CHAPTER NINE
W
ATCHING
T
REY
STEP
out of his car, his dark jeans crisp and green sweater fresh as spring grasses, was physically painful. Max tried to scoff at the idea of him sitting in the dusty attic in his clothes. She tried to laugh at the cobwebs that would be clinging to him when he came down the attic stairs, but both efforts were halfhearted at best. She should be attracted to someone who wore Carhartt and liked to dig in the mud, but the eye was attracted to what it was attracted to and, in her case, that was the crisp, clean lines of Trey’s clothes, his thick hair, which she wanted to run her fingers through and his heavy eyebrows that were made more expressive by an unexpected sense of whimsy.
She was dressed for a farm interview, which meant jeans, work boots and a University of Illinois hoodie. Foolish of her to be lusting after a man who wore a suit every day. Just because she was interested didn’t mean he was interested. He was trying to sell her livelihood out from under her, which made her interest self-defeating anyway.
“Who’s the guy?” Trey nodded at the car leaving her, no,
his
property.
“Someone I was interviewing for one of the summer intern positions.” The interview had been yesterday and he’d slept over in the barn.
“How’d he do in the interview?”
She shrugged. “Strong back. Seems genuinely interested in farmwork. He needs more hustle.”
The eyebrows she admired so much were crossed when he turned to look at her. “Hustle? I would think strength would be more important and he looks like the kind of man who has a
strong back
.”
“It’s all well and good to be able to lift up a full crate of potatoes into the bed of the truck over and over and over, but I can do that. I need someone who can get all the lettuce harvested before the summer heat kicks in and kills the lettuce, the worker or both.” She shrugged. “Whoever works the farm with me this summer will get strong if they’re not already. Hustle is related to the drive to work in the sun during a North Carolina summer. No hustle, no drive.”
“It sounds like experience has set you straight.”
“Experience and your father. I was stomping around complaining about how long it took to harvest the tomatoes my first summer when Hank pointed out that one of my interns had no hustle.”
“My father would know. The only thing he ever hustled for was a beer.”
Max didn’t know what to say, so she relied on her father’s old standby and grunted.
“Did you just grunt at me?” She must have surprised laughter out of him because it came out more as a cough.
“Hank wasn’t much of a dad to you or Kelly, but I never saw him take a drink of anything stronger than Cheerwine.” She had no taste for the sweet, cherry-flavored pop that was native to North Carolina.
“He just got better at hiding it.”
“I guess it’s possible,” she said, but didn’t put any conviction into her words. She knew alcoholics could hide their drinking, and she hadn’t spent much time with Hank, despite living on the same property. However, arguing with a wounded son wasn’t on her to-do list for today, so she let it pass.
Trey looked down the driveway to the road, where there wasn’t even a cloud of dust to show someone else had been here. The pity she thought she saw in his eyes was confirmed when he shook his head. “Poor fella.”
“Don’t worry about him. I might still offer him the job. He applied through a program I’m participating in that teaches veterans to farm.”
“And overlook the hustle?” He looked disappointed. “Pity hires are no good.”
“It wouldn’t be a pity hire. As you say, he’s strong. And he has a vision for his future that might provide the drive he needs. I may not be able to teach hustle, but I can light a fire under his toes if he provides the kindling.”
“How many interns do you hire?”
“Three. I’m now able to provide housing, though only for one of them, so it’s nice if I can find some locals.”
“Our hustler over there?”
“Would need housing. But I’ve got some other good candidates who wouldn’t.”
“I assume they don’t know anything about the farm’s future.”
“I assume the farm’s future is with me.” The words were easier to say than to believe, but if she wasn’t able to say them, she wouldn’t be able to believe them. “Hank said he made provisions for the farm, and I choose to trust him on that.”
Trey opened his mouth to respond, but she turned her back to him and walked down the hill to her fields. She had carrots to plant.
Silly though it may be, Max believed the plants took in the energy of the person tending them, and her anger was likely to turn the carrots from sweet to bitter. She would have to put herself in mind for sweet.
