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The only father I’d ever known was gone, and I wasn’t ready to let him go. I wasn’t ready to fill his shoes, my feet too small and unpracticed to do anything but flop around uselessly. I’d spent three days avoiding that truth, working from dawn until I dropped so I wouldn’t have to think anything or feel anything except my anger at Olivia.
That was so much easier than facing the truth.
“I’m sorry.” Two words, rough with emotion. “It’s just … nothing is … I don’t know how to …” I shook my head, fighting emotion. “Frank’s gone, Kit. What the hell are we supposed to do now?”
Before I knew it, I was somehow wrapped in Kit’s arms, which was a feat of physics, given her height and mine. But she managed, rocking me and shushing me and crying, from the sound of it. The pigs had gotten louder when she set her bucket on the ground, just out of their reach. One of the sows was working hard to wedge her head between the stall slats, which would be a disaster. I’d have to bust the fence to get her undone.
“You’d better feed those pigs before Susie tears the pen apart,” I teased, rubbing Kit’s back.
She laughed around her tears, dabbing at her eyes with her apron. “Wouldn’t want any more work for you, given your hands are so full with a pint-sized redhead, would we?” Kit picked up the bucket. “Hush, Susan. Don’t be dramatic.”
The second the scraps hit the trough, the only sound was their sloppy eating.
“Come on, Jake—I think you need something to eat too,” she said, slipping her arm into mine.
I took Kit’s bucket and let her lead me away.
“Alright,” she started once we were out of the barn. “You’ve been bottling yourself up long enough. Go on and unload it.”
I glanced down at her, unsure if anybody was ready for that.
But she gave me a look. “Go on, chicken.”
So I took a deep breath, and for the length of the walk, I did.
It was much of the same, centered around Olivia’s ideas and punctuated frequently by the words stupid and no. I heard the petulance in my voice as I neared the end of my exchange with Olivia and hated it, hated how petty I sounded. But not as much as I hated the prick of realization that I maybe wasn’t entirely in the right.
By the time we reached the house, I’d gotten it out, even if it wasn’t gone—the film of it clung to the space it’d occupied. Sullenly, I let her guide me inside, taking the bucket back before depositing me in a chair at the kitchen island.
For the length of time it took her to put the bin under the sink and wash her hands, she was silent. But when she moved for the fridge, she said, “She’s right, you know.”
My nostrils flared.
Kit didn’t wait for me to answer, which was good. I’d rather have jumped off the roof of the barn than admit either of them were right.
“Every successful farm in the tristate area has a shop and does tours, and you know it. Only reason Frank didn’t was because it reminded him Janet was gone. Easier to ignore her absence if he didn’t deal with her part of the business. Why let somebody else run the shop? That was hers. Letting somebody else in would have erased her, he thought. I didn’t have the heart to tell him it was just another way to hide. But I don’t have any problem telling you. And if there was one person he’d let open it up, it’s Livi. I think you know that too.”
She didn’t put me on the spot by making eye contact, instead keeping herself moving first with a container of fresh lunchmeat and brioche buns she’d probably baked at three in the morning.
“We need to up our income, and Olivia has all the tools to do it. But you’ve gotta let her. Nothing’s going to change if we don’t, and none of us know how to do it, except Livi. We are one trip around the sun from the farm falling into a deficit we can’t recover from. And then we won’t have a choice. We’ll have to sell, and who do you think the highest bidder will be?” she asked the bun in her hand as she slathered it with mustard.
The thought of selling to those crooks sent a roaring burst of fire through my chest. “That won’t happen.”
“As it stands, we can’t make enough to make up for the last few years. You can’t promise we won’t have to sell, especially if you do nothing but bury your head in the sand like Frank did.”
“There are other ways. More livestock. Higher production. Raising our wholesale prices.”
“That won’t be enough—the cost of livestock alone will take years to recoup. Frank held everything still, pretending like it’d work itself out as the world changed around him. Maybe he was too scared of the risk or skeptical of any solution’s success. He wasn’t willing to adapt. And if you aren’t either, you’ll be the one carrying the burden of the farm’s failure regardless of whether it was your doing or not.” She set the knife down with a clang, her face tight with emotion when she finally met my eyes. “You won’t survive that, Jake. So if you won’t listen to Olivia for yourself, do it for me. Do it for the farm. Get out of her way and let her try. Frank risked this farm’s survival for you. Don’t you dare let that be in vain.”
