest and lean against the side of the tractor. Prancer takes the opportunity to hop from my shoulder to the top of the cab, settling into the divot next to the seat. She likes to ride with Barney in the mornings and wander back home when she’s ready.
I do my best to ignore Barney shaking with silent laughter atop the tractor.
“What do you know about farming, Jeremy?”
He combs his hand through his hair and squints at the horizon. “I know a bit.”
“Let’s hear it then.”
“Well,” he shuffles his feet, puts his hands in his jacket pockets only to pull them out again. “Obviously, you plant things.”
“Obviously.”
“And nourish them.”
“Sure.”
“I actually have some ideas about your growth patterns. How do you feel about canna—“
“Do not finish that sentence,” I growl. I’ve heard enough weed jokes to last a lifetime. I jerk my head to the back of the tractor. “Maybe we can talk about growth patterns next week.” Barney makes a choking noise. “In the meantime, we have a tradition. The newest member of the crew is on rock duty. You’re going to follow after Barney and scoop rocks out of the topsoil, toss them in that bucket on the side. It’ll make it easier for us to disc and then plant in the next week or so.”
I was on rock duty every summer for four years at Parson’s Produce. Did it myself here when it was just Barney and me getting the fields ready. It’ll be a nice change not to do it this time. I glance at Jeremy’s shoes.
Brand new Nikes, pristine white.
A twinge of guilt pulls at my gut. It’s not exactly his fault he didn’t know what to expect. I remember my first day at the farm when I was a kid, too skinny and out of my element, stumbling to keep up with everyone around me. It was like trying to jump into a dance midway through without hearing the damn music. I remember laughter when my feet slipped in the dirt behind the tractor, the sun beating down on my neck and blistering my skin.
“You got a hat, kid?”
He shakes his head, still staring at the shovel in his hand. I dig into one of the packs slung over the seat and pull out an old baseball cap, faded and ripped on one side. I toss it to him. It hits him in the chest and then falls to the dirt. He looks at it like he’d rather die than put it on his perfectly styled hair.
I shrug my shoulders and Barney snorts a laugh, hitting the ignition and putting the tractor into gear. “You seeing your pop tonight for dinner?” Barney shouts over the rumble of the engine.
I nod. We have family dinners every Tuesday night, a tradition for as long as I can remember.
“Tell him I say hello. And he owes me one hundred and forty-seven dollars after our last poker night.”
I roll my eyes and wave him off. Barney and my dad have been playing poker together every Saturday night for about as long as we’ve been having family dinners. Pretty sure neither of them has ever settled the debt between them.
Jeremy stares mournfully at me as Barney starts the slow trek towards the edge of the west fields, the wheels of the tractor bumping along. It’s slow work, but important, and we’ll spend the next couple weeks getting the fields ready for the shipment of saplings from the north. The trees we plant won’t be ready for at least five years, but that’s the nature of a tree farm.
It’s all about patience.
“Where are you going?” Jeremy yells across the field, stopping to scoop the hat from the ground. If he doesn’t get himself moving, he’ll be shoveling rocks until next week.
“To take a look at the aesthetics,” I shout back.
There’s plenty to occupy myself with while the fieldwork gets underway. Stella and I decided after our first season that we wouldn’t rely solely on Christmas trees to see us through the year. In the offseason, we experiment with several different crops. Corn and pumpkins in the fall. Berries in the summer.
Bell peppers, apparently, in the spring.
Salvatore meets me near the barn as I make my way over to the produce fields, a sunny grin on his weathered face. He claps me once on the shoulder and guides me toward the massive sliding doors instead of the fields.
“Got a little hiccup,” he tells me, that grin still stretched across his face. Last summer we had a rainstorm that turned all of the fields into gaping mud pits. Two steps off the tractor and he had slipped, covered head to toe in thick sludge. He had smiled so wide, I could only see the white of his teeth through the dirt. I’m half-convinced his face got stuck that way. I’ve never seen someone smile so much in my damn life.
“I don’t know how many hiccups I can handle this season, Sal.”
“Bah,” he gives me a sly look as we slip into the barn. “I think you’ll like this one.”
Susie, one of the farmhands that helps with collection, offers a wave from the far corner of the open space. Half of the barn is used for visiting Santa during the holiday season, the other half for storage. She’s set up right by the divider in the middle, her arms cradling … something.
“Did you find more kittens?” I ask. Last fall, Stella discovered a whole family of cats tucked behind one of the giant wooden nutcrackers. All four of them live with me now, a tiny army of soft fur and obstinate opinions about the quality of my sheets. I wake up every morning with at least one of them curled up on my chest, purring away.
