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He brought it to the table, and I attacked my food. I hadn't realize that I was hungry when I was painting, but my stomach felt as vast and empty as the Grand Canyon.
"What do you want to do this afternoon?"
"I need to go into town to buy some things for the cows. Do you want to come with me?"
Leave this house?
"Yeah."
"Okay. Let me get cleaned up, then we'll drive into Verona."
I looked down at my paint-sp
lattered clothes. "Give me a little time, too."
Both of us got ready, and then we met downstairs. He looked handsome with his hair slicked back, though he was still wearing dreadful flannel and overalls. I shouldn't be thinking about him like that. I had no desire to get tied down in Wisconsin, even if he and my dad really wanted me to. This house was not the kind of place I could ever see myself living.
"Let's go."
Farm and Fleet
Amelia
We walked out to his rusty truck, and this time I didn't need his push to get inside. I just jumped for it. It was a little different since I was so much shorter than him, but it worked out. It was nice to be in a truck. You could see so much more than you could in my sleek little Corvette, which I barely used. It wasn't worth the hassle of trying to find parking back home. In Wisconsin, open parking stretched for miles and miles around the house. It was open country, all covered by a coat of snow.
We went to a place called Farm and Fleet. Inside, it had more things than I even knew could be put under one roof.
It was gigantic, and the parking lot was gargantuan. The parking lot alone looked like the size of a small strip mall. There were tractors parked there. I followed him through the aisles. I could feel eyes on me. I looked nothing like them. I had dark skin, dark hair, and a multi-colored Prabal Gurung dress on. They had blonde hair, light eyes, and simple, mono-color clothing. There were more overalls than I had ever seen in one place in my entire life.
I was quiet. The eyes weren't hostile. They were just curious, like they didn't see people like me very often.
We checked out, and he asked me, "Do you want to see the real library?"
"Sounds good to me."
"You can use my library card."
"Awesome."
We drove for a little while on Verona Road and turned so that we went north a little bit. Tucked away on Silent Street was a small library. It was pretty. There was a big sign out front that said that it had won some kind of architectural award.
"Come on in."
When we walked in, we were in a small area before the main library. There were bulletin boards on the walls, and there were call-outs for senior citizen gatherings. They had computer classes as well as classes to teach them how to use iPads.To my left, there was a large room filled with schoolchildren watching a documentary. Next to that room, there were bathrooms. I walked through the sliding doors into the main library. The carpet was multicolored with a lot of different shapes in it. Back home, I didn't visit the library that often. I just bought books. But in a farming community that wasn't so casual about spending money, the library must mean a lot more.
We walked inside. "I'll show you to the fiction in a minute, but let me show you our castle first."
A castle? I followed him into the Kids' Zone. I tried not to admire the swagger of his shoulders. He was like a predator, a lion prowling around his kingdom. I admired the ease of his step, like everything here belonged to him.
"Here it is."
I looked at the small gray castle, which was child-sized.
"It's adorable." It really was. It had small little windows with bars over them and no glass. There were two entrances, and there was a circular, big chair in the middle while there were smaller chairs in the corners of the castle. It was a perfect place to play pretend.
"I donated it last year."
I blinked. "Oh?" How could a farmer afford to donate something this adorable? Sure, the castle was small, but I didn't think that it was cheap. I raised my eyebrows.
