Chapter 8
eight
A thud sounded from the ceiling.
Luca blinked awake into the darkness.
The thud was followed by the unmistakable wail of a small child.
It took him a moment to remember where he was. It was one of the first times that waking up here, in Emerson King’s guest room/seed storage, had left Luca off balance.
Maybe it should have felt stranger, getting used to living with other people again, living in a new place. But most days so far, Luca had simply been too exhausted to even really think about it.
Fishing was physically taxing, too; no doubt about it. Both the actual work and the endurance of it: your body against the elements for such long stretches at a time. A lot of that time involved waiting, though. Patience. Navigating. Shooting the shit.
There wasn’t a whole lot of being still on a farm. He was sore in muscles he couldn’t remember ever feeling before. Jansel had taught him stretches he should do for his back that first day; even with following those instructions, his spine felt abused. His hands were almost never clean.
And he was pretty sure he loved it.
Being too exhausted to think about anything else was kind of fucking awesome.
Except.
It wasn’t true that his brain had been empty. Not completely.
There was something ironic about it, that he hadn’t been at Short King Farms five minutes when Emerson had said that thing about nightshades.
And even though Luca had taken this job to turn a new leaf, to leave both fishing and his old useless writing dreams behind—fuck if that word hadn’t sparked something deep inside his brain.
It was so visual, so dark and atmospheric.
He could picture where it would fit into the world of Drift immediately.
It had been so long since he’d had that feeling.
Opening up his laptop had felt more like self-imposed torture than anything else for, god.
Years now. He’d forgotten the sparks. How something could unexpectedly slot into place, how special it was that you could take this world you’d been tinkering with forever and still find ways to improve it.
It wasn’t even just the Nightshades, already capitalized in his head.
It was everything about the farm. Studying the plants and the soil and the lay of the land in a way he had never fully done before.
The world of Drift was mostly composed of sand, water, and wood, but this—the greenery, the colors of it all—they filled in details he’d been missing.
Either for the alternate world his characters had been struggling to find for so long, or maybe for how their own world used to be.
Or maybe there was a new story hiding inside all of it. He hadn’t worked it all out yet.
He’d allowed himself the indulgence of jotting down some ideas on paper each night after dinner. This felt innocent enough. He hadn’t opened his laptop, hadn’t looked at his spreadsheets in all of the five days he’d been here so far, and he counted that as a victory.
He wasn’t a perfect human being. He’d still check his writing email sometime this weekend.
But he’d promised himself to only do so once a week.
The fact that he hadn’t caved yet—that deserved a drink.
Or like, a good, thorough orgasm. A quiet, no-thoughts afternoon of watching a baseball game.
If he could find the time or the energy for any of that.
A more familiar sound carried through the ceiling now. Emerson’s feet on the floorboards, quicker than his usual tread.
Luca’s bedroom on the bottom floor of the split-level was right underneath Daisy’s.
He’d barely spent much time in this room other than to make his nightly scribbles and to sleep; his backpack and suitcase still lay sprawled open in the corner, barely unpacked.
But he had gotten used to the sounds of the house, the pitter-patter of Daisy’s small feet, the heavier weight of Emerson’s; the high-pitched murmur of her voice and the deep, calm rumble of his as they got ready for bed.
It probably should’ve embarrassed Luca, that he’d been falling asleep at roughly the same time as a four-year-old.
But it seemed Emerson likely did, too. The house was always quiet as sin once Daisy’s storytime was over and her door snicked shut.
This was the first time Luca had been woken up to this.
More sounds filtered down. The creak of a door opening.
The reverberations of Emerson’s voice, barely audible over the frantic pitch of Daisy’s.
Luca felt the breath he’d apparently been holding release at the sound of it.
Knowing Emerson was with her now. He’d heard Daisy cry a few times, during the rare times he actually crossed paths with Emerson and Daisy during the day: when she was overly tired and trying to refuse her nap; when she’d gotten a finger pinched in the fence of the goats’ pasture; when she’d tripped and fallen, bare kneed, onto the gravel drive.
