Chapter 16
sixteen
September
Wednesdays were dedicated to weeding.
Since Short King Farms was certified organic, they couldn’t use any chemical weed killers or pesticides.
Jansel and Emerson used some natural remedies, some basic tools, tarped certain beds, but even still: a lot of the maintenance on the farm was done by hand.
There was something satisfying about even this routine, though, Luca had to admit, even if it wasn’t as sexy as harvesting.
Looking down each row when you were done, seeing how much cleaner and healthier it all looked, knowing you had made it look that way. Still—
Wednesdays were hard.
Jansel and Luca were halfway through the day, backs aching, contemplating breaking for lunch soon, when they heard the cry.
Luca straightened. They were in the bed closest to the dirt road, closest to the house—greens, broccoli, garlic, radishes. Close, but not close enough to hear what was happening inside the house’s walls. Usually.
Another wail, angry and shrill.
“That’s Daisy, right?” Luca looked over his shoulder at Jansel, a few rows over. “Not a goat?”
Jansel smiled in agreement. “Not a goat.” When Luca turned back to the house, unable to return to weeding his own row, Jansel added, “She’s a kid. Probably having a bad day.”
“Yeah,” Luca said. Kids had tantrums. Luca had grown up in a house of five children. He had a niece and a nephew. He knew this.
Luca stared at the house.
It was probably overstepping boundaries. Being worried about someone’s kid definitely went beyond the bounds of a sex pact. Or even, you know, just regular employment. Jansel wasn’t sweating it. Emerson knew how to be a dad; he was likely handling it fine.
But Luca couldn’t stop the uneasiness from spreading anyway, prickling along the back of his neck and down his spine each second Daisy’s cries continued.
“Hey,” Luca said. “You mind if I head in for lunch a little early? Make sure everything’s okay?”
Jansel only gave him a look.
“I ain’t your boss,” he said. Even though he was totally Luca’s boss. Jansel was the one Luca had truly learned everything from. “Do what you need to.”
Luca dropped his gloves, his bucket, his tools at the end of the row. And then, like a man with absolutely no chill, he ran across the road to the house as fast as he could. Dashed through the door and down the hall to the source of distress, a room he hadn’t entered since that first day.
Daisy’s.
She sat in the middle of the floor on a polka-dotted rug, hugging Moomoo to her chest. Fat tears rolled down her cheeks, fogging her glasses. Her entire face was red, like a not-quite-ripe strawberry. Emerson had been squatting in front of her, but stood with a sigh when he saw Luca.
“She wants to spend more time with Sally,” he explained.
“But I got a guy coming to look at the old barn in”—he checked his watch, huffed—“five minutes now, if he’s not already here.
I’m sorry, Daze.” Emerson directed his words to his daughter.
“I can’t leave a four year old alone. You gotta come with me. You can use your screen—”
“I won’t be alone,” Daisy wailed. “Be with Sally.”
Emerson rubbed his temple.
“We can’t. You’re hanging out with me, then it’s lunch, then it’s nap. We can’t always do everything we want. Come on.” Daisy didn’t move. Emerson’s voice turned stern, frayed with frustration when he said, “Enough of this.”
With an ear-splitting scream, Daisy suddenly yanked at Moomoo with both hands, pulling in opposite directions. The sound of stitches ripping was, Luca knew, barely audible over Daisy’s cries, but he still felt it like a gunshot.
“Fuck,” Emerson said under his breath, but Daisy still heard it. Her head whipped toward him, eyes flashing above her glasses, which were still a mess but had almost fallen off the tip of her nose. Which was impressive, considering they were strapped to her head.
“Bad word!”
“Hey now.” Luca stepped forward, hand outstretched toward the stuffed cow. “Let’s not take it out on Moomoo.”
“Moomoo,” Daisy strangled out through her tears, “is mine.”
And, well. Luca held up his hands. “That’s fair.”
“Daisy.” Emerson’s voice had returned to only sounding exhausted.
“Come on, you’re going to make yourself sick.
Take a breath, love. It’s okay.” He tried to return to her level, reaching out for her on his knees, but Daisy only shook her head and backed away, clutching the now-torn Moomoo to her chest.
“Hey. Daisy. It okay if I chat with your dad for one second?” Luca motioned with his head toward the door. After a pout-filled moment of consideration, Daisy nodded.
Luca and Emerson stepped into the hall.
“Hey, so,” Luca started, the words coming fast and low so Daisy wouldn’t hear.
“If you’re okay with me breaking from my work with Jansel, I can hang out with Daisy and Sally while you deal with the contractor.
