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“Okay,” Fia said. “You seem especially spacey today.”
“I’m distracted,” she said. “Or maybe I have pregnancy brain.”
She had Gus McCloud brain was what she had.
She had not anticipated this.
It was so strange to think back on the Alaina that she’d been a couple of months ago. Because that girl had been a trial. Impatient, and nervous, and so desperate to push her way into the next thing. And nothing had actually been about...being in the moment. It had all been about pushing past difficult moments. The last night with Gus, she’d been entirely in the moment.
Her first time having sex had been about gettingpastthe moment. Getting the thing over with.
She had never wanted her time with Gus to end.
And she felt calm here too, while she assisted with the baking, especially after everybody quit talking about her. Especially after they all started focusing on jam and bread, and pies.
“We’re putting in for a big community injection of cash,” Rory said. “Because we need to get this farm store up and running. And we need signage, and to get a new road.”
“A new road?”
“Yeah. It’ll be easier and faster to get to the farm store from the highway if we pave and excavate a new road,” Quinn said. “But it has to go through the back part of Granger land.”
Alaina recoiled. “You have to deal with the Grangers?”
There were other ranchers in the area, of course. Four Corners was the biggest spread. It was the biggest spread in the state. But there were others. And often, they didn’t play nice with the Four Corners folk. The Grangers being one of them.
“Yeah, I could live my whole life without having to sort out easements with Levi Granger, but if it comes down to it...”
“Well, best of luck to you with that,” Alaina said.
“Thanks.”
“Hey,” Fia said. “Would you and Elsie run down to the root cellar and get the canned rhubarb?”
“Sure,” Alaina said, and she and Elsie left the kitchen, heading out the front door of the farmhouse, and making their way down toward where the root cellar started.
“They still send us on errands like we’re kids,” Elsie said.
But Alaina realized it didn’t bother her anymore. Because she didn’t feel like a kid. She just didn’t feel that desperate clawing need to prove herself. And maybe it was because she had her own space now. Her own thing.
“So are you gonna tell me why you’re so spacey and blushing every five seconds?” Elsie asked.
Suddenly, Alaina understood something she hadn’t understood before. Elsie hadn’t wanted to share about Hunter because it felt too private. Too personal. She could understand that now. In a way that she never had before.
She’d taken it personally, but it wasn’t personal. Elsie hadn’t been able to share because she hadn’t known what to say. Because it felt like taking all of the things that had happened in the dark and dissecting them in the light would be wrong.
Because what had happened with Gus wasn’t funny. It wasn’t something to giggle about. It had stripped layers of protection away from her, but left her with something else in its place. It had changed a fundamental understanding of certain things inside of her, and she didn’t have the words for it.
She wanted to try, though. Because if she was going to understand what was happening, she needed to reach out. She pondered that. If it was reverting to her old ways. To trying to ease that restlessness rather than learning to sit in some discomfort.
No, this was different.
It was reaching out, saying what was happening, maybe even what she needed, rather than running.
“I... Something happened with Gus,” she said, feeling shy, when she never was. They went down the stairs into the root cellar, and she felt that actually damp air cooled her off. There were shelves of all the things that her sisters spent so much time canning and organizing.
“Something?” Elsie pushed.
“We...” She spread her hands. “Last night.”