The metal of the seeder was heavy when she lifted it out of the bed of the truck, and the seeds sounded like rain as they tumbled against each other from the bag into the hopper. She found it hard not to think,
This is the last time.
She pushed the seeder in front of her, down the row of drip line, her legs splayed as she lumbered behind. The seeder was an easier and faster method of planting than doing it by hand like she had when she’d gardened with her mother, but there were times Max missed the feeling of dirt under her nails. Carrots were planted early, which meant the soil would still be cold.
Next year... Well, next year might not bear thinking about. Next year she might be back gardening with her mother. Better to enjoy the experience of seeding
her farm
while she had it.
She didn’t understand why Trey was so intent on selling the farm. He could continue to lease it to her and never have to think about it. She’d take care of everything and, if he could be patient, eventually she’d be ready to buy it. He’d seemed so interested in the life of a small farmer—in her troubles and her dreams.
Maybe that was what hurt so much about his sudden betrayal. They’d developed a bit of a friendship. She’d shared her work on the farm with him, walked around the fields with him and updated him about farm developments.
When she had the seeder positioned at the next row, Max had her answer. Trey was being entirely truthful about his reasons for selling the farm. He hated his father and anything his father had touched. Maybe her determination to share the glory of the land with him had only made him more determined to sever any connection. She’d chased after him like he was a reclusive housecat and, like a cat, his reaction was to hide.
And if she could go back in time to change her own behavior, she’d start by demanding to see the will Hank had promised her instead of just taking his word for it.
Even though she knew she wouldn’t be able to see over the rise to the farmhouse, Max stopped and looked.
She had wanted to help with the search for the will, but both Kelly and the lawyer thought it was a bad idea. Kelly would keep Trey honest and, as she had the most to gain from the new will, it was better she remain on the sidelines. Kelly knew as well as she did that any new will wouldn’t include him. He was contesting the will for her, and for the transformation she had wrought on the land of his childhood.
Even though Max was pretty sure Trey’s determination to sell wasn’t about her, she still felt like a fool being attracted to him.
Ashes bounded up to her, the bright winter sun and squawking geese giving her old dog new life. He sat, near her but never next to the drip line, and smiled with his tongue hanging out of his mouth, dripping with pond water. All of him was dripping. Ashes had pursued the geese into the pond, their usual refuge from him.
She patted his damp head, enjoying the way he cocked his head toward her when she started scratching his ears. Without geese to chase, how would Ashes find his inner puppy for his last years? Without a purpose, her dog would more quickly grow old before her eyes. Into an early grave.
Tears slipped down her face and her nose ran. She sniffed, wiping her cheeks with her sleeve. Crying would do her no good, but she couldn’t help herself. If they didn’t find the new will, five years of turning dirt into soil would be sold off to someone who would pour concrete where her potatoes had been and she’d be a farmer without a farm.
No need to worry if her sadness made the carrots salty; she wouldn’t likely need to worry about repeat customers.
* * *
T
REY
KEPT
EXPECTING
—hoping, really—to hear Max’s footsteps in the house. He knew he was hurting her, knew he was tearing her livelihood from her and by rights she should want to castrate him with a garden hoe, but that knowledge didn’t dampen his desire to be near her. Hell, not only was he going to rip the land away from her, but he was also tossing their fledgling relationship out the window. No more watching basketball games. No more emails with pictures of the changing landscape. No more lunches in her kitchen.
Kelly handed him the box cutter and Trey ripped open the tape. They should’ve labeled the boxes. Aunt Lois would have made them label everything they’d packed, but two men weren’t smart enough to think ahead. So instead of opening only the boxes with papers in them, they had to open each and every box. This search would take all weekend. His clients would be pissed that he’d spent another two days in North Carolina instead of working. At least he was at a hotel and had reliable internet.
Maybe he’d get to eat dinner with Max tonight. And tomorrow was Sunday. Even she wouldn’t feel the need to work on Sunday just to stay away from him.