But if you want to stand your ground on her having to do what you say, I get that, too.
Or—” He took a breath. “You can tell me to get out of your parenting business and I’ll leave right now. ”
“No,” Emerson said immediately. And then, to Luca’s surprise, he fell forward, an almost comic collapse, his forehead digging into Luca’s shoulder. “Please don’t leave.”
On instinct, Luca’s arms wrapped around him. His hands rubbed up and down Emerson’s back.
“You really wouldn’t mind?” Emerson asked into Luca’s t-shirt. “Hanging out with her for a while?”
“Of course not.”
“Okay.” With a heaving sigh, Emerson pushed himself off Luca’s chest. He reached up, brushed a hand across Luca’s cheek. “Thank you.”
And then he walked back into his daughter’s room, as if what had just transpired in the hallway was totally normal.
But as Luca followed him back into the room, he couldn’t stop thinking about how it kind of had felt normal.
Even though the last few days, ever since Emerson had returned from Portland with Daisy in tow on Saturday, had been…
not bad, but—well. Every single day that Luca couldn’t touch Emerson made him realize how much he’d gotten used to touching Emerson.
But he’d tried not to be too whiny about it.
These were the terms he had helped set up and agreed to.
Fuck, if anything, it was good. He was already entirely too fucked up about this whole thing. Space was good. Space was great.
But then, at the first sign of Emerson needing help—
Luca had literally sprinted across the farm.
And then welcomed him into his arms.
Luca had apparently missed Emerson explaining the plan to Daisy in the midst of his thoughts. She must have been down with it, though, because suddenly, her body was wrapped around his knees, her shout of “Loo-kah!” startling him out of his head.
A knock sounded on the front door.
“Okay, I gotta go.” Emerson rested a hand on both Luca and Daisy’s shoulders.
And then he reached down and extracted Daisy’s glasses from her face and her hair, wiping the lenses on his t-shirt before settling the contraption back on her head.
Both careful and quick, like he’d done it a million times before.
“But come get me if you need anything, okay?”
Luca nodded, but Emerson was already gone.
“All right, m’lady,” Luca said, trying to get himself together. He held out his hand. “Should we go see our favorite cow?”
It shouldn’t have been surprising to him, really.
How quick he was to jump past boundaries.
He’d been doing it since the moment he’d met Emerson at the bar.
He’d been doing it every time they slept together.
God, he’d made it through exactly one (1) night in Emerson’s bedroom without asking about the photos on the wall.
There he was the next night, prying into Emerson’s entire life history.
Eating up every morsel Emerson gave him.
Daisy was silent, other than her sniffles, as they walked across the road toward the barn.
“Oh, shit,” Luca said. Daisy glared up at him. “I mean, shoot. Sorry. Daisy, you know you can’t bring Moomoo into the barn.”
She pulled her hand away. Stopped walking. Hugged Moomoo to her chest and looked at Luca with a pout so dramatic Luca had to pretend to cough into his hand to hide his laugh.
Once he’d recovered, he dropped to his haunches in front of her.
“Those are the rules, Daisy.” He reached up, tucked a lock of wispy bleach-blonde hair behind her ear. “We can go back inside and hang out there with Moomoo, or we can put him away and then go see Sally. Which do you want?”
Daisy dropped her eyes from his to look at her stuffed animal. The red had mostly faded from her face, leaving only slightly rosy cheeks.
“I hurt him,” she whispered, fingering the tear in Moomoo’s neck. “Didn’t mean to.”
“I know.” Luca kept his voice steady, pretended there weren’t things happening inside his chest. “We all have big feelings sometimes. Moomoo knows you didn’t mean to hurt him.”
Daisy pet Moomoo for a moment more before she looked at Luca, brown eyes big and sad.
“He can stay inside,” she said, as if no one had ever made such a sacrifice. “We see Sally.”
“Good choice.” Luca stood, wincing a little at his sore quads, and gently ruffled Daisy’s hair. “I bet you he could use a little nap anyway.”
“Yeah,” Daisy agreed, voice perking up. “He’s so tired.” And she was running, her little legs sprinting across the road with surprising speed, and Luca hustled to keep up with her.
Inside, they carefully laid Moomoo down on top of Daisy’s comforter and underneath a small, soft blue blanket sized perfectly for Moomoo. She gave him a kiss on the forehead before turning and taking Luca’s hand again. Luca pretended his chest wasn’t doing even more weird shit.
When they walked into the barn, Sally wasn’t in her stall. They said hi to the random chickens who were pecking around instead before heading out into the pasture.