“Better,” Sal tells me. As I get closer, I see a tiny puff of yellow. Susie opens up the towel she’s holding and tucked inside is a duckling, hardly bigger than the palm of my hand, a streak of dark fluff right on top of its head. It gazes up at me and lets out the tiniest little squeak, its wings ruffling slightly at the disruption to its cocoon.
“Ah, shit.” The damn thing is cute as hell. “You think it was abandoned?”
“Looks that way,” Sal rocks back on his heels. “Haven’t seen any trace of mom.”
I don’t know much about ducks, but I’d assume ducklings can’t survive long without their mom close by. I stare down at the little guy and rub my knuckles against my jaw. “I’ll take him into town. Swing by Dr. Colson’s and see what can be done.”
I hold out my hands for the bundle. I try to avoid town if I can help it, but I’ve got to place an order at the hardware store anyway. Christopher, the owner, refuses to do anything over the phone and won’t answer if I call too many times. I can drop this little guy off at the vet, place the order, and be back before lunch.
The duckling squeaks up in my general direction, its bill nudging once at the back of my hand. I stroke my finger over the top of its head, its downy fuzz impossibly soft.
I try to gather the threads of my restraint as we gaze at one another. Naturally, my brain has already started making plans. We have some chicken wire in the greenhouse. I could loop it around the edges of the kitchen. Make a fence.
I sigh as I watch the little guy doze in the safety of my hands. I can’t adopt another animal. I don’t know the first thing about ducks.
You didn’t know the first thing about cats, either. That didn’t stop you.
The duckling makes a small squeak and nuzzles further down in my hand. I sigh.
I will not adopt another animal.
I hear the click of a camera and look up to see Sal and his damn smile angling his phone at me. I frown and he clicks again, a chuckle under his breath.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Stella’s calendar idea,” he tells me with a laugh. Stella has been pushing the idea of a farm calendar featuring only pictures of Luka and I out in the fields for close to a year now, an attempt to try and boost profits. Needless to say, I am not on board with it. “You’ve kind of got a Snow White vibe going on, my friend.”
I head out the door without another word.
“Well,” Dr. Colson holds the duckling in the palm of his hand, nudging his glasses up his nose with his knuckles. “It’s a duckling, alright.”
I shift on my feet and fight the urge to roll my eyes. I am pushing my capacity for socialization today and it’s not even noon. I still have dinner with my family tonight and my sisters aren’t exactly known for their calm and quiet demeanor.
“Sure is,” I manage instead, clenching my teeth when Dr. Colson peers up at me from above his glasses. He swivels on his chair and places the duck carefully back into the cardboard box I bundled him up in. The little guy quacks and waddles closer to me, settling down in a corner and mouthing at my hand with his tiny bill.
Do not name him, I tell myself. If I give him a name, I’ll bring him home, and I’m not sure a pack of kittens and a baby duck would make good roommates. Don’t you dare give him a name.
“I’ll make some calls and see if there is a rescue nearby that will take him in, but ducks are tricky. He’ll have to be accepted by a new mother.”
I breathe in deep through my nose. “And if he isn’t?”
“If he isn’t, I’m afraid the little guy won’t make it. Not unless someone adopts him as a pet.”
He gives me a significant look.
Fuck. “Is that a possibility?”
Dr. Colson nods. “With the proper care and attention, absolutely. It’ll be time-consuming at first, but ducks can make great pets.” He looks up at me with a sly grin. “Farms are a great environment.”
“Not sure farms with a family of bloodthirsty cats are a great environment,” I grumble. Prancer brought me three mice last weekend. She lined them up in front of my door like a sacrificial offering. It was both disgusting and endearing.
“Remind me to send you one of those Toks all the kids are sharing,” Dr. Colson says. He stands with a wince and claps me on the back. His knees have been bothering him since he turned sixty. “Sheila at the front is always showing me new ones. I think there’s a whole account dedicated to cats and ducks.”
I wouldn’t know. I have no interest in social media.
I haven’t looked Evelyn up again, not since that first time. Not even after she posted her now-viral video of Luka and Stella pretending to love each other while also desperately pretending not to love each other. Luka had been so pleased with his internet celebrity, he walked around autographing everything within reach for weeks. The third time he signed a potato with a sharpie, I snapped the marker in half right in front of his face.
“I can’t adopt a duck,” I say. Maybe if I vocalize my intentions, they’ll manifest. My sister Nessa has told me that no less than seventy-five times. I sigh. “You’ll keep him here for a bit? Give me a call when you hear from the rescue?”
