“I’m sorry,” she says, voice tender.
My shoulder lifts in a half-hearted shrug. “It happens, but it never really gets easier.”
She’s quiet for a moment, then pulls a mug from the cabinet, pouring the stemming coffee into it. “Well, you’ll have the place to yourself to decompress for the next few days.”
“Oh?” I’m not sure why that makes disappointment sink in my stomach, heavy as lead.
She nods and blows on her coffee, her hair falling over her shoulders in a thick curtain with the movement. “I’m working on the Airstream today and have dinner at my parents’ house tonight. Then I’m heading out on a two day hike tomorrow.”
“Back at work?”
“Finally.”
“That’ll be nice.”
“Yeah,” she says, but something about it sounds hollow. “You won’t have to deal with me in your space as often.”
“It hasn’t been a bother.” It’s the truth, no matter how much it surprises me.
“No?” Stevie’s brown eyes lock on mine and hold.
“No.” I lean a hip against the counter, and we each take a sip of our coffee in the lingering silence. “I’ll be off work when you get back,” I say. “We could hang out.”
The smile she gives me is small, but her eyes are bright. Whiskey poured over ice. “That would be fun.”
“Fun,” I echo.
Her gaze holds mine for a beat longer before drifting to the clock on the stove. “I better get ready. See you in a few days, Jared.”
“See you in a few days, Stevie.”
Myparents’housealwaysused to smell like apples. My aunt and uncle live on the same piece of property as my parents’ apple orchard, and my aunt runs a farm shop in a little building smack dab between the two houses. She makes candles and soaps, potpourri and simmer pots kits. And my mom has always been her tester, sampling out everything before it went in the store.
Or she used to be.
When Grandma moved in, mom packed up all the half-burned apple candles and tossed out the potpourri. She bought lavender scented essential oils and diffusers, just like Grandma always had in her house two hours away.
The little farmhouse I grew up in still smells amazing, but it doesn’t smell like home anymore.
I let myself in the front door—another change since Grandma’s bedroom is on the backside of the house and on her bad days, it can scare her when people come in through the back door unannounced. I can smell roasted vegetables coming from the direction of the kitchen, and Dean Martin is playing on therecord player in the living room. I follow the noise and find my dad on the couch, lying on a heating pad, several prescription bottles on the table beside him, and a book in his hands.
He looks up when I walk in, giving me a smile that looks pinched. “Hey, honey. How’s my girl?”
Worry gnaws at me, and I lower myself onto the edge of the couch, careful not to bump him. “I’m good. What happened to you?”
He waves me off. “Nothing, just hurt my back a little. No big deal.”
My dad is tough as nails. When I was twelve, he suffered his first back injury on the farm. Times were hard and he was doing more than he should. He was in the hospital for days and they debated surgery, but ended up saying they could hold off as long as he hired some help to let him rest and recover. He couldn’t, and for years he was in and out of doctor’s offices and emergency rooms. The worst injury happened when I was seventeen. He spent eight days in the hospital recovering from the surgery that could no longer be avoided, then spent three months recovering in a rented hospital bed in our living room with nurses and physical therapists coming every day to help him. We almost lost the farm, but Fontana Ridge stepped up. They bought tickets and shopped at the farm stand. They donated their time and money. They rallied together to hire help.
It’s been over a decade since that happened, and he still has his days and weeks where the pain flares, but for the most part, he’s able to run the farm again with help. But every time I find him like this, I’m transported back to being seventeen, standing beside his bed in the hospital, wondering if he would ever be okay again.
“What happened?” I ask again.
His eyes, the exact color of mine, meet my own and soften at the worry I’m sure he finds there. He pats my knees with one ofhis large, work-roughened hands. “Really, Stevie, I’m okay. I was just fixing one of the tractors yesterday and overdid it.”
My heart is still racing, but it begins to slow a little. I nod, reassuring myself as much as him. “Do you need anything?”
“No,” he says with a shake of his head. “Now, how’s my girl? How’s your head?”
