Chapter 28
CHAPTER 28
“ I love this,” Darby declared. Eli had spent the morning showing her around his uncle’s farm.
“Which part?” Eli asked as they stood beside their last stop, the goat pen. The goats had already been fed, milked, and watered, but that didn’t stop them from attempting to climb the pen’s enclosure in search of treats. Knowing them as he did, Eli had come loaded with treats, which he allowed Darby to distribute, much to her delight. (And the delight of the greedy goats.)
“All of it,” she declared, in rapturous enchantment. In truth, it was almost sensory overload. The uncle only had a few acres, but he’d made good use of them with goats, bunnies, bees, flowers, and vegetables. Eli explained that it had always been his uncle’s dream to be off the grid and self-contained. Finding that impossible, especially because he had to work a fulltime job before he retired, he instead dabbled in multiple areas that he found the most profitable and rewarding. Not even learning that the rabbits were raised for meat tamped her joy and enthusiasm.
Eli gave her a benign smile, taking vicarious enjoyment through her pleasure.
“You think I’m an idiot,” she said, tamping down her smile to a manageable level.
“No way,” Eli disagreed. “The farm has been my favorite place, my whole life. I love to bring people here.”
By “people,” Darby wondered if he meant women, and then immediately banished the thought for the undue jealousy it brought. Eli was not hers; he could see whomever he wanted, and he was certainly free to bring these nameless, faceless others to this little country oasis. Just because she felt oddly possessive of the farm now didn’t mean she was allowed to be oddly possessive of him . “Why do you live in the city?”
“The golden question lately,” he said. He rested his arms on the fence rail and faced the barn. “It’s a shorter commute, for one thing.”
“It’s Washington DC, it’s almost the law that you have a long commute,” she returned.
He tossed her a smile. “Is my landlady trying to evict me?”
That thought brought sudden and immense panic. Somehow she hadn’t realized that if Eli left, he’d be leaving her . He was her first and only friend in a decade. She couldn’t lose him. On the other hand, she had no right to be possessive, she reminded herself again, no right at all. “I want you to be happy,” she said, which was true.
He faced the barn again with a sigh. “Sometimes it’s hard to figure out who you are, to figure out what’s best.”
“Tell me about it,” she agreed, now also resting against the fence. The goats herded around them and bleated, desperate for more treats. She reached through the fence to pet one but, after realizing the hand contained no food, the goat butted her away with an irritated bleat. I think I just got rejected by a goat.
“I think that’s what our twenties are supposed to be about,” Eli said.
“I thought that was what being a kid was supposed to be about,” Darby returned.
“Who says we’re not still kids?”
“My late husband.”
He grimaced.
She bumped his shoulder. “Too soon?”
“Did it never bother you, the age disparity?” he asked, tone tentative.
“Truth?”
He nodded.
“It honestly never occurred to me. I knew Ham was older when we met. I had no idea how much older, until we were married. By then, he was just Ham.” She shrugged. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Yes.”
“Is it really that weird and disturbing?”
“Honestly?” he said.
She nodded.
“Yeah. It makes me really angry.”
She blinked at him in shock. “Really?”
He nodded.
“Why?”
“Because you were a child. Do you have any idea how stupid and immature I was at eighteen? I was still staying up all night to play Mario at that point. To think anyone would have thought me capable of being a husband at that point, especially someone forty years older.” He paused and shuddered, trying to throw off his revulsion. “You were taken advantage of, borderline abused.”
She frowned. “Ham was never abusive to me, he loved me.”
“He possessed you,” Eli said. It was the most vehement she’d ever heard him, and it made her feel terrible. The entire conversation made her feel things, squeamish and vaguely guilty and borderline ashamed. Tears filled her eyes and she faced away from him, blinking rapidly.
She must not have been fast enough or sneaky enough to avoid Eli’s detection because he immediately deflated. “Oh, no, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Why not? You believe it.”
“Yeah, but just because I believe something doesn’t make it right. It’s hard for me to imagine, but it was your marriage. You must have really loved him.”
His tone was probing, gentle, and somehow that made it worse. She cried in earnest now, even though she tried to press the tears back in with her fingers. “I did, and he loved me. It wasn’t about the money.”
“Hey.” Eli rested his hands gently on her shoulders and faced her toward him. “Is that what you thought I meant?”
She nodded and sniffled, too far gone to make a reply.
