Weekends in Carolina (13 page)

“My mom said the same thing, but it didn’t make the name Patchwork any less irritating.”

“My aunt calls you Maxine.”

“Yes, and trying to correct her is like trying to dig through lava rock with a plastic spoon.”

Her perfect description of his aunt made him laugh. He tightened the arm he had around her a little, pulling her closer. However mediocre—
fine—
the coital part of the night had been, the postcoital cuddle had been so pleasurable Trey fell asleep forgetting that he was in the farmhouse.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

T
REY
WOKE
UP
in the morning hard and ready to be anything other than fine. Only the sun streaming through the windows wasn’t an early-morning sun and he was the only one in the bed. The chickens were up and so was Farmer Max.

He found his clothes and padded through the living room and dining room into the kitchen for some coffee. The worn wooden floors weren’t so bad, but the linoleum in the kitchen was cold, even through his socks. His entire life the kitchen had been the wrong temperature. In the summer it was too hot. In the winter, too cold. Like the rest of the farmhouse, the kitchen was heated—it just wasn’t heated well, and the fireplace had been a death trap even when he’d been a kid. Surrounded by outside walls or unheated rooms, the kitchen was hopeless. Between the peeling linoleum floors and the cracking laminate counters, it was also ugly.

There were no mugs in the cabinet he opened. Max had rearranged the kitchen. He blinked a couple times and looked around. It was the same ugly kitchen—and yet it was different. She’d engineered some sort of planters on the wall that were filled with herbs. The trestle table against one wall was the same trestle table that had been in the kitchen for as long as he could remember, only now it was painted a bright white. And the peas he’d shoved in its cracks as a kid were probably gone. There was a clock above the sink with songbirds at the numbers. And Max had removed the dingy tractor-pattern curtains his mother had made when he’d been five and replaced them with a cheery check pattern. The same kitchen, only brighter. More alive.

Had it been like this when he’d come here to search for the will?

Trey spotted the mugs on a mug tree near the coffeemaker. He poured himself a cup of coffee. Sitting down at the table with the mug in his hands, the coffee didn’t look good. It was thin, with an oily black color and smelled like coffee dust.
Next time I come down, I’m bringing my own coffeepot and stopping at that small grocery store for a bag of
good
coffee.
Right now, all he wanted was breakfast.

After one sip, he considered himself fortified by the caffeine; he wasn’t about to take another drink of the foul brew. Trey cleared papers off the table so he would have a place to eat the cereal he’d found. One of the papers fluttered to the floor and it wasn’t until he was setting it on top of the pile that he realized it was a bank statement. And that Max had
thousands
of dollars more than she’d let on. Maybe even enough for her to get a mortgage for the farm. Definitely enough that she didn’t need another three years to save.

He took a large gulp of the coffee and grimaced, the sour coffee and his anger burning a channel down his esophagus. Was she playing him? No. He shook his head in answer to his own question. She had no reason to play him and every reason to buy the farm. So why did she insist that she didn’t have enough money?

No answer came to him as he sat at the table, not quite awake. He was angry, but the more he sat contemplating the bank statement and his soggy cereal, the more confusion overrode the anger. Max was a forthright person who wanted to buy this rotten piece of land and he wanted to sell it to her. Why wasn’t she dumping all of her money into the purchase and be done with it?

His coffee was cold and cereal warm when Max walked into the kitchen, trailed by a panting Ashes. “Oh. You got yourself breakfast. I was thinking of making omelets. Would you still want one?”

He looked down into his bowl of cereal, where the flakes were disintegrating and becoming one with the milk. The whole mess would have to be tossed. He hated wasting food. And wasting time, which is what this entire I-don’t-have-enough-money act was—a waste of his time.

“I saw your bank statement,” he said to her back as she was pouring herself a cup of her disgusting coffee.

“What?”

He waited until she’d turned back to face him before he spoke again. “Why did you lie about how much money you have?”

