Chapter 9 - Olivia
O livia had woken up sore from all of the lifting, loading, and unloading she’d done at the farmers market the day before. After making a mug of pour-over coffee, she crawled back into bed and grabbed a book off the top of her Tbr pile. As she read, she savored the peaceful, sunny morning. Ms. Darcy lay next to her, head on a pillow, body under the duvet. What a ridiculous dog. Olivia smiled and scratched Ms. Darcy’s neck.
Her phone buzzed on the bedside table. Assuming it was her mom reminding her about Sunday lunch, she reached over to unlock the screen.
It wasn’t her mom. Aiden wanted to make sure she’d made it home okay.
Aiden Wescott texted me to make sure I'd made it home okay ? All of this after catching me skinny dipping last night. Are we flirting? Is this what flirting looks like in Gresham at thirty-one? I am so out of my depth.
Even if he was flirting, which she wasn’t totally certain he was, how would that even work? He lived in Saint Paul. Was he looking for a one-night stand sort of thing? She’d never had a one-night stand before. Can it be considered a one-night stand if you kissed the person in kindergarten?
She wasn’t going to pretend hooking up with Aiden wasn't appealing. He was very nice to look at, and she kind of liked the idea of a short-lived, low-key fling, especially after her last relationship, which had lasted five years too long.
Rather than creating an online dating profile after breaking up with Sam like a normal human, Olivia had fled the state—nay the entire region—to start over. Back to the safety of the Midwest.
Sam had been a classic never-committer. He couldn’t commit to Olivia, nor could he not commit to Olivia. They’d lived in ambiguity for so long Olivia had feared coexisting in limbo until her biological clock ran out. She had started to worry she’d wake up one day and realize she'd settled for something she didn’t want.
Olivia had finally given Sam an ultimatum. Four times.
It took four “marry me or else” conversations before she’d gotten the nerve to tell his self-satisfied ass to move out of her townhome. The one she'd purchased with income from a job he frequently criticized as being so corporate .
She’d known deep down he would never cave. Honestly, she would have been in a heap of trouble if he had. Because in her heart of hearts, the idea of a wedding day standing next to Sam, who had always been a tad too “cool” for her with his tattoos, gauged ears, and fixed-gear bike, had filled her with dread.
There was a distinct lack of joy in that daydream, but it was easier to use Sam’s inaction as the lever Olivia needed to get the hell out of there than to leave of her own accord. One day, she might need to apologize to him, but it had only been six months since all that went down. She assumed she had until she was eighty or so to come clean.
Not yet, though, because Olivia was still in the “screw that guy” phase of grief. Funny how grief was like that. She could know with one hundred percent certainty she’d made the right decision, and yet, she had to cry the allotted number of tears some god of grief had determined she owed as penance for being too weak to walk away sooner.
The thought made her laugh. It sounded so very Catholic. Penance, guilt, wrongdoing. In all reality, it had probably been random chance and hormones.
Regardless, it was time to stop staring at her ceiling and take a shower. She was planning to make at least three spring vegetable side dishes you will crave on repeat that she’d seen in her Bon Appetit magazine that month: mixed greens with lemon tahini dressing, charred and chilled asparagus, and shaved snap pea salad with goat cheese and dates. She would also grab a jar of the strawberry rhubarb compote she’d canned a few weeks before. They would have it for dessert with some of her parents’ ever-present vanilla ice cream.
Covering vegetables with tasty sauces like lemon tahini dressing was her surefire approach for getting her dad to try new vegetables like mustard greens and jicama. When her dad asked what the sauces were, Olivia always told him they were ranch dressing.
His response every time? “Mmm, delicious, honey.”
When Olivia parked her car at her parents’ house with Ms. Darcy in tow, her parents’ car was gone, which meant they hadn’t gotten back from Sunday mass at Our Lady of Holy Sorrows yet.
Before going inside, she crossed to her parents' vegetable garden to see what was growing. The garden sat in full view of their living room picture window, right next to the old swing set, which was almost paint-free thanks to Minnesota’s harsh winters.
She reached down to touch a cherry tomato plant before lifting her hand to her nose. The lingering scent epitomized the word green . Smiling, she dropped her hand and walked to the door, letting Ms. Darcy run into the house ahead of her.
The smell of her mom’s pot roast and potatoes overtook the fresh tomato smell and wrapped Olivia up like a warm, comforting blanket. Though the warm blanket was also a bit stifling, given it was eighty-five degrees outside.
Cue the never-ending debate about whether a giant beef pot roast was seasonally appropriate between Memorial Day and Labor Day, not to mention morally appropriate given climate change. She could already hear her mom’s response, with her singing, “Traditioooon, tradition!” in a false baritone, a la Tevye from Fiddler on the Roof .
Grinning and shaking her head at the thought, Olivia pulled plates and glasses out of the antique corner hutch in her parents’ dining room. The small room’s walls were covered in the same floral wallpaper her mom had put up when Olivia was in grade school.
She set their four-person table but left her sister Grace’s spot empty. Grace lived in Austin and wouldn’t be back to visit until July for the town’s over-the-top Independence Day celebrations. Four years younger than Olivia, Grace was absolutely killing it as a recruiter for the University of Texas.
She had texted the family two weeks before to say she was bringing her boyfriend, Abesh, home for the first time, and they were all very excited to meet him. Olivia hoped their dad wouldn’t ask Abesh something uncomfortable about his “heritage,” but she wouldn’t hold her breath.
She'd just sat down and pulled out her phone when her parents walked in the door, plastic grocery bags dangling from their hands.
“Hi,” all three said in unison.
Olivia walked over to help unpack the groceries and inspect the contents. Among the cans of tomato sauce and hunks of meat were mayo-drenched potato and macaroni salads.