He pulled her carefully against his chest and hugged her, his hand making soothing passes up and down her back. “That isn’t what I meant, not at all. You did nothing wrong. You were a child who saw a chance for a better life, a way out with a man who loved you. I’m so glad it turned out well, that he was kind to you and took good care of you, financially or otherwise. I guess it makes me mad because I think of all the ways it could have gone wrong, and who would have known? Who was looking out for you?”
“No one,” she agreed. No one ever had. Even Ham. She’d thought she’d found someone to take care of her at last, and the irony was that she had become the caretaker for him. After he died, she lost the part of her that wanted to try again. It was easier to be alone than hope for something better. At least with only herself she knew she was safe. And then it turned out she had a tumor, and that was worse because there was no one, absolutely no one, to rely on. Except her neighbor, Eli. This man who shouldn’t care about her at all, especially after the way she’d ignored him for so long, had stepped up to be the closest thing she’d ever had to a real friend. She felt grateful for his presence, but terrified, so terrified that it would disappear again. And now it would be worse because she’d had a taste of care and kindness. How would it feel if that went away again? But how could she make it stay? All in all, she felt a swirl of confusion and fear, always fear.
Except not right now, because Eli held her and soothed her, his strong hand making gentle passes down her back that ran along her nerve endings and quieted them, sending her fight-or-flight mechanism into sleep mode. She took a deep breath, held it, and let it out, releasing all her negative emotions with it. Instead she experienced a moment of such clear and intense healing that she would be hard pressed to describe the experience later. All she knew was that she wanted more of this, on repeat forever. It would be easy to say it was a byproduct of growing up and reaching out, but the more time she spent with Eli, the more she began to realize it was particular to him. He wasn’t afraid of all her broken pieces, wasn’t scared away by any of it. And neither did he see her as merely a pretty face, as so many others did. Rather, he seemed to like Darby , seemed to see something in her he wanted more of. What, though? She had no idea.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
“About my future, I guess.”
He let her go and studied her face. “What about it?”
“What I want it to look like.”
“Did you come to any conclusions?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know how to do that. I feel so totally clueless.”
He took her hand and gave it a squeeze. “Let me again remind you that you’re only twenty eight. Just because you spent five of those years married doesn’t mean you have any idea what you’re doing.”
“So, how do you get there? How do you figure it out?” she asked.
They started to walk, to take another trek around the property. Everything was in bloom, and it wasn’t too hot, making it a perfect day for a stroll. “Let’s start with what you like about your life.”
She thought about that. What did she enjoy about her life, post-Ham? “I like the peace of it. I enjoy drinking coffee on a quiet, unhurried morning. I like being able to make my own schedule. I like overseeing the rentals, doing the bookwork, tracking my investments.”
“Huh,” he said.
“Good huh, or bad huh,” she said, ever fearful that he was about the judge her for the boring smallness of her life. She was learning, though, that Eli lacked judgment about anything. He was fair and, above all, kind. Gracious , was possibly a better word. Her choices and life were just that to him, hers, and he didn’t fault her for them, didn’t put the weight of his expectations on her. That, Darby was learning, was an incredibly rare trait to find in a person.
“Just huh. Here’s what I gleaned from that: you value peace, autonomy, and security. You’re a self-starter who would prefer to be her own boss.”
“You got all that from I like coffee and money?” she exclaimed.
He laughed. “Yep. You forget, I manage people for a living. I’ve learned to parse through what people say to what they mean, and I’m pretty good at seeing strengths and weaknesses.”
“What are my weaknesses?” she asked, biting her lip in trepidation.
“You tell me,” he said.
He must be an amazing manager, because he got her to think about her weaknesses without an emotion, through the lens of a prospective employer. What would make her a valuable asset? What would make her a liability? “I’m afraid,” she croaked. “So afraid.”
“Of what?” he asked gently, coaxingly.
“Of being a burden on someone, of someone being a burden on me.”
Eli nodded, absorbing that. “But, as humans, aren’t all of us a burden on someone, at some point? You can try your hardest not to be, but eventually life catches up with you. You have a tumor, for instance,” he gave her a pointed glance. “Or maybe you make it through midlife unscathed. Age still has its way. Every day I deal with people who have no one in their corner, no one to root for them, support them, care for them. Instead they pay my company, a group of strangers, to oversee their care. I do my level best to make certain that care is top notch, but it’s nothing compared to the oversight of people who know you, who love you, who really have your back.”
Darby didn’t want to cry again, but she certainly felt like it. Everything he said was true, all of it, but what was she to do? She was completely isolated from humanity. “Do you think I should get a job?”