“I didn’t lie.” Her face puckered with confusion.

“I. Saw. Your. Bank. Statement,” he repeated. “I know how much money you have saved.” He had to take a deep breath to keep from yelling. “It may be enough for a down payment.”

“Why were you going through my stuff?”

Trey squelched the temptation to say, “I asked you first,” saying instead, “The bank statement was on the kitchen table, right out in the open for anyone to see.”

She blinked, but still didn’t answer his original question, so he repeated it. “Why did you lie?”

“I didn’t lie.” Though she held her coffee cup over her mouth, he could see the nervousness on her face. “That money’s not for buying the land.”

He ran his hand over his face, pressing hard into his cheekbones and hoping the pressure would override his irritation. “Max, what’s more important than buying the land?”

* * *

“W
ELL
, I...” W
ORDS
STALLED
.
Max coughed. The movement cleared the way for speech, but still the words wouldn’t come.

“What’s the money for?”

She cleared her throat again. “I’m saving some of it to renovate the other tobacco barn, so I can provide housing for two interns.”

She knew what he was going to say before he opened his mouth, because she had the same argument with herself every time she checked her bank account. Coming out the winner of those arguments didn’t mean she’d come out the winner of this one.

“If you aren’t able to buy the farm, you won’t have a barn to renovate. Nor interns to hire.” The air in the kitchen collapsed around her as he shifted in his seat.

His argument made perfect sense. Without a farm, the money was useless and she’d only have to use it to try to buy another farm. Pick up her life, leave her soil behind and go somewhere else. The very thought made her soul hurt.

“If I put all the money into buying the farm, I’ll have nothing left if something goes wrong.” She put her mug down on the counter before her sweat made it slippery. Then she wiped her palms on her pants. “It’s putting all my eggs into one basket. It’s dangerous.”

That sounded reasonable. Sensible. Unlike pouring all of her money into the farm and being left with nothing if disaster struck. Like her mother moving halfway across the country for a man, only to end up divorced and far from all her friends and family.

I could lose everything.

All she needed was a broken tractor to make spending all of her savings buying the farm dangerous. With the remains of her spring crops rotting in the sun and no way to plow them under to prepare for fall. Crops that needed to be transplanted stuck in her greenhouse, stunted in the little seedling cells because she had no place to put them. And no cash in the bank to hire a mechanic.

The mechanic didn’t work on the barter system.

She shoved her hands in her pockets, hoping to warm them.

Trey was talking again. She saw his mouth moving, but his voice wasn’t loud enough to penetrate the objections and fears rushing about in her head.
What if...?
He must have sensed her confusion because he stopped, seemingly midsentence, and waited until she shook the noise from her head. “You,” he drew out the word, “might not have a basket to put eggs in.”

“If you could wait another three years...”

He leaned forward, crossing his arms on the table and caging her with his gaze. “I’m not going to wait another three years. I’m selling the farm by December. If you’re not buying it, then someone else is.”

She felt sick to her stomach. Sex had changed more than she’d expected it to. And it had changed nothing at the same time.

She swallowed and the sound echoed through her body. She pictured her hand writing out that check and then the sight of her bank statement with nothing in it when she found out her water pump wasn’t working. When her truck broke down. When fungus decimated her tomato plants and she had to buy more seedlings or not have any tomatoes that season.

She swallowed again. The CSA’s entire purpose was to mitigate those risks. She could buy the farm in December. CSA participants paid her in January. That would only be one month of an empty bank balance. And the chances that something catastrophic would happen were slim. And the extra money she had saved was to fix up the tobacco barn anyway.

It wasn’t that much of a risk, was it? The bigger risk was losing the farm completely. She was either all into the farm or all out. She looked at Trey. “I don’t know” was all she could muster, and the irritation on his face changed to something closer to pity.

“How did you manage to leave your dad’s farm behind in Illinois and come here? That must’ve been a huge risk.”