Dr. Colson nods. The duck lets out a quack. I pinch the bridge of my nose.
I cannot adopt this duck.
“Are you adopting a duck?”
“Fuck,” I curse under my breath as Nova pops up in my window. She hops up on the side bar and loops her arm through my open window before I even manage to slow my truck to a stop. At five-foot-nothing and wearing her standard head to toe black, it’s a wonder I didn’t run her right over.
She pokes me once in the cheek as I shift into park. I swat her hand away and grab the pie from the passenger seat.
“How do you know about the duck?”
Do not name the duck. You will not name the duck.
“The phone tree.”
The Inglewild phone tree is only supposed to be used in case of emergency, but in the last six months, it’s turned into a town gossip distribution chain. Two weeks ago, Alex Alvarez from the bookstore called to tell me Sheriff Jones and Matty were seen picking out tulip bulbs at the greenhouse for their back garden. When I asked him why the fuck he was calling me about tulip bulbs, he muttered phone tree and hung up.
I did not continue the phone tree that day. I haven’t had a single phone call since. I’m assuming I’ve been removed.
“Is he adopting a duck?” Harper shouts from the door, hanging over the banister on the front porch, a dish towel slung over her shoulder and a wooden spoon in her hand. I climb out of my truck with a sigh, careful not to send Nova flying off the door.
“I’m not adopting a duck.” I sling my arm over Nova’s shoulder and ruffle her hair as we walk up the ramp that leads to the porch. Some of the boards creak under my boots and I pause, considering. I reach out and push at the handrail, the wood wobbling slightly under my grip.
“I’ll help you fix it this week, if you want,” Nova tells me, urging me forward and gently guiding me towards the house. She probably knows I’m about three seconds away from getting the toolbox out of my truck and reconstructing the whole thing. Guilt pricks at me. It’s been too long since I’ve asked my parents if they need anything.
“Stop,” Harper admonishes as soon as we step onto the porch. She smacks me once with her spoon. Of all my sisters, she’s the one that looks most like me. Dark blonde hair, blue-green eyes, an almost permanent frown. She’s two years younger but she might as well be my twin. “You’re beating yourself up before you even enter the house. That must be a new record.”
“No. Remember Christmas Eve two years ago? He forgot the stick of butter mom asked him to bring and he almost took out the mailbox heading to the grocery store. He didn’t even make it out of the driver’s seat before he started beating himself up.”
“Or when he forgot about Nessa’s dance recital. I thought he was going to sink through the floor.” Harper’s lips curl up at the edges and her gaze cuts to me. “You didn’t even miss it. You just got the date wrong. You were feeling guilty about potentially missing something.”
They dissolve into a fit of giggles and I push through the both of them into the house. It doesn’t bode well for me that the teasing has already started. I can usually count on Nova to be on my side but not tonight, apparently.
Garlic and rosemary drift down the hallway from the kitchen as I toe off my boots. Fresh baked bread and a hint of honey. I can hear the low murmur of my mom and Nessa chatting, my dad wheeling backward in his chair to poke his head around the corner as Nova and Harper follow me in.
“You adopting a duck?”
I roll my eyes and shrug out of my jacket. I contemplate returning to my truck and asking my mom to bring dinner out to me. She probably would. Nova loops her hand around my wrist before I can turn for the door and tugs me down the hallway into the kitchen, directing me to the island in the center. Her grip is scary strong for someone so small. She manhandles me until my arm is exposed under the light, the cuff of my sleeve rolled up so she can see the ink that decorates every inch of my skin.
“Can I get a drink first?”
“No.”
She doesn’t bother looking up as she traces one of the vines that starts at my elbow and curls down over my wrist. She added some flower buds to it about two weeks ago, and they’re almost fully healed.
“They look good,” she tells me, flipping my wrist and poking around at my skin with almost clinical detachment. She started tattooing me when she was sixteen and decided she wanted to be an artist. She apprenticed at a shop down the coast, but no one would let a teenager practice on their skin. So I volunteered. Every tattoo on my arms is by her, an interesting progression from my left arm to my right. Now that she’s one of the most sought after artists on the East Coast, she’s been going back over her work, adding detail and cleaning up old missteps.
“I want to fix this one,” she tells me, poking at a tiny oak leaf on the inside of my wrist. The edges are slightly blurred from too much pressure from the gun, a wobble in the crisp lines. I pull my arm out of her grip and roll my cuff back down.
“Nope.” I like that one. It was one of the first she ever did, and she had been so fucking proud when she pressed that cool wipe over my skin, wiping away excess ink. It’s a good memory, and I don’t want to change it. “You can harass me into other changes after pie.”
