Chapter 6 #2
“Mine is the cow,” she said. “Have you met ours?”
“Only briefly, from a distance.”
“She’s the best cow.”
“Your dad seemed to think so, too.”
“She’s in the barn! Right now! Wanna come see?”
Luca stood. He glanced again at Emerson, readjusted his cap.
“I’m at the direction of your dad from here on out, I think. So wherever he wants me to go, I’ll go.”
Emerson turned his head, focused his gaze on the fields and the distant trees of the orchard beyond.
Luca was wearing a plain black t-shirt along with his hat and jeans.
A fine outfit for the farm. Emerson didn’t know why everything about him felt illicit.
Why it made his ears burn hot, what Luca had just said. I’m at the direction of your dad.
Emerson had only ever wanted to hang out with plants.
As it turned out, farming required a lot more authority over people than he had ever anticipated.
Well—he wasn’t sure he held much true authority over Jansel.
A blessing. But he’d directed Parker and Myriah just fine for the last two months. This shouldn’t feel any different.
“We’re just about done at the barn. You and I can wrap up there ourselves, Daze. I was thinking for today I’d have Luca shadow Jansel.” With what felt like an award-winning amount of bravery, Emerson turned his head back to address Luca directly. “He should be over in the nightshades.”
Luca’s mouth quirked. He crossed his arms over his chest.
“Nightshades,” Luca repeated, almost a murmur to himself. For some reason, Emerson felt himself blush again. He didn’t know why he didn’t just say—
“Tomatoes, peppers, stuff like that.”
“I’m only going to call them nightshades from now on.” The grin on Luca’s mouth grew. “Sounds like a heavy metal band. Or—”
Abruptly, he cut himself off. He looked over his shoulder, in the direction Emerson was just staring.
“What’s a heavy metal band?” Daisy asked.
Luca looked down at her.
“I’ll play you some later, if it’s all right with your dad.”
“Cool.” Except when Daisy said it, it always came out coo, like a dove.
These were the facts: Luca had shown up. Luca was warm and charming with his daughter. Daisy stood motionless, mouth hanging open as she stared up at him, her standard posture for taking in something new.
But Luca had been warm and charming when Emerson met him at the bar. Emerson didn’t know why it felt alarming, absorbing it anew now.
He tried to remember how it had felt, wandering the farm with Luca Friday night, shoulder to shoulder.
The easiness between them, both in the silences and how Emerson had been able to talk about this place with him.
Both derisive and affectionate, the way he always talked about it inside his own head.
He understood now that he had probably been trying to show off a little for this man.
It had felt different, open, free, just the two of them on this land in the twilight, a beer in his system.
But Daisy was here now, and Jansel. It was no longer a Friday night. It was Monday morning. Emerson had returned to himself. He didn’t have space for carefree things.
When Luca’s attention returned to Emerson, his face was serious. Professional. As if they were on the same page.
“That sounds good to me. Shadowing Jansel.”
“Great. He can show you what to do. Bed C is over there. You can actually see him—that gray ball cap over there? You can take lunch whenever. Just follow Jansel’s lead. Let me know—”
Emerson was already backing away when Luca interrupted.
“I’ll get right over to him, but—uh. I have some things in the car I was hoping I could unpack? Some perishables and stuff I took from my fridge that I was hoping—but if that’s not—”
“Oh.” Emerson stopped cold.
“Sorry, I should have asked if I could bring—”
“No, no. Of course.”
Emerson cleared his throat. Changed course. Walked past Luca without looking at him, assuming he would follow.
He had prepared for how he’d deal with Luca being on the farm.
But even after his conversation with Jayden, he somehow kept forgetting—
Luca was going to live here. In the house. With Emerson and Daisy. Emerson hadn’t even cleaned the spare bedroom, which was full of drying herbs and seeding supplies.
Luca stopped at his car to pull out a backpack, a suitcase. Several tote bags.
“Can I—” Emerson started, trying to remember some sense of decency.
“No, I got it.” Luca pushed the car door closed with his hip. His arms strained under the weight of his bags, his black t-shirt tightening against his biceps.
“I can show you my room!” Daisy shouted.
Emerson turned with a swallow and followed her inside.
“The kitchen’s through here,” he said, unnecessarily, as it was visible as soon as you walked through the door. “The room where you’ll be staying is downstairs, if you want to drop—”
“Kitchen first is good.” Luca let his things slide to the floor before picking a tote bag back up.
“Oh! You can meet Moomoo!” Daisy was still five steps ahead, already grabbing the stuffed animal from its perch at the kitchen table.
“Hey, Moomoo,” Luca said casually, perfectly, as he set his bag on the kitchen island. “Nice to meet you.”
“He protects the house when we’re on the farm,” Daisy said, voice serious, arms clutched around Moomoo’s middle.
“An important job. Glad you’ve got him around.”
Daisy inched toward Luca as he placed a carton of oat milk, a half-consumed block of cheese, something wrapped in brown paper inside Emerson’s fridge.
“Do you like yogurt chips?” she asked.
“Don’t know. Don’t think I’ve ever had them.”
Daisy gasped again.
“You can have some of mine at snack time.”
And while Emerson was leaning against the doorframe at the entrance to the kitchen, giving Luca space—staring at the way his shoulder blades pulled against his t-shirt as he hunched over the fridge—he could just see the soft smile in Luca’s profile when Luca turned to Daisy.
“That’s kind of you, Daisy. I might be busy in the fields with Jansel when it’s snack time, but I look forward to trying them when I can.
” He balled up the empty tote bag in his palms. Turned back to Emerson to say, “Hope it’s okay where I put things in there.
Feel free to rearrange, or if there’s some system we can—”
“No system required. Use my kitchen however you need.”