“My brother got married and he and his wife moved into the farmhouse with my dad. Then my stepmother brought home this one guy who talked about how much he loved his farm and his harvester. I think she was trying to set me up with him, but all I wanted to do was go back to one of my summer jobs spent on the small farms and dig in the dirt. I was browsing ads for farmland when I saw your mom’s ad.” Typing the email had been one of the most freeing things she’d ever done. “Durham didn’t look that far away from my mom on the map, so I just sent off the email. I didn’t think about it.”

He blinked, took a sip of his coffee and grimaced. “That’s it. You didn’t think?”

She shrugged. “Thinking gets me into trouble.”

Everyone she knew—including herself—had been amazed when she’d packed up her bags and moved south to start a farm. If life were to present her with the same choice again, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to make the move. Not because she didn’t want to or it was a bad decision, but because she’d replied to the farm posting without a single thought until she’d hit the send button. By the time the panic and doubts had hit, she’d felt committed to moving and all her mental energy had gone to talking herself into why North Carolina was a great idea. She’d not done anything so freeing before that moment and she hadn’t since.

At the time, she’d agreed to the lease with a handshake because it had seemed less risky than tying herself down to a life decision she’d given no forethought. After a couple years she and Hank had agreed to a three-year lease. They’d talked about when she would be able to buy the land from him and how much he thought he’d ask for it. The investments into the farm had been made, decided on and purchased together. The reach for permanence had been such a logical thing to do. The risks had been minimal. “The worst that could happen” seemed to shrink every passing day. Now either way she looked at her present situation, she feared losing her farm.

“Stop thinking, then.” Trey looked so reasonable—all stubble faced and sharp jawed with enough strength to cut through all her doubts.

“It’s too late.” The words came out with a weary sigh. She’d been staring at the money sitting in her bank account since Trey had offered her the right of first refusal. The numbers beat down on her shoulders with a force at odds to their size and she had to stiffen her knees to prevent herself from buckling under. And every time she’d decided to contact the bank for a mortgage, the what-ifs came back in force. She looked down at her feet, but any answers there were hidden in her boots.

The worries about her tractor breaking again, the water pump dying, illness, injury, a storm... Those weren’t the worries that stilled her hand. More powerful was the constant beat of
what if I’m wrong?

Chair legs scraped against the floor. Light footsteps shuffled until she could see the toes of Trey’s socks alternating with her work boots. Her worn flannel shirt was soft against her skin when he rested his hands on her biceps.

“What are you so afraid of?” He started to rub her arms. Friction of hands and cloth against skin created a warmth that crept, slowly at first, up her arms and through her body until it burst into her toes.

“My mom jumps from interest to interest with seemingly little thought. It’s fine because she’s in Asheville now and surrounded by people who share her spirit, but she just up and decided to marry my father after that one meeting. No thought. No planning and then—bam!—she’s got two kids and a marriage she doesn’t want, living in a place she doesn’t want to be.” Max pulled her hands out of her pockets and he folded her into his embrace. As her head rested against his shoulder, the unease in her stomach subsided.

She didn’t know how long they stood there together, nor who pulled away first, but she did know that she felt stronger when she looked up into his face. She smiled. “I guess you won’t give me an extension now, will you?”

“No.” He chuckled and put his hands back on her arms, in affection and support rather than concern. “This is different. You know it is. Since that first day, I’ve seen you as a fighter and you want this place enough to fight for it. I care about what happens to this land—which I never imagined I would—but I
don’t
want to own it. I don’t want to be a part of it. That hasn’t changed.”

“I guess we won’t know which way I will fall until December is upon us.” She wished she could see the same fighting spirit in herself as Trey did. “Whatever I’m feeling most—fear or hope—will mean I sign the mortgage or I don’t.”

“I hope you won’t let your fear make the decision for you.”

He kissed her softly on the mouth. It tasted like goodbye.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

T
REY
TURNED
OUT
of the farm’s driveway onto Chicken Bridge Road and began the long drive back to D.C. On Old Oxford Highway, where old and new North Carolina sat across the street from one another, he thought he passed Kelly headed in the other direction.

