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More steel rods are being driven into my chest, pumping in air and materials that aren’t supposed to be there and filling me up with pockets of painful emptiness. “They’re good. And already fed. It’s only a twenty-minute drive.”
Twenty minutes. Probably five more to pay the bill for her car. And maybe five more to say an awkward sort of goodbye. Thirty minutes at most, and I’ll probably never see her again.
Stop her. Stop her from leaving.
But what right do I have? This is her future. And she deserves the absolute best one.
She shifts the bag up a little higher on her arm, and her eyes drop down to the floor. We aren’t together. I have to keep telling myself that. We were never together. We only ended up in the same place at the same time because we wanted a future apart. It doesn’t matter how wobbly I feel right now or what kind of doubt I see in Nina’s face.
Alright, it does matter. It hurts. It’s just another piece of glass in a heart already littered with shrapnel.
“Okay,” she whispers, her voice hoarse with strain. What strain? Of holding something back, or is she worried she has to go back out into the real world and try to solve the problems with her family?
It’s another reminder that we might have found something unexpected in our time together, but it isn’t real. Out here, this isn’t the world. It’s not our mom and our dad and our grandparents. It’s not college or a career or whatever we want out of life. It’s just a nice retreat away from all of that, but all of that is still waiting out there.
It’s a wake-up call for me too. I thought I could run away from all that, detach myself, and get a clean break, but I haven’t escaped any of it. I’m still a member of a family, and they still love me. I still love them, too, however grudging I might be about saying it. And that’s wrong. They need to know. I went about standing up for myself in entirely the wrong way. I ran away from the pain and humiliation I suffered and buried myself here. I’m happy, but it’s not complete happiness. I need to fix those things for myself, no matter how much time it takes. And I need to let the people I love know how much I love them despite all the chaos.
“Can I carry something for you?”
She shakes her head, her eyes two blue skies, but the shadows are still there. “I’m alright.”
There’s no other reason to delay. If I’m not going to tell her… Wait, tell her what exactly? Something, I guess. If I’m not going to tell hersomething,then we should head out of here. “I’ll get my keys.”
She doesn’t tell me not to, but then, why should she?
In the truck, nothing has ever felt so final as starting it up, turning it around, and heading down the gravel driveway. I try not to think about how Nina looked, walking up that first day, a city princess covered in dirt and grime, smiles and utter determination.
Nothing has ever felt as final in my life as that last turn off the driveway, the right turn that takes me to another gravel road, heading away from the farm toward Upperhand.
CHAPTER 18
Thaddius
It’s been a day since Nina left. No, not even.
Maybe the correct term is since I dropped her off at the garage, got her car taken care of, and made her promise me that she’d be okay driving home. That she’d turn on her phone and let her family know she was coming.
Giving her cash felt like guilt money or buying her off, but I did that too. More than enough to get her home. She promised she’d pay me back, but I told her that if she got home safe, it would be payment enough.
I’ve never felt lonely here at the farm. Why should I? There are more than enough things out here to keep me company. I always liked the wide open space of the fields, the big maple standing sentinel at the far corner of the yard, the red barn, the little chicken coop, and the white peeling farmhouse. As soon as I bought the place, it felt like home.
I haven’t been to Seattle to see my family, but it’s only been a day. I haven’t called my mom or grandma to tell them that Nina is gone either. I’m sure they already know. If they haven’t come out here to talk or yell or throw a fit about that, then either they’re giving it some time, plotting a new course of action, or cooling themselves off before they start plotting again.
I want to drive in and tell them that I love them and appreciate them. That I might have moved out here, but I’ll always be a part of them, and I appreciate that they worry. I still cringe about the cameras, but I do get that they care. I wasn’t making it easy for them, and yet they still stuck it out. They’ve always cared. I bucked against the idea of marriage to Nina, but I bucked against all the other ways they tried too.
While I feel this off-kilter, I’m doing what I need to be doing out here, which is keeping busy. It means repairing Herman Merman’s fence for the six hundredth and forty-third time. He’ll still find a way to get out no matter what, and I’ll still try and find a way to keep him in.
Animals sense when a person is hurting, and while the sheep have given me a wide berth today, preferring their own company out in the field to my moody, broody self, Herman Merman comes up and nudges my shoulder with his nose.
I laugh at him and reach for his muzzle to give it a stroke. “We make good company, don’t we, boy? Two stubborn grouches.”
He brays a full heeee-haaaww at me, turns his face, and gives me a wet tongue to the cheek. He’s never done that before. It’s slimy, but it’s nice. The sheep have each other, and the chickens do too. There are three cats, so if they want company, they can have it, even though they’re more solitary. I only have one dog, but Shaggy keeps himself busy. He’s happy here and far more independent for a dog than I ever would have thought one could be. But Herman Merman? He’s alone, and he needs a friend. I’ve been meaning to get one for him for months now, so I’m going to do that. Today. I’ll find another donkey today. I know what it’s like to feel completely alone. No wonder he’s always trying to escape. He wants to get out and be with everyone else because he’s got no one else like him to be with inside here.
I pet Herman Merman’s neck, scratching him in the spots I know he likes.
Nina left yesterday morning, and it’s not even noon now. I guess, by now, it’s been a full twenty-four hours, but it feels more like a million years have passed. I know people use that all the time to exaggerate the slow passage of minutes and hours, or, god forbid, days, but I truly do feel like at least three ice ages have come and gone.
I know it’s bad when I see my grandma’s car coming down the driveway, and I don’t even get my typical feelings of sort of angry resentment. I don’t even wish I’d spent time in the barn fabbing a spike belt. I just lean against the fence the same way I leaned against it the day Nina walked up my driveway and changed everything, feeling…defeated.