“And you can come say hello to your mother,” my mom says over her shoulder, stirring something that smells like cinnamon and honey. I wander over to the stove and press a kiss to the back of her head.
“Hi, mom.” I reach for a sliver of roast carrot from the pan, enjoying the sharp crunch and answering sweetness.
“These from the farm?” I ask. I already know the answer. The carrots are from the farm, and the bread is from Nessa, and the music is a playlist Harper made over the summer, and the delicate bouquet of wildflowers drawn on the back of her arm is by Nova. My dad whittled the spoon she’s using, and this whole kitchen is filled to the brim with pieces of my family. The love between my parents and for all of us, mixing together with thyme and butter and pie until all the tension I usually feel in a room full of people is back in the hallway, shoved in the pocket of my coat. I’ll pick it back up later, I’m sure, but for now I’m settled.
I’m home.
Food is served and conversation dissolves within minutes into a spirited discussion of some dating show, the volume of my sisters’ and dad’s voices rising until they’re all yelling over each other.
When my dad first had his accident, he sat in the dark of his bedroom all day every day, caught in a depression that was almost as crippling as the fall that paralyzed him from the waist down. Nessa started sitting in the room with him, right at the edge of the bed. She’d turn on some show about housewives behaving badly and he’d pretend not to be interested.
Now they have weekly viewings.
Harper glances at me from across the table as Nessa shrieks something about chardonnay. “Do you want your earmuffs?”
I nod, grateful she offered and I didn’t have to ask. She tugs open a drawer in the china cabinet behind her and pulls out a fluffy pair of pink earmuffs. I thought Nessa had been making fun of me when she bought them for me three years ago, but she had been insistent that they would help.
I’ve always struggled with noise. It sets my teeth on edge, makes me feel like needles are pricking at my skin. The earmuffs muffle the sound without wiping it out completely. I can still hear what’s going on around me without an overwhelming wave of tension.
And they never fail to make my mom smile.
I slip them over my head and my chest loosens a bit, able to participate now that the noise has dulled. Nessa has an exhibition coming up in June, her biggest one yet. And apparently Nova has been talking to Stella’s brother, Charlie, about a tattoo of a scorpion on his ass.
I level a glare at her. “Why are you texting Charlie about his ass?”
Nova shrugs, unbothered. “I’m not. He’s texting me about his ass.”
“Alright. Why is he texting you about his ass?”
“Because he wants a scorpion on it. I don’t know.”
Harper keeps to herself throughout dinner, unusually quiet, rearranging her food around and around on her plate. I make a mental note to dig into that later just as my dad launches into his weekly dramatic retelling of the failed wheat crop of 1976. I spear a carrot on my plate and my mind begins to drift.
I picture Evelyn sitting at the table, in the straight backed chair with the flowers carved into the arms, right next to Nessa. I picture her smile and her glowing skin and the way her thumb smoothes over her bottom lip when she’s thinking about what she wants to say, eyes glinting with mischief. Would she laugh at my dad’s stupid jokes? Would she dance with Nessa around the kitchen during clean-up? I can’t stop picturing her in all the places I am.
“Beck? You alright?”
I nod. I’ve got no idea what’s going on in my head lately. A whole lot of nonsense. I need to sleep more or something. I fork a bite of potatoes into my mouth.
“M’fine,” I say.
My dad gives me a skeptical glance and continues to shoot me an entire spectrum worth of concerned looks throughout the rest of dinner. I manage to deflect until the end of the night, when I’m overfull from pie and trying to balance three containers of leftovers. I shrug on my jacket in the hallway and he corners me, his movements eerily quiet despite his wheelchair.
“Beckett.”
“Jesus.” My whole body topples sideways, my elbow landing in the antique clock my mom bought when I was six. One of the containers goes tumbling to the floor. “You need a bell. You scared the shit out of me, dad.”
“Paralyzed or not, I always got the jump on you kids.” He scoops up the Tupperware and balances it on his lap. “Come on, I’ll follow you out.”
I nod in agreement and he squeezes my arm once, a wordless reminder of his dinner question. He’s likely walking me to my car in an effort to interrogate me further, my mom and sisters knowing the futility of trying to get me to talk at the dinner table. Where they prefer brash interrogation, my dad has a more subtle approach.
I follow him out the front porch and down the ramp, frowning when I notice the way his wheelchair jumps over the rickety boards. His hand holds one of the wheels steady while he pivots. He shouldn’t have to maneuver his way up and down this thing.