The side of the road was already greener than it had been a month ago. The trees had an optimistic bend to them as they prepared to bud out. Birds swooped and danced with a sense of promise, prepared to forget the lean winter season. Fields were plowed. Persephone was not yet on the move, but she was awake and the world knew it. Nature was prepared to help her pull herself out of the darkness. He would have to pull his head out of his poetic ass if he was going to be any use to anyone at work.

He left the country scenery behind and drove through the city of Durham. Many of the gas stations and fast-food joints had been here when he was growing up. The
tacquerias
and
tiendas
were new. Durham was not the town it had been when he’d cheered his own escape, though he was grateful the small grocery store Max had shown him had survived all the changes, so he could stop in and buy a tub of pimento cheese on his way out of town.

When he pulled onto the interstate and shifted into fifth gear, Trey had time to think about the woman who’d enticed him down to Durham. How Max’s fear managed to keep a grip on her.

The Max afraid to take a risk didn’t match with his image of the woman standing, holding a rifle and shooting tin cans.

Like all things Max, this contradiction should be a sign that selling the farm to her—or someone else—come December was the right thing to do. Instead, Trey’s mind drifted south to the farm as he drove north. He wasn’t able to force his mind back to his work until he hit the D.C. suburbs.

* * *

M
AX
WAS
BUSYING
herself cleaning the kitchen when Kelly walked through the door. “Was that my brother I passed on the road?” he asked, helping himself to a glass of water before sitting down at the table.

Neither brother seemed to have noticed that someone other than their father lived in the house now. She should move the table and see if one of them tried to sit in the empty space.

“He came down for the basketball game. His friend Jerome had tickets.”

Behind the rim of his glass, Kelly’s brows were raised.

“What?”

He lowered his glass. “Why was he leaving
the farm?
”

“I guess he wanted to see his property,” she said peevishly.

The old wood of the trestle table swallowed the sound of Kelly’s glass hitting it. “My brother has the hots for you.”

Both Harris boys could jump off a cliff.

Kelly seemed unperturbed by her dirty look. “Speaking of hots, who’s the guy sitting on the porch of the barn?”

“Sean, one of my summer interns.”

“He got a boyfriend or partner that you know of?” Kelly rolled his glass between his hands, a hungry look on his face.

“He just got out of the army.”

“Doesn’t mean he can’t be gay.” He stopped rolling his glass long enough to give her a “don’t be stupid” look. “Just means he had to be silent about it for most of his career.”

Max thought about arguing with him, but stopped herself. She didn’t know anything about Sean other than that he was serious about farming and had spent all of his twenties and a healthy part of his thirties in the army. He could be gay. He could have a wife and kids. Both could be true. They didn’t affect his ability to hoe weeds and he hadn’t volunteered the information, so she hadn’t asked. “Gay, straight or bi, he’s a man with secrets, and I don’t know that he’ll let you or me in on them.”

Kelly raised a brow at her, looking so much like his older brother that her heart hurt. Kelly was comfortable. Kelly believed she should own the farm. Even if he were straight, Kelly wouldn’t interest her at all. Trey was a risk. She wanted him and she was afraid to even
try
to have him.

“Got anything I can use to strike up a conversation?”

“No. I’m not helping you hit on my intern. You want him, you work for it.”

“I contested a will for you.”

She sighed. “You could ask for a tour of the fields. Say I’m too mad at all the Harris boys to give you one.”

Kelly laughed, then caught the look on her face and stopped. “What’d I do?”

“You were born.” His concerned look made Max feel bad. “I’m not really mad at you. Or Trey, even. I’m mad at myself. If you want a chaperone, take Ashes.”

Kelly stood and came over to rest a hand on her shoulder. “No. You need the dog more than I do.” Then he gave her shoulder a squeeze. “I’m off to go get me a man.”