The box Kelly had opened was full of papers. Judging from the coffee stains on the old electric bill his brother handed him, this was the pile from the kitchen counter that Aunt Lois had dumped into a box with one great sweep of her arm. The next sheet Kelly handed him was a bank statement. Their father had remained land rich and money poor until the day he’d died, though the income from Max’s rent seemed to have helped.
“I don’t know why you want to sell the farm so badly.” Kelly’s words accompanied another bill, this one for satellite TV.
“We’ve been over this. I don’t want any part of something Dad had, even the farm.”
“Why not make the move to sell right after the funeral? Why wait until now?”
“I needed the right buyer.” To avoid looking his brother in the eye, Trey looked down at the paper in his hand, some piece of junk mail about alarm systems. He could lie to the house majority leader while laughing and looking the man straight in the eye, but he couldn’t lie to his brother.
Avoiding Kelly’s gaze didn’t help. Trey could feel the lie hanging in the dust of the attic and knew his brother felt it, too.
“Max isn’t Dad. Max’s Vegetable Patch isn’t Dad’s dead tobacco farm.”
No. Even though much of the furniture in the farmhouse was the same, the colors on the walls were the same, hell, even the dishes in the cabinets were the same, the entire piece of land and every building on it felt renewed. Like someone had opened all the windows at the edge of the property and a storm had blown his father’s funk into the great beyond. It was fresh and light and he wanted to stay here.
Trey shook his head at the thought. He’d escaped rural poverty and obscurity. He had an interesting and important job that made him a lot of money. Red clay dust no longer clung to his shoes. Wanting to stay here with Max, enjoying the fertile world Max had created, converged into regression.
“I have a life in D.C. and I don’t want the bother of a farm in North Carolina.” Trey set the piece of junk mail on top of all the other bits of mail he’d looked over from the box. They should throw the entire box out when they were done. Or better yet, bring the box outside and put a match to it. If not for Max, Trey would put a match to the whole house. His brother’s silence made him look up. Kelly was holding a piece of paper to his chest, regarding his brother. There was pity in his eyes.
“Is that the new will?” Part of him hoped it was. Maybe he could pretend he didn’t have the money to break the lease, take the pages out to Max and promise never to sell her land out from under her. It wouldn’t be like last night when she’d barred him access to the house and her heart with her hands crossed over her chest. She would open herself up to him. Welcome him, and this time, when she looked up at him, he’d bend his head down and kiss her.
He was a fool.
Kelly stretched his arm out and Trey took the paper. He could tell by the length of the page that it wasn’t the new will, but he looked at it anyway. Another bill, this time for services rendered to produce a will. The bill was dated December of last year. His dad had promised Max a new will and gotten Max a new will.
Trey sat back on his heels. “Don’t you ever wonder why Dad couldn’t keep a promise to us but kept his promise to a stranger living on his land?”
“You’ve been gone a long time. Dad changed. Max being here is the result of his change, not the cause of it.”
Conflicting thoughts banged against each other in Trey’s head. He respected what Max had done with the land. And was attracted to her. But he resented the hell out of her right now for getting their father to keep a promise where flesh and blood family had failed.
“This—” he wadded up the bill and threw it onto the pile of other trash “—isn’t proof of anything other than that Dad got a new will made.”
“We know the new will has a contingent for Max’s lease. Why would he lie about that?”
“You said it yourself—if the new will isn’t findable, we can assume the old man destroyed it. It was never in him to let something beautiful survive.”
“D.C. turned you into a real asshole, you know that?”
“Don’t give me credit I don’t deserve. I was always an asshole. D.C. gave that part of me voice.”
“What’s worse about this is that I think you like Max and you’re going to sell anyway.”
“She seems nice. Attractive. That hair’s pretty crazy. But I’m suspicious of anyone who would choose to be a farmer.”
“Well, how about that.” The awe in Kelly’s voice made Trey look up. “You’re jealous.”
“Of who?”
“Of Max. You’re jealous that Dad kept his promises to her. You’re jealous that she had the guts to take on the farm and make something of it. You think you succeeded, but Max has won where you lost and she did it wearing work boots covered in mud.”