“I’ll swing by next week and fix it,” I tell him.
He peers over his shoulder at me, his eyes reflecting the light from above the garage. “Fix what?”
“The ramp,” I kick at a board that’s sticking up half-an-inch, edging at the back of his wheelchair. “It’s falling apart.”
“Psh,” he waves his hand. “It’s only like that because I bet your mom I could get up and down in less than thirty seconds. This thing wasn’t built for that kind of torque.” He gives me a look and releases his grip on the wheels, letting his chair coast down the last foot of the ramp. He slips onto the driveway with a soft sound. “Plus, I’ve got arms, don’t I?”
“You do.”
“Good. Then leave my ramp alone. It suits me fine.” He squints up at me, his face screwed up in the same look he always gets when he’s trying to work out a puzzle. Pinched brows, scrunched nose, a downward tilt to his lips. He used to make that same face when Harper would lie to him about her plans for the night, shimmying out her window and sneaking down the road to the bonfire parties instead of studying in her room.
“You doing alright, kiddo?”
I open the passenger side of the truck and a tiny felt mouse falls to the driveway. Half of me expects Cupid or Vixen to come tumbling out after it. Of all of the cats, those two cause the most trouble. Stella found them in one of her kitchen cabinets two weeks ago, pawing through a box of Triscuits.
“I’m good,” I tell him, placing the Tupperware on the floor. I tuck the mouse in my pocket and lean up against the truck. “What’s going on? Everything okay with you?”
He nods, swallows hard, and then tilts his head back to look up at the sky. I follow his gaze and glance up, my eyes immediately landing on Pleiades, a cluster of stars shaped like a question mark. Everything is illuminated tonight, not a cloud in sight. Clear enough that you can see the slight differentiation in color. Pale blue. Crisp white. Bright and shining yellow.
“You wouldn’t shut up about the stars when you were a kid,” my dad laughs, neck still craned back and face turned up. I ignore the stars and look at him instead, watching the way his hands curl around the arms of his chair. “You wanted to go to that space camp, do you remember?”
I do. I saw the commercial and immediately started saving the money I earned around town. I devoured anything and everything about astronauts. I launched a one-man campaign to have a space-themed week during STEM units at the elementary school and I made Nova and Nessa build a spaceship out of old garbage cans in the backyard. I wanted one of those patches they handed out with “Junior Astronaut” stitched on it. I wanted to eat space ice cream.
Stupid stuff. Kid stuff.
But as I got older, I started to look at what I had to study. I took out books from the library on engineering, math—goddamn biological science. School stopped being boring and became a path instead. A challenge.
But I never made it to that camp and I never took a single class on engineering. My dad fell off a ladder while repairing some roof shingles at the produce farm. One of the rails had buckled and the ladder listed to the left, sending my dad to the ground from a fifty-foot drop. A freak accident.
I remember the exact pair of shoes I was wearing when my mom got the call. Red converse with both sets of laces undone, one half off my foot as I sat at the kitchen table and tried to do my English homework. The phone rang twice and my mom answered with a cup of coffee in her hand, the receiver wedged between her shoulder and ear. I remember the small noise she made. A sharp intake of breath. A quiet, where is he? Shattered glass on the kitchen floor.
“What’s this about, dad?”
He heaves a deep breath and rubs his palms over his knees. “I just—“ He swallows around the rest of his sentence and turns from the stars to look at me. “I guess I just want to know if you’re happy.”
“‘Course I’m happy,” I reply. He studies me, looking for the flinch in my words. “What do I have to be unhappy about?”
I love working at Lovelight. I love my cabin on the edge of the grounds and the early, brisk mornings when it’s just me and my breath and the sun crawling up from behind the horizon. Cotton candy skies and the leaves on the trees rustling as sun beams urge them awake. I like the stillness, the quiet. Layla in her bakery, the smell of fresh baked bread twisting through the towering oaks. Stella in her office, paperwork everywhere and a drawer full of pine tree air fresheners she thinks no one knows about. Sal with baskets looped over his arms and Barney on the tractor. Every single person that finds their way there, down the narrow dirt road and around the bend. Through the arches and up the gravel driveway. The big red barn by the road and the rows and rows of trees, waiting for a home.
It is exactly where I’m supposed to be. My hands in the dirt and my feet on the ground. I’ve never doubted that for a second.
Rooted.
“I feel like I made a choice for you, is all. You were fifteen years old, and I—”
I push off the truck and grab his shoulder the way he’s always grabbed mine. I shake him once. “It was my choice,” I tell him.
He puts his hand over mine. Squeezes tight. “You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”