“Don’t blame my dad for that.”
She blinked. “Did you just excuse your father for something?”
Trey snorted. “I guess I did. But my dad hated hippies and anything he associated with hippies, including pot. He’s never forgiven them for, well, for the sixties.”
“He had gotten better. At least—” she had to be honest here “—he got better about some things and learned to shut up about the rest.”
A grunt came over the phone. “Tell me what you plan to do about Sean.”
“I thought you didn’t want to argue about him.”
“I don’t. But I think you need someone to talk to. I can give advice without arguing.” He paused. “I think.”
With a smile, Max told him. Trey made all the right noises. He clucked and hmmed and she could feel him nodding from five hours away. Finally, when she’d laid out all her staffing problems, he said, “You’ll figure it out. No matter what I think, you need to feel that you made the right decision.” The struggle in his voice was clear, but she appreciated his effort to lend her support and not criticism.
“Maybe I should fire Sean.” She shrugged at Ashes, who was too busy sleeping to concern himself with her conversation. “I
can
function with only two interns.” She would work from sunup to sundown, but it was possible.
“Maybe.” Disappointment pinched. Had she meant the words as a test of Trey’s faith in her? “But the question isn’t whether you can, but whether you should.” There was a pause. “Do you know what I imagine when I picture you?”
“Mud and red hair?”
His laugh was full and hearty enough to travel to Durham and swell her heart without the help of a phone line. “Specifically, yes, though not always the mud. Sometimes freckles and the hair. Sometimes your hair, the fields and no mud and no clothes.”
She leaned her head back in the recliner and pictured that, too. There was a nice flat spot between the first and second fields, down by the ponds. She could ignore the chiggers and ticks if she let her mind come back to that image tonight. And she’d include a picnic....
Then she shook her head clear. This was why a relationship with Trey was risky. So long as she could tell herself this was a time-limited fling, she could hold herself steady. But as it grew to mean more to her, Max knew she was just holding her heart out, waiting for it to be crushed. “Okay. Besides the red hair, what do you see?”
“A woman who stood on
my
property and dared me to question her place.”
Was that what she had been doing?
The temptation to prevaricate, to be humble at his words, gushed into the room. Max ignored the flood. “Then I will dare Sean to disobey me. And if he leaves, I will hire someone else.”
“That’s the woman I remember. She’s a bit foolish because she still believes in Big Ten basketball, but she stands by her pronouncements, and I admire that.”
Max got up from the recliner, calmer than she’d been when she sat down. “I have to cook dinner and if I stay on the phone with you, I’ll just get a big head.”
“You could give me a big head.”
She snorted. “You need practice with your dirty talk.”
“I can’t practice on the politicians. They don’t appreciate it, at least not from me.”
“You’ll be down this weekend. You can practice on me.” That was enough future for now.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
I
F
T
REY
WAS
going to be in a relationship with a farmer, he was either going to have to start waking up when the sun winked at the horizon or get used to waking up alone. No lazy weekend-morning sex with Max so long as she was up and out the door to be ready for the farmers’ market when it opened at eight in the morning.
Relationship?
The word flashed in his head before he could stop it. If this ended in December as they’d both agreed, then it wasn’t a
relationship
in the heavy sense of the word. When her Kickstarter was over and he had sold her the land, they’d have to redefine whatever it was they were doing. He didn’t know how they could maintain a long-distance relationship when they both understood that neither would move, but he also knew he wouldn’t want this to be over with the new year.
However this relationship ended, he was going to be awake tomorrow morning for morning sex—even if he had to set an alarm and bring the coffeepot into the bedroom.
In the kitchen, his coffeepot was out, along with a bag of coffee and the grinder. A Post-it stuck on it read, “I thought about making coffee, but I didn’t know how much to use. There’s my swill on the counter if you want it. Breakfast at the market.”
He smiled. Tonight, he’d prepare the coffee and the first one up would only have to press a button for something other than swill. Maybe he’d even be awake enough to bring Max coffee in bed.
* * *
T
REY
HAD
NEVER
been to a farmers’ market in D.C., so he hadn’t known what to expect. He had figured there’d be people, but the crowds were a surprise. So were the food trucks and the woman selling yarn. He knew Durham’s food scene had boomed, and that small farming was giving new life to North Carolina’s agricultural economy. But this was not just new life.
Bounty
was the word that came to mind.
If he had stayed in North Carolina, could he have been part of this dramatic shift in his hometown? Trey scratched at the back of his neck. He couldn’t have stayed. If he had stayed...