She chuckled, having to stop herself before she gave him the satisfaction of laughing outright. “Oh, shut up. The act doesn’t suit you.”

“But I made you laugh.”

“Yes, yes, you did. Thank you, Kelly.”

Almost as soon as the door closed behind Kelly, Max’s landline started ringing. She answered quickly.

“Maxine, honey,” her mother said, “how are you?”

Since returning to her home state, Max’s mother had gotten her Southern accent back. Or maybe it had never really been gone, only hidden under the pressures of trying to be a Midwestern housewife and then a single mother living in a land where she’d never been comfortable. Maybe losing her accent had been a protective measure, a way to pretend marrying a man she’d known for the time it took to walk from Harmon’s Den to Max Patch hadn’t been stupid.

“Big money for easy work,” she said, then winced. “Sorry, Mom.”

“What are you sorry about? I was married to your daddy for eleven years and bore him two children. Hearing his words come out of the mouth of my beautiful child doesn’t trouble me.”

“I know, but...”

“But?”

Max didn’t know how to finish her protest. Knowing how happy her mother was to be back in North Carolina, she couldn’t understand how as a young woman she’d packed up all her bags and married an Illinois farmer.

No, that wasn’t fair. There were photo albums with picture after picture of her mom and dad gazing lovingly at each other, and her dad was still handsome. What Max couldn’t understand was how her mom didn’t look back on that decision with regret. In one move, her mom had thrown everything she’d had behind one decision that had ultimately left her stranded.

“How’s the new man in your life?” Her mother always had a new man in her life. And a new hobby. And new friends. And a new favorite restaurant. She had been a dying plant in Illinois, come alive and vibrant under Asheville’s care.

“I’m still with Howie. He wants me to meet his kids.” A
tsk
came through over the phone. “I don’t know. I’m not sure we’re serious enough for that yet.” She paused, and Max waited to see what else her mom had to say. “He wants to come with me to Durham and meet you.”

“Oh.” Meeting a new potential step-parent wasn’t new, though Max couldn’t remember how her father had introduced them to Tina. One day his father had a girlfriend at their house cooking them dinner and the rest is history. Being thirty-two and introduced to your mom’s boyfriend felt different, especially because her mom was open about having flings—not serious love interests.

“Mom, do you ever regret marrying Dad?”

“What? Honey, where did that come from? Of course I don’t regret marrying your father. I loved him. Marrying your daddy gave me you and Harmon. How could I regret that?”

The sincerity in her mom’s voice didn’t match the memories Max had of her parents’ marriage, which seemed to have mostly consisted of arguments. “You gave up everything to be with Dad and it didn’t work. Aren’t you happier now?”

“Tricky thing, happiness. Moment to moment it relies on such insubstantial things and in the long term, it’s about having people you love in your life. Being a farmwife wasn’t for me, but I was surrounded by people I love, so I wasn’t unhappy there.”

Silence was the only response Max had. Her mother’s answers didn’t help her own decision-making process.

“What’s this about?” her mom asked.

Again, Max didn’t immediately respond. Her mother had raised them all to believe in their dreams and go for what they wanted, which was easy when your dreams were easy and there wasn’t much risk. But what about when failure meant losing everything? “I’ve just been thinking.”

“Is this about the farm? If you need money, I will help you buy the farm. And I’m sure your daddy will help, too.”

Guilt blew through her body with a sudden gust. Her parents were willing to risk their shaky finances to help her achieve her dream. But she had the funds to do it. And if she risked everything she had on this one dream—and failed—she knew she wouldn’t be alone. She’d still be surrounded by people she loved.

“No. I don’t need your money, Mom, but thanks. I’ve just been weighing the risks.”

“Honey, sometimes the risks aren’t worth weighing.”

But how do you know
when
those times are?
Max didn’t ask her question. She listened to her mom talk about learning to throw pots; she talked about what they were planting on the farm and her new interns, then hung up the phone still weighed down by the risks.