“Do you want a job?”
She wrinkled her nose. “Not even a little. But connecting with people is so hard.”
“So is not connecting with people. It’s all hard. You have to choose your hard. One way leaves you vulnerable, open to rejection or exhaustion. The other leaves you lonely. Which way, Western Woman?”
She eked out a little half laugh. It was Eli’s specialty in life to lighten the mood of any heavy situation, and he was good at it. Suddenly everything seemed possible, even leaving the safe little shell she’d created for herself. “Practically speaking, how does one leave the bubble and make friends? I would pretend I’m asking for a friend, but we both know I don’t have one.”
“You could join a book club, a yarn club, I saw the blankets you made. You could volunteer. Also, what are you talking about? Of course you have a friend.” He linked his arm with hers. “Tristan is your new bestie.”
She bent over laughing at that one. Besides asking her a thousand questions, she hadn’t heard Tristan utter more than three syllables, nor had he looked at her, minus the calculating stares that tried to figure out if she was victim or perpetrator.
“The point is that you are young. You have an entire life left to live. You can change it in any way you want, to suit your needs. Take it from the guy who got braces at an advanced age. You are one decision away from changing everything.”
She shuddered because, though he meant that in a good way, it could also go really wrong, as proved by what her tumor-adled subconscious did to her when she was unaware. “I wish I could remember my connection to Asher,” she said, calling them back to the question he’d asked her the previous night. She had no recollection of saying anything about Asher in the hospital. Had she really been afraid of him? She assumed so, but why? “You told Tristan about it, right?”
“Yep.”
“What did he say?”
“We had a really chatty discourse about it. He gave me deep thoughts and insights about his inner workings,” Eli said.
“Let me guess, he said, ‘OK,’” Darby said.
“Just ‘K. You give him too much credit,” Eli returned, and then shrugged a shoulder. “He ponders things, though, takes them all in and lets them ruminate, then he’ll bust out with something deep and unexpected.”
“What if the something deep and unexpected is that I killed Asher?” Darby asked, tense all over again. Tensing up tugged her stitches and she made a conscious effort to relax as Eli led her up to the porch swing. He waited to speak until they sank into the swing.
“Not possible.”
“How do you know?” she asked. “I wasn’t exactly in my right mind.”
“Right mind, wrong mind, you’re not a killer,” he assured her.
She stared up into his kind, warm eyes. “That might be the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.”
He laughed.
She poked him. “I’m serious. You made me all gooey inside.”
“Are we certain that wasn’t your stitches coming undone?” he asked, which made her bend over and clutch her stomach, because laughing hard still hurt, drat him. He rested his hand comfortingly on her back, and she understood it was a sign of his concern, that little touch. Maybe he was only half joking with his question.
“I’m fine,” she assured him. With more effort than she wanted it to take, she sat up and regarded him as he stared down at her with worried eyes.
“Are you, though, really?” he asked. His finger swiped gently on her cheek.
“Um,” she said, and that was it. Before Ham, she’d been a typical teenager, she’d flirted and had a few boyfriends. But now anything she ever knew about men seemed to have evaporated, along with all her confidence and spark. Instead her mind was a big blank and “UM” was the least-stupid thing it would provide her. Thanks, brain. I’m glad I eat well and work out, so you could repay me like this, when I need you. Why, for instance, could she instantly recall all the words to the Simpsons theme song, but couldn’t think of a coherent reply to this man she desperately wanted to impress with her interesting wit and personality? Not that she had much chance of that, after she tumored all over him, then cried, then admitted she had no friends or outside interests. Seriously, at what point did she begin to question him for continuing to hang around with a loser like her? Was he really that nice? What could he possibly see in her?
“I like you, Darby,” he said, as if in answer to her unasked question. Unless, oh no, did she ask it out loud? She didn’t think so, especially when he continued. “You’re good people.”
She certainly wasn’t bad people, of that much she was certain. Her life might be small right now, but she tried to always do her best, tried to be kind to the few people she encountered. Mostly, that meant the hooligans who lived in her apartments, people like Mack, Anthony, Dex, and Asher…
Darby stared into space, as images flooded her vision. Asher, a man, blood, so much blood…
“Darby, hey, are you okay?” Eli cupped his palm around her cheek, drawing her back to the present.
She licked her lips, and his eyes tracked the movement, with something that maybe looked a lot like hunger? She had no time to dwell on that now, because, “I think I know what happened with Asher.”