Stopping at a booth that sold pies distracted him from the question. He bought several empanadas, a trio of pigs in a blanket, those tasty doughnut muffins and a whole lemon chess pie that would be delicious with some of Max’s fresh strawberries. Then his wallet was almost empty of cash. He shouldn’t have blown all his money at one booth when he could also see cheese and meat sellers down the aisle.
“Trey Harris? Is that you?”
The unknown voice surprised him, and he turned in a full circle to find its source. His high school girlfriend was walking toward him with a baby on one hip and another child holding her hand. His mind tracked all the ways she looked different than she had when he’d last seen her between their first and second years of college. She’d gained some weight, her hair was now cut to just below her ears and the blond had darkened to nearly brown. But her brown eyes were still shining and her smile was still warm. She looked happy, and prettier than he remembered.
“Patty, how are you?” He stuck out his hand for a shake and was instead enveloped into a hug. She smelled like baby powder and Irish Spring soap. The baby didn’t seem to mind being squeezed between them.
“I
was
fine. Now I’m flabbergasted. I never thought I’d see the day when Trey Harris walked around the Durham Farmers’ Market. Isn’t there a force field at the border that keeps you in Virginia?”
“Hah.” His laugh was hollow, but Patty didn’t notice. “Dad died. I’m selling the farm.”
“That red-haired woman farms his land, doesn’t she? Max’s Vegetable Patch? I have some friends who get their CSA from her.”
“That’s the one. If everything works out, Max will own the land and your friends can continue to get their CSA from her. In fact, she’s going to be launching a Kickstarter in September and it would be great if they all donated money.”
Patty listened to his sales pitch with a half smile on her face and promised to come by for the farm tour in September. Before she continued on with her shopping, her eyes softened and she said, “I’m sorry about your dad.”
“Thanks” was all he could muster up. Then he carried his largesse to Max’s booth before Patty could say anything else.
When he came up to the booth arrayed with spring vegetables, Max was weighing some carrots and Sean was giving someone their change. “Oh,” she said when she saw him, “did you buy us some treats from Scratch?”
Trey passed his bags over and Max set them in the back of the truck. After she and Sean had rung up a few more customers, Max gave her intern some cash and sent him off for some coffee to go with their breakfast. “You can sell vegetables while Sean and I eat our breakfast.”
“Where are the other two?”
“Sidney and Norma Jean?” She put another pint of peas out to replace one that had just sold. “It’s supposed to rain this afternoon so they’re trying to finish the last of the weeding before the ground gets wet. When you hoe in wet soil all you do is push the weeds over.”
“And him?” Trey gestured with his head in the direction Sean had gone.
“I can keep an eye on him better this way. I apologized to Kelly for dragging his boyfriend out of bed so early on a Saturday morning, but we both agreed it was in Sean’s best interest. He was red-eyed this morning, but he didn’t smell like a distillery floor, so I think he was just tired.”
“And,” he lowered his voice, “the pot?”
Sean returned with their coffee, so Max didn’t get a chance to answer his last question. She and Sean sold more vegetables and talked with customers about the farm or what variety of carrot or radish they were buying. Trey chatted up people in line, asking them about the market and what they planned to do with their produce. A couple people looked at Trey in his dark jeans and dress shirt and seemed to know he was decoration. They waited for Max or Sean to answer their questions, though he did take money from a few customers. He scoped out a couple people Max seemed especially friendly with who also had enough presence that he thought they’d do well on a video for the Kickstarter. At his urging, Max wrote down their names so she would remember to ask them when the launch was closer.
The small part of him that was still in D.C., still trying to get the education bill passed, whispered,
Ask everyone to call their senator and congressman about the bill,
but Trey silenced the voice before it got any traction. Besides coming to North Carolina for Max, he was doing it to get away from the education bill—he was sick of it. The Triangle reps to the House were all for the thing and the senators were entrenched in their positions—one yay and one nay—so it would be a waste of breath, even if he was willing to dirty Max’s own campaign with his.
Not that anyone would listen to him talk about anything other than Max’s farm right now. Some of the people bought their vegetables and left, but those who stayed to chat were clearly interested in Max and the farm. When he’d researched how to sell Max’s Kickstarter, he’d quickly discovered that the local food movement was plastered with the adage “know your farmer.” Max’s customers knew and loved her.
“When do you want to start on the video?” Trey asked after the crowds had cleared from the market and they were eating their empanadas in between loading their stuff.
