Chapter 2
Nick
Nick’s vintage Dodge truck, which his sister Cleo had named Deirdre, let out its habitual groan as he coaxed it up the tyre-rutted road that led to his farm.
His farm. He could barely believe he owned it – or that the forces of the universe and local economics had aligned in such a way that he’d managed to pick it up for a song from the county website.
For the price of a couple of years’ back property taxes and about half the materials they’d had on hand at the local hardware shop, all thirty acres of it were his.
Before signing on the dotted line, he’d called up a couple out in Bend that the county said were related to the previous owners and might want to step in, but they’d waved him off and said that they didn’t want any part of it.
This was about fifty per cent due to the tax situation and fifty per cent because they’d had their fill of the rain and were all about that dry, Central Oregon life.
C’mon, Deirdre. Nick crossed his fingers on the steering wheel as he downshifted and jabbed the accelerator.
The truck grumbled, and something clanked, but the ancient vehicle trundled up to the huge, rusted gates that marked the entrance to the vast, forested property.
Next to him, Alice panted happily: she was close to home, with all of its familiar sniffs and things to roll in.
Nick jumped out and unlocked the padlock, swinging the gate open with the shove of a shoulder.
He winced, massaging the tender tissue around the joint.
He’d slipped hiking a few years back, and the injury still nagged.
His sisters hadn’t been wrong when they’d teased him about life after thirty being nothing but a list of aches and pains.
He was two years past the thirtieth birthday milestone now, and the list was quickly growing.
He chugged Deirdre through the gate, then locked it up again, even though it was a pointless act – most of the property was only notionally fenced, with massive gaps and holes from fallen trees or wayward cows.
Something had been getting through at night and making a grand old mess in his trash cans, but he hadn’t yet figured out exactly what.
Coyotes, probably. Or raccoons. Or bored teenagers, because there was no shortage of those out here, driving around in their lifted trucks and doing wheelies on every expanse of grass or gravel they could find.
Anyway, that was a problem for another day.
Nick drove the rest of the bumpy way up to the moss-covered farmhouse, which would need a new roof by the time the rains started in earnest in October, but otherwise was as charming as they came.
He loved every part of it: the wide porch, the stained glass inlaid into the front door that he’d painted himself, the hardwood floors he’d carefully polished up over weeks, the built-in bookshelves he’d filled with the vintage volumes he’d browsed from second-hand bookshops all up and down the West Coast.
The only thing missing was someone to share it with, he thought, with a glance down at the business card he’d taken from the gorgeous auburn-haired girl at the farmers’ market. Zoey Kaban, owner, The Smoothie Maven, it said, in neatly printed type.
She’d been so sharp and dry – wary, yes, but with an undercurrent of wit and intelligence that had immediately grabbed him by the shirtfront and refused to let go.
Then there was the fact that she was stunning, with that heart-shaped face and those luminous hazel eyes and the way she’d bit at her full lower lip when she’d been considering the cordyceps mushrooms.
The cordyceps mushrooms, he thought, drumming his fingers against the sun-faded steering wheel.
Of course she’d chosen those. Never mind that unlike the rest of Nick’s mushrooms, which grew neatly and predictably in his greenhouse, the cordyceps only grew wild, and only in one specific part of the property.
The creepy part. It had been struck by lightning at some point – twice – and the soil and surrounding rocks were scarred from the electric jolt.
And now, as of a few weeks ago, the effusive bloom of orange mushrooms had started springing up.
As far as Nick could tell there wasn’t anything specifically wrong with that bit of the property, although he’d made a call to the city to see if there were any surprise features that hadn’t been described on the property disclosures.
They were pulling the records, and as a bonus were sending out someone from the business development committee to talk to him about tax breaks for small businesses – a chirpy woman called Darina, whom he’d actually met at his stall today.
Although they hadn’t really talked much given that she’d spent most of their conversation in a handstand position.
Nick cut the engine and yanked the silver door handle.
He chuckled as Alice scrambled over his lap and went racing off into the garden in a flurry of tail wagging and shedding fur.
Alice was his best girl and had been for three years now, ever since his disastrous breakup with Jessica following his equally disastrous relationship with Jessica.
(Cleo still sent him Sopranos memes about it.)
Nick and Alice had travelled all over in Deirdre, who had valiantly made her way up Mount Hood and around Big Sur and deep into the narrow forest roads left by the loggers of generations past. They’d been restless and shambling until the farm had given them a reason to settle down.
And what an undertaking it had been, unearthing the tiny yellow farmhouse from decades of water damage and moss and mud.
But its bones were good: there were gleaming hardwoods with grain as tight as a ream of paper, decorative light fixtures with ornate swirls and curlicues, a fireplace he didn’t have the heart to use because a bat colony had taken up residence inside.
There was the farmhouse, yes, but also the land surrounding it, all drenched trees and lush ferns and fallen logs.
The whole place was spiced with fallen Doug fir spikes and the Fruit Loop smell of the shrubby weigela flowers: he’d never grow tired of exploring it.