“Mom, I told you I was bringing sides,” Olivia said without managing to hide her annoyance.
“I know, I know, but you know we like to stock up when we’re in town.”
“Okay, whatever, lady.” Olivia gave her mom a kiss on the cheek. “Hey, Dad.” She gave him a hug.
They worked alongside each other, falling into old roles established as soon as Olivia was old enough to be trusted with glass jars. As a little one, she’d been assigned to the vegetable drawers, but after her middle school growth spurt, she’d towered over her mom and had been reassigned to manage the highest shelves in the pantry.
Olivia turned to catch her dad gazing at his wife with soft eyes and a smile. Her parents had been high school sweethearts. Thirty-three years later, they still looked at each other in a way that embarrassed Olivia’s inner fifteen year old. They’d been apart only once since they were sixteen, when Olivia’s mom had spent two years in St. Cloud, Minnesota, getting an associate’s degree in dental hygiene.
Meanwhile, Olivia’s dad had never lived outside Gresham. As the oldest—and the only boy in his family—he began farming with his dad full-time after high school, eventually inheriting the land on which they now lived. He’d slowly expanded his acreage year after year, buying out other small farmers. Most of the neighbors who’d sold him their land had done it because they were ready to retire, and their kids weren’t interested in taking over the family business—a fate her father perpetually feared.
“Hey, sweetheart. How’s the truck running?” Her dad always asked her this when there was a pause in a conversation.
Olivia told herself it was his way of saying he loved her. “Good. Thanks. I just changed the oil.”
“Smart girl. Did you do it yourself like I taught you?” Olivia could hear hope in his voice.
“No, Dad. I brought it to a mechanic like everyone else.”
“Well, that’s alright,” he said, though it was clear the alright-ness was debatable.
Once they’d completed the dance of setting the table, they sat down. Olivia’s parents prayed, and they dug into the feast of thinly sliced beef, baked potatoes, gravy, and the veggies Olivia had supplied. Olivia knew the store-bought salads would be showing up on their dinner table the next day, but she wouldn’t hold it against them.
After they’d all enjoyed a few bites, her mom put down her fork and turned to Olivia. “So, you know how I asked if Ms. Darcy could come and meet the kiddos at my summer camp?”
Ms. Darcy's ears perked up at the sound of her name, but she didn’t lift her head from the chair's armrest. She’d been pouting since she’d lost her campaign to get Jackie O to chase her. Ms. Darcy had performed so many adorable (yet fruitless) play bows.
Olivia smiled and said, “Yeah, of course.”
“Well, I talked to Maya, and she loved the idea. She said she was already planning to do a healthy kids day program next Thursday, and she thinks Missy's demo could be a great way to get the kids engaged. What do you think?”
“Sure, that sounds great! I just need to be home by noon so I can start prepping for my Friday harvest.”
Olivia could have sworn her father grunted his disapproval at the mention of her CSA but chose to ignore him, mostly for her mom’s sake. She and her dad had been avoiding the topic since she’d declared her financial independence.
“That shouldn't be a problem.” Her mom smiled and clapped her hands in anticipation.
“Okay, great. It'll be so fun to see Fiona,” Olivia said with equal enthusiasm.
Her cousin Philip's seven-year-old daughter, Fiona, was one of the YMCA campers with special needs her mom volunteered with each week. Fiona had been diagnosed with Down syndrome at five days old.
It'd been at least a month since Olivia had seen Fiona. She made a mental pledge to do better. Spending more time with Fiona had been one of the things she’d been most looking forward to when she’d moved home, but the farm consumed most of her waking hours and several of her sleeping ones as well.
“Speaking of volunteering, Carolyn told me Aiden hung out with you at the market yesterday.”
Wow. There are no secrets in this town. Noted.
“Hung out?” Olivia asked skeptically. “If him picking up her CSA subscription is considered hanging out, then yeah, we had a great hang .”
“Okay, okay, no need to be so sarcastic. I’m just saying, Carolyn shows me pictures of her kids all the time, and that Aiden is haaaaandsome!” she said. “He’s back home now, so why rule him out?”
“Mom, he got a job at Saint Paul Children's. That’s not exactly moving home.”
An anticipatory smile took over her mom’s face. “Oh, so you did catch up then?”
Oofda . The traps had been laid.
“Yes, we talked for maybe five minutes, and he mentioned it.”
And then he saw me swimming around naked in a pond…
Her mom smiled at her and raised her eyebrows questioningly. Her dad was decidedly no longer part of the conversation because he pulled out his phone to scroll through what Olivia was sure would be the current prices of his crops.
“And?” her mom asked, sounding hopeful.
“I don’t want this to come as too much of a shock, Mom, but he proposed. Yeah, we’re getting married next week. I was going to mention it, but I was waiting for the right time.”
“Ha ha,” her mom said dryly.
“Well, honestly , what do you expect happened? We haven’t seen each other since high school, and even back then, we didn’t talk to each other.”
“Yeah, but you’ve both grown up. You’re adults now.”
I guess . But it sure didn’t feel like it.
She’d felt like she was fifteen again. Flustered and blushing through the entire conversation at the market, not to mention the whole date-with-his-baby-brother thing. Then, what would surely be one of her most cringe-worthy memories until she died, he caught her skinny dipping. So yeah, things were going swimmingly, so to speak. Both memories made her want to crawl under the table.
Instead, she bit the inside of her cheek. “Let it go, Mom. Let it go.” She’d keep telling herself the same thing.
“Okay, fine.” Her mom raised her hands in surrender before changing the topic to their plans for Grace and Abesh’s visit in a few weeks.