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I turn my phone off and pocket it. It’s impolite to take a call when you’re on a date. Especially when you’re on a date with the most beautiful woman on the goddamned planet.

No distractions. I just want to get lost in Thea Storm’s beautiful brown eyes.

We continue chatting as the afternoon wanes. Pretty soon our sandwiches have disappeared and our coffee cups have dried up.

Thea checks her watch. “It can’t be nearly two already.”

“You’re kidding.” I check my own phone to confirm the time. “It is. Time flies when you’re in the company of a beautiful woman.”

She blushes. “The same could be said about an attractive man.” She cocks her head. “You know, I usually take a mid-day nap around this time. I have to get up so early for the news broadcast every morning, but I hated going to bed at seven, so I started splitting my sleeping time. Normally I’m conked out at this hour. But I don’t feel the least bit sleepy.”

“I’m glad.” I give her hand a squeeze. “When do you think you’ll have to get home to get ready for the gala tonight?”

“The event starts at seven thirty. I should be there early to mingle during cocktail hour, and it’ll be a thirty-minute drive or so from my place. I’ll probably need another forty-five minutes to shower and get ready, so…” She wrinkles her forehead. “So just to be safe, I should be home by half past five.”

“Great. It’s two now, and if you’re a half hour away from here, that gives us three more hours together.” I lean in and flash Thea my most dazzling smile. “And I’m not ready for this date to end.”

She looks up at me with a grin, tiny flames dancing in her eyes. “I’m not either.”

17

THEA

I haven’t been whole since Daddy died.

The earth has completed nearly two revolutions around the sun since he left us, and I still feel the same way I did when I watched the life leave his eyes.

You’re not supposed to see death. Not like that.

Human beings are the only animals on the planet cursed with the knowledge of their own mortality.

It’s supposed to be something you brush under the carpet. Something you don’t think about. A topic best left out of civil conversation.

But I saw it. One moment my father was here, and the next he was gone.

Witnessing that moment firsthand altered my brain chemistry in ways I can’t explain.

Nothing’s been the same since.

Emmy took me in. It was clear she didn’t want to, but it was my father’s dying wish that she raise me on her own. She didn’t see a way out of it that wouldn’t make her a pariah among our community.

Emmy changed when Daddy died, too.

She became less kind. Less flexible.

Crueler.

She was never warm. Never affectionate. Not like how I always imagined my true mother was.

But she changed from being mildly detached to a terror of a woman in a matter of months.

Part of me understands. Daddy was our breadwinner. Without him, the day-to-day of the farm went to Emmy, and she has no background in agriculture. She’s been learning on the fly, but she doesn’t have the natural intuition with the land my father did.

Our first harvest was a fraction of its usual size. The first winter after Daddy slipped away was rough. There were days at a time when we’d split a can of beans for dinner, if that.

Inheriting a farm and a child overnight is a lot of pressure to put on a person. Pretty soon, Emmy came to see me not as the final extension of the man she loved more than anything else in the world, but as an inconvenience. Another bill to be paid.

It started halfway through that winter, when I suggested burning an extra piece of firewood on a particularly cold night.