Because my own heat is impeding and runs about a week. A week is a lot of time away from a deadline with two million dollars riding on it. There are pills for that. There are ways to make myself easier to schedule around, and I’ve been turning one over and over at the back of my head.
I look at Bram’s neck, he turns his head and catches me looking, and for half a second something crosses his face, there and gone, maybe the same math as mine, who knows, before he smooths it over and bumps his temple against my knee.
***
The light’s gone long and gold, my face sore from smiling.
Cal climbs up onto the pallet stage and the microphone shrieks once under his hand.
“FOLKS.” He thumps it twice with two fingers. “If you put something into a contest today, get on up front. If you didn’t, get up here anyway and holler for the ones who did.”
The crowd folds in toward the hay bales. Maren has my arm in a grip, and she’s gone dead quiet.
“You’ve got it,” I tell her, feeling the steady, warm presence of my alphas behind me.
“Don’t.” Her eyes don’t come off the stage. “You say it, you jinx it.”
Cal starts small. Best jam. Best dozen eggs, which is apparently a real and bitter rivalry. A ribbon for bread-and-butter pickles that goes, to the shock of absolutely no one.
Then: “Baked goods.”
Maren makes a sound with no air in it.
There’s a row of three judges up there, paper plates scraped down to fork-tracks and crumbs in front of them, and the heavyset one in the middle leans over and says something inCal’s ear. Cal nods, taking his sweet time, while I feel Maren’s fingers dig into my arm.
“Third place... Suzanne Fox.” A woman two rows up goes pink and bustles forward for her white ribbon.
“Second... Jasper Kowalski.” A teenager shoved up the aisle by his mother.
“And the number one ribbon for baked goods goes to...” Cal lifts his eyes off the card and waits a beat, enjoying himself thoroughly. “Maren Merigold with her pie made out of Miller apples.”
Maren lets out a high, shaky squeak, drawing a few amused looks from the crowd. Her face breaks right down the middle and goes pink and streaming at the same time, both palms slapped flat over her mouth.
I get my arms up under hers and pick all five feet of her off the grass.
“Market research,” I say into her apron.
“So worth the trip,” she says, laughing.
“Don’t be shy now, Lakeview!” Cal booms over the top of us. “Come on up here!”
Somebody behind us hollers “LAKEVIEW,” and somebody clear across the crowd hollers it back, and Maren scrubs her whole face on her sleeve and goes up to take the blue ribbon of victory. The look she throws me over her shoulder on the way, I’m keeping.
Maren walks back into the crowd, clutching her blue ribbon. I grab her arm, smiling, and we squeeze back in between the alphas.
Then Cal squints at the next card and his eyebrows climb. “Now. Next category: Most Unusual Produce.”
Delia is already moving. She comes up the side of the stage with the crate held in both hands, slow and level, both thumbs hooked over the rim, sets it on the table by the microphone, andpeels the square of muslin off the top of it, slow, for the drama of it.
The apple comes out into the gold light, and the crowd does one long, helpless ohhhh.
At the foot of the stage the other contender needs no cloth and gets none: the huge squash, the wiry old man planted beside it with his arms crossed.
“Now, if this was about the biggestandmost unusual,” Cal says into the microphone, “Earl’s squash would win, no contest. Look at that monster.” He points to it, and the crowd gives the squash a polite, hat-in-hand round of applause while the man nudges his neighbors and raises a fist.
“But since this category is only about themost unusual, the blue ribbon goes to...” He lets it hang for one, two, three drumrolls... “Apple Blossom Orchard, for their five-pound apple!”
And the same crowd that just gave the record squash its due breaks wide open for the apple. People lean out over the rope with their phones up. And Earl, red ribbon and all, watches a whole field turn its back on his squash to coo at a nice piece of fruit.