“Ugh,” she said with her face wrinkled in disgust. “I know I have to do the video, but I’m not looking forward to it.”
“Contact a couple people from your CSA and we’ll do their video first. Invite them to the farm for lunch. Give them a tour and we’ll film them talking about how much they love you.” Convincing people to laud a business whose product they liked and business ethic they believed in sounded like the easiest thing in the world.
“The McKenzies’ll do it for sure,” Sean said. “They get a regular CSA delivery on Wednesdays and buy vegetables every Saturday.”
Max swallowed her bite of food and wiped her hands on her jeans before speaking.
“I’m going to whine once and then I’ll put on my big girl britches and do it, but I wish I could just grow vegetables and people would buy them. I like selling carrots. I hate selling myself.”
“Done?”
She wrinkled her nose again. Some of her freckles disappeared, but most seemed to grow bigger as the wrinkles linked one freckle with another. “Yes,” she said finally. “I’ll keep the rest of my whine to myself.”
“You can share it with me, but I’m not going to sympathize.” Trey collected their food wrappers into the paper bag, which Sean took out of his hand before heading off in search of a trash can.
Max watched her intern march off and shrugged. The man wavered between attempted friendliness and standoffishness. It was like there was some barrier he was trying to break through—probably a thick layer of alcohol.
Max turned her attention back to Trey. “I don’t really want sympathy, because sympathy might convince me not to do it, but I don’t want the nerves bundled up inside me, either.”
“I’ll come down for the video and we’ll do it together. I can’t come down next weekend, or the weekend after that, but I can come down... When is that?”
“Memorial Day?”
“Great. I’ll drive down after work on Friday and teach you to make a sale on Saturday. You can practice selling things to me all weekend. I’ll even play hard to get,” he said with a waggle of his eyebrows.
She gave him a long, hard look before she answered, “Sure.”
He hadn’t expected to have to sell her on his help.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
M
AX
SAT
ON
the folding chair under the roof of the pack house. The day was sunny, with a nice breeze, both of which should help dry out her fields after a week of straight rain. At her feet were crates and crates of onions to clean, which would then go in the greenhouse to dry out for storage.
She tossed an onion into the crate before looking at the watch on her belt loop. Sean was two hours late. The other two interns were out in the fields, trying to hoe the weeds out from under the tomatoes, but Max had assigned Sean to onion-prepping duty. Despite his preference for being out in the fields, she wanted to talk with him about how his meetings were going.
The past couple weeks Sean seemed to have blossomed—as much as a silent, stoic man can. He talked a little while working, even with Sidney. The drinking seemed to have been the cause of most of his fights with Kelly, because those had settled down, too. Max was beginning to see the engagement with farming that she’d witnessed in Sean’s interview.
But now he was two hours late, and she was assuming the worst.
Living on the same property as her workers was fine when they didn’t have a private life. She’d not really considered how she would handle the issue of employee privacy when they were living on
her
land and working on
her
farm. She’d just been excited to be able to offer the barn for housing. More convenient for the intern. Cheaper for her.
She cut the brown bits of stalk and skin off the onion and tossed it to the side. She didn’t usually have to wish that she’d overthought something and considered all the negative possibilities, but this was one time where she wished that she had. If she’d considered what to do with an alcoholic intern earlier, maybe she wouldn’t be sitting here cleaning onions, obsessively checking her watch.
Sean could legitimately be sick, have a summer cold, food poisoning or a migraine. Max didn’t want to wish illness on anyone, but illness was better than what she was afraid she would find when she knocked on his door. Another onion went into the crate, this time with more force than the vegetable deserved.
It
hadn’t done anything wrong.
If he’s not here by the time this crate is empty, then I will confront him.
She looked down into the crate of onions. There were only two left. Her immediate thought was to have the rule she’d just set for herself apply to the next crate, but she dismissed her cowardliness. While part of the attraction of small farming had been the smaller number of employees and less required management of people, she was still Sean’s boss and she needed to act like it. She rushed through the last two onions, tossed her knife in the empty bin and headed for the barn.
Out of the shade of the packing shed’s roof, the sun was warming the moist air. Max stopped her march to the barn to look up into the sky. Today was the first day they’d been able to be out in the fields hoeing weeds, and the clear sky teased that they might have a sunny day tomorrow, too. Which meant everyone would be out working on a Saturday, trying to get as much done as possible while the soil was dry. “Make hay while the sun shines,” as the saying goes. Only Max needed to “hoe weeds after three sunny days.”