Especially when it came to the fungi, his first love.
Mushrooms adored the damp, and every inch of the farm was a riot of truffles and chanterelles and morels.
And then there was the greenhouse, filled with what he’d dubbed the ‘bunk beds’ – layers of deep shelves smothered with pasteurised substrate that made for ideal growing conditions.
He’d only started selling the mushrooms recently, spurred by a surprise property tax bill and the endless repairs that the farmhouse apparently needed. (Replacing knob-and-tube wiring came with more zeroes than it had any right to.) Little wonder the prior owners had found themselves underwater.
But demand had been surprising – mushrooms were having a moment.
As evidenced by the listicle on Eater Portland last month, which had the curious tagline: This is your brain on mushrooms. The reporter had name-dropped the farm, which had resulted in a barrage of emails and phone calls asking for farm tours and mushroom-foraging excursions and bachelorette parties.
The property wasn’t quite ready for anything like that, but he could see the vision. Bit by bit, he could make it happen.
Nick was just about done unloading his market tent and table when Alice came racing up, nose dirt-covered and tail thick with cobwebs.
She’d been off in the deep part of the forest again, the bit towards the back of the property where the orange cordyceps mushrooms grew on the lightning-zapped ground amid chunks of smooth rock and spiky undergrowth.
He could tell from the pieces of fern stuck in her fur, and the traces of orange on her tan-and-white muzzle.
Thankfully she wasn’t in the habit of eating mushrooms, only pointing them out, because she’d used up all of her veterinary bill grace the time she’d hurt her hip jumping off the truck bed when they’d been camping out under the stars, the two of them nestled up in a giant sleeping bag.
Until something had stirred in the trees, and Alice had valiantly raced off to protect Nick from whatever lurked in the underbrush.
Bigfoot, probably, judging from all the branded merch at the roadside shops.
Oh, who was he kidding, he thought, as he stroked the soft fur of Alice’s head: he’d spend every last cent on Alice if she needed it.
Hang on, what was that in Alice’s fur, amid all the leaf refuse and dirt clods?
Something hung from her collar, stuck to the fire-hydrant tag a local artisan had etched for him.
Weird: it was a fragment of fabric. Filthy, and covered in spores and with a herringbone pattern.
Perhaps from an item of clothing belonging to the previous owners?
Although it could’ve been from anything, really.
A discarded doll from a cousin or a family friend.
A marker for the rose bushes that had grown out of control to one side of the property.
Herringbone wasn’t that odd. It was one of the few fabric prints that Nick could name, after all, the other two being plaid and paisley.
As he gingerly pulled the scrap of fabric from Alice’s collar, his phone rang.
A Palm Springs, California, number, according to his caller ID.
Who did he know from Palm Springs? A scammer, most likely: someone pretending to be from the IRS, which was apparently in desperate need of gift cards.
(His grandpa had almost lost his retirement buying gift cards in bulk at Lowes, and Nick wasn’t about to play that game.)
The call went to voicemail. But the caller, in a rare move for anyone who wasn’t his health-insurance company, was actually leaving a message. The auto-transcription populated his screen.
The second he saw the word cordyceps (rendered as gaudy sepsis by the auto-transcription), he hit play.
Alice cocked her head at the sound of the voice.
So did Nick, a thrill running down the back of his neck.
It was the voice of Smoothie Girl Zoey. Zoey, with her sparkling eyes and that reticent smile that, when she let it spread wide, could light a vintage movie theatre.
Nick had tried to ignore the frisson of attraction he’d felt when he’d returned to the stand to find her there patting Alice, but to no avail: it had gone racing all over his body like the time a moth had got into a flannel shirt he’d left on the floor.
Nick didn’t do attraction, not after Jessica and the way she’d torn out his heart and stomped on it with the heel of her Danner boot. If he was ever going to do the romance thing again, it would have to be worth it.
But, a little voice said, Zoey might be worth it.
Boom!
Just then, a blast shook the farm. Nick shoved his phone in the pocket without hearing the rest of the message.
His neighbour Bozo (probably not his real name) was at it again: blowing things up with Tannerite, for what purpose exactly Nick wasn’t sure.
If Bozo wasn’t blowing things up, he was shooting them, which made for some exciting moments out in the garden.
Nick had taken to keeping a helmet nearby just in case.
The ground shook as though Mount St Helens was going in for a repeat of her 1980 shenanigans. Bozo was serious about exploding whatever it was he had his sights on.
‘C’mon, girl.’ Nick ushered Alice inside. He closed the red farmhouse door behind them right as the next explosion hit, making the clock on the kitchen wall rattle and quake. Always unflappable, Alice jumped up onto the faded blue couch and let out a sigh.
Humans, she was clearly saying. What is the deal with humans?
It was a fair point.
Well, it could be worse, Nick thought, as flakes of ceiling plaster drifted down onto the hardwoods: at least the spring rains hadn’t started yet.