But he hadn’t heard her cry like this before. The sound of unfettered fear.
Her calls of distress lessened as soon as Emerson started talking. They grew intermittent, and then quiet, until Luca could barely hear her at all. But Emerson’s cadence remained steady.
Until it changed.
Until Emerson started to sing.
Luca shifted under the covers. Stretched an arm under his head.
The clarity of the words was still muted, but Luca could track the melody.
It was something familiar, something he knew he’d heard before.
The specifics eluded him for the first minute and then the second.
But it was right there, hovering in the back of his memory. He just needed Emerson to keep singing.
Emerson was different on the farm. At least, he’d been different this week.
Luca had been trying not to take it personally, the fact that he’d talked with Daisy far more this week than he’d spoken with his actual boss.
It felt, sometimes, like Emerson was purposefully avoiding him.
That in the few moments their days did cross—when Emerson came down from his wildflower field to check in with Jansel; when they happened to occupy the kitchen at the same time—Emerson studiously avoided eye contact.
Turned tail and walked in the other direction as soon as he could.
Luca really was trying not to take it personally.
This job wasn’t about him; it was about the farm.
And if the man Luca had met at the bar a week ago now seemed somehow altogether different—well, it wasn’t Luca’s place to analyze.
His place was doing whatever Jansel told him to do.
His place was working until he was too exhausted to think about anything else.
Except it hadn’t just been at the bar. What Luca couldn’t stop thinking about was after they’d left the bar that night, when Emerson had first shown him the farm.
There hadn’t only been an easiness to the way Emerson walked, to the way he talked.
There had been a confidence, too. A rightness.
Hands in those damn well-fitted jeans, spine straight but shoulders relaxed.
A hint of a grin always hiding on his mouth as he complained with affection about all of it: the goats, the land, the chickens and the profit margins.
It had made Luca feel easy, too. At home on this land from the jump.
This week, though. Any time Emerson was around, there had only been stiffness.
There had only been a general aura of stress, even when it was surrounded by wildflowers.
Luca wasn’t taking it personally. He wasn’t trying to analyze.
But maybe he understood his boss a little better now.
That the man he’d met that night, a week prior—alone, indulging in all of a single beer, complaining about his goats to a stranger, gazing quietly at his land—that had been Emerson King letting go.
That might be the most of Emerson Luca would ever be able to get.
Except for all the moments Luca had also been able to see Emerson with his daughter.
Even with Luca around—Emerson always softened, just a bit, when Daisy was there.
His voice through the ceiling hit a slightly higher note. Finally, it snapped into place.
Elton John. “Levon.”
When his daughter was scared after a nightmare, Emerson sang her 1970s Elton John.
Maybe Luca had learned more about a four-year-old this week than he had about his boss. Maybe he’d never truly know Emerson King.
But now—for better or worse—he knew this.
“Jesus Christ,” Liv Gallagher said the next morning as soon as she saw Luca walking through the automatic doors of the IGA. He smiled over the box of blooms cradled in his arms. “People are going to start depending on us having these things.”
“Emerson said you didn’t have to take any you didn’t need.”
“Of course he did,” she said with a roll of her eyes.
“He said to tell you he really meant it today, though. In case you still had bouquets from earlier in the week that hadn’t sold.”
It had been one of Luca’s favorite duties, driving Emerson’s flowers to the IGA each morning. Partly because Emerson had looked so grateful when he’d first offered to do it, a rare moment when he’d actually looked Luca in the eye. Briefly. But still.
In any case, Luca liked seeing Liv every day, the blunt butchness of her, the way she rolled her eyes as much as she smiled.
The way she knew everyone. The way she cared for everyone.
Her family had been in Greyfin Bay as long as the Yaegers had.
No matter how much adulthood had twisted around Luca’s ribcage, weird and squirmy and always less certain than he used to imagine, being in the IGA and hearing Liv Gallagher’s voice always felt like being a kid.