The corner of Luca’s mouth quirked in acknowledgement, but it was brief, professional still. Emerson wasn’t at all jealous of his daughter for receiving the easy, warm smiles this mouth was capable of.
Emerson pushed away from the doorframe. Grabbed Luca’s suitcase and turned toward the stairs.
“You’ll be down here. I have to warn you that I didn’t have a lot of time—”
“I’m sure whatever—”
“You’ll be staying in Gamma and Gappah’s room!” Daisy zoomed between Emerson and Luca’s legs, darting down the stairs ahead of them.
Luca sent a questioning look Emerson’s way.
“My in-laws,” he answered. He hoped Gamma and Gappah—pronounced by Daisy’s tongue in a way Emerson couldn’t replicate if he tried—lasted even longer than Da-dee and Poppy. He broke Luca’s gaze and followed Daisy down the stairs. “Well, ex-in-laws. They stay in the guest room sometimes.”
Luca spoke to his back.
“I can always head back to my cabin if—”
“No, no, you’re fine. They have no plans of visiting anytime soon, as far as I know.”
Emerson hoped it sounded casual. That it wasn’t obvious that it broke his heart a little, not knowing if Graham and Yulia would ever occupy the room again.
They had promised, when he and Jayden had broken the news of their divorce, that Emerson would always be their son.
That they would still be a family. It had been promised with such confidence, with one of Yulia’s vanilla-scented hand squeezes—both of hers wrapped around one of Emerson’s—and one of Graham’s solemn nods.
Emerson had received it with as much gravity as he’d accepted his and Jayden’s wedding vows, Daisy’s first cries into the world.
It had felt real when he’d joined them at their house last year for Thanksgiving. It had felt real when they’d been there at Jayden’s bungalow for Christmas. Not the same as it was, not one hundred percent, but enough for Daisy. Enough for Emerson to hang onto.
And then Easter arrived. The first holiday Emerson had custody for. The first holiday post-divorce he’d hosted at the farm.
Emerson and Jayden weren’t religious people; the holiday had never been a weighty one. More an excuse to make a ton of deviled eggs than anything else. An opportunity for Daisy to choose a favorite frilly dress.
But he still—
Emerson had thought they’d come.
He cleared his throat in the dark hallway.
“It gets pretty good eastern light, so in the off-season, I typically use it for—”
Daisy was already pushing open the door. Emerson hurried after her, as if arriving two seconds before Luca would change anything.
“Uh, prepping starts,” he finished hastily as Luca followed him into the room.
“Storing seeds. Drying herbs.” After dropping Luca’s suitcase, he swooped past Daisy to gather dirty trays from the dresser, the bed, the ground into his arms. “That kind of stuff. Sorry I didn’t clean it more before you arrived.
” Juggling the soil-crusted trays in one arm, he swept a hand across the bedspread with a frown.
Well. At least the pillows looked clean.
“No worries.” Luca dropped the rest of his bags onto the bed. “Looks just fine to me.”
“Typically all this stuff would be done in greenhouses, but mine are a bit of a mess at the moment.” At the moment meaning, they’ve been a mess since we bought the farm and I haven’t been able to fix them yet, even though it’s been years and doing so is essential to my long-term business plan.
“Maybe that’s something I could help you with?”
Emerson opened his mouth but couldn’t formulate a reply. Even with Luca’s extra help, there was so much to do this next month, especially with preparing for the wedding, that it felt impossible to believe the greenhouses would be fixed anytime soon.
God. Emerson had agreed to host a wedding in September. By many accounts, his busiest month of the year.
“Yeah,” he eventually said.
Luca stepped toward the arrangement of mismatched cabinets along the far wall.
“This where you keep your seeds?” He pulled out a small drawer, labeled Peppers in Jayden’s neat hand.
“Yeah.” Emerson swallowed. Jayden had found every piece of the vintage assortment of cabinets and shelving in this room—along with a lot of other things that filled this house and this farm—all along the Oregon Coast, from scouring thrift shops to hours spent on Facebook Marketplace and Buy Nothing.
They hadn’t had much to fill these seed storage cabinets with that first year, but they had become Emerson’s prized possessions.
“Da-dee says I’m not allowed to play with those,” Daisy said with a Tony-worthy pout.
Emerson held back a response. He had to have some boundaries with her on the farm. A man had to be somewhat precious about his seeds.
“Well then.” Luca pushed the drawer back in, raised both hands in innocence. “I better not play with them either.”
Daisy giggled.
“Okay my room!” she shouted mid-giggle and twirled on her heel. Luca smiled after her as she raced out of the room.
“You don’t have to—” Emerson almost reached out a hand to stop Luca following her, until he realized placing his hand on this man’s forearm might be a thing he couldn’t recover from. “You can get settled in here, if you want. Jansel will be ready for you whenever.”
Luca shrugged, stuffed his hands in his pockets. The smile that had chased Daisy still lingered on his lips. The space between them was so small, and Emerson didn’t know why he’d stopped him, why he hadn’t let Luca proceed out the door. His pulse jumped in his throat.
“She seems pretty determined to give me the tour,” Luca said. “I don’t have much to unpack anyway. I’ll get over to Jansel and out of your hair as soon as she’s done.”
“Thank you,” Emerson said, feeling suddenly grave. “For being kind to her.”
Luca’s eyebrows rose the tiniest fraction.
“It’s not hard,” he replied. “She’s sweet.”
Emerson only nodded. Extended a hand, motioning for Luca to exit ahead of him.
It shouldn’t be hard. Being kind to kids.
But it had been, for Emerson’s parents.
“Helloooooooooo,” Daisy called from upstairs.
“On our way, ma’am,” Luca called back as they headed up the stairs. And even from here, through the stairwell and the kitchen and the upstairs hallway that led to her room, Emerson could hear Daisy’s giggle.