And two days of sun wouldn’t be enough to dry out her flooded cornfields. And she’d have to wait for the spent kohlrabi, broccoli and cauliflower fields to dry out before turning the soil under to prep it for planting. Again.
The rain had ruined all their work of last week.
But at least they’d managed to get some onions harvested and out to dry. The air wafting out of the greenhouse was tinged with the smell of onions. By late afternoon, if she could see the building, she’d be able to smell the onions; the heat of the sun tended to make them pungent. When she passed the farmhouse, Ashes came out from behind the side porch and followed her to the barn. He was less willing to work on the sunny days and had so far spent today napping in the shade.
Max knocked on the barn door. Ashes sat at her feet, his tail swooshing on the wood of the barn’s porch, and looking at the door with a big, doggy grin. Sean was one of Ashes’s favorite people. Though when the door opened, even her dog looked shocked. Months’ worth of sun couldn’t cover up the sick pallor of Sean’s skin, and his entire body had the tightness of someone trying desperately to pretend they didn’t feel like shit.
She and Ashes both sniffed the air, though for different reasons. Whatever her dog smelled, he’d keep to himself, but she didn’t smell any alcohol. “Can I come in?” she asked.
He nodded once then stepped back. She hadn’t been in the barn since March. When she’d lived here, the barn had been spare. Now it was Spartan. The same furniture she’d used was in all the same places, but any softness was gone. Sean had no decoration, no photos of his family, no detritus lying around the house. Everything was neat as a pin and just as comfortable looking.
He collapsed into the recliner, his body contracting like he wanted to curl up into a ball, but he straightened himself out and managed to look like he was sitting normally—if she ignored the strain that sitting obviously caused him. He shivered in the warm room, but didn’t get up to get a sweatshirt or pull a blanket over himself.
“I have to poke around for alcohol.”
He nodded again, still not having said a word since she’d knocked on his door. And she did feel bad. Everything about Sean bawled out sickness, but she needed to make sure. After all, hangovers were a type of sickness, too.
Ashes came over to her intern and rested his chin on the man’s knee, both in support and in hopes of a pet. He reached out his hand as if to scratch behind Ashes’s ears, but the effort seemed to be too much. His hand fell through the air, smacking her dog on the forehead. Ashes grunted, but didn’t yelp. He moved his head back and forth under Sean’s hand, content to pet himself.
She opened cabinet doors and the refrigerator, rummaged around in both the kitchen and bathroom trash and went upstairs to the loft to look around. It didn’t look like the bed had been slept in, but that didn’t surprise her. The bathroom was downstairs, and when she’d been sick in this barn, she hadn’t wanted to risk the stairs, either. She didn’t see any evidence of alcohol, nor did she smell booze lingering in the air. When she came back down the stairs, both Sean and Ashes had their eyes closed, though Sean’s were closed in pain and Ashes’s in contentment. Somewhere, her intern had found enough energy to move one finger and scratch behind the dog’s ears.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
Sean didn’t open his eyes. “Stomach flu, I guess.” Normally, his voice was quiet. Now his voice was weak.
“When did you get sick?”
“Last night.”
“Have you had anything to eat?”
“I couldn’t keep anything down.”
“What about something to drink?”
“Water.” It looked like it took effort to open his eyes. “I couldn’t keep that down.”
“What did you eat?”
“The only thing I had.” He gave her a little smile, then stopped when it clearly pained him. “Pringles. Sour-cream-and-onion flavor.”
Her sympathy came out in a shudder and a laugh. “That must’ve been terrible when it came back up.”
His answering laugh came out like a cough and his body contracted on the recliner. When he recovered enough to straighten himself out he said, “It wasn’t great.”
“I have ginger ale at the house and some crackers. I don’t think I have saltines, but oyster crackers should do. I’ll bring those over. Can you make it upstairs to the bed?”
He nodded weakly.
“You head up there. I’ll bring what I’ve got over and get you a trash can. Then I have to finish the onions.”
“If you bring some here, I can help.”
“And get your sick self all over my produce? No, thank you. Plus, the smell would make you barf faster than anything.”
His smile was more robust than any response she’d gotten from him so far. He pushed himself out of the chair and shuffled past her to the stairs. Ashes followed. “Do you mind if I keep the dog?” he said, one hand on the banister and one on the wall. He swayed a bit, but didn’t fall.
“Keep the dog. I’ll come over before lunch to let him out and check on you.”