8. Rivers and Roads
RIVERS AND ROADS
THE HEAD AND THE HEART
EMORY
“Em?” Dinah yells from the front door as she comes through the house, announcing her arrival. “Emory, why is there an alpaca in your spare room?”
She trudges down the hall, not prone to entering any space subtly, and finds me where I’ve made a nest of sorts for Pam.
“What is happening in this house?” she asks, Lola on one hip and her hand on the other. “Pigs in the kitchen. An alpaca poking her nose out of a front window. Next thing ya know you’ll have a monkey and a horse taking up residence in your living room.”
“Just call me Pippi,” I say, nudging Pam’s nose into her water dish, though she’s refused food or water since yesterday afternoon.
Dr. Rafferty confirmed Jordan’s diagnosis on Saturday but didn’t balk when I asked her to start a protocol of meds anyway.
Much like Jordan, she didn’t seem hopeful, encouraging me to prepare for the worst case scenario and to keep a close eye on Pam. Which I intend to do.
“This is about as crazy as I intend to be,” I say, meaning it.
Dinah snorts. “I passed Buttercup wearing a Bugs Bunny T-shirt, so I doubt that.”
“Says the woman who takes every opportunity to dress up her massive cat to match her husband.”
She giggles. “Don’t steal my joy, Em. They’re adorable together.”
“Never.” I pull myself away from Pam to hug Dinah and take Lola from her arms. “I’m glad you’re here, Dinah Belle. And you, too, little Lola.”
“I love your brand of crazy,” Dinah says, rubbing a hand up and down my back, just a woman casually soothing her senile elderly sister.
And I obviously don’t blame her. I know I talked a big talk about moving Pam into the house, but I surprised even myself when I brought her in early this morning with very little thought on the matter.
Thoughts like, will she fit?
Yes. All the praise hands.
Will your daughter ask if the entire herd can come in?
You betcha.
Will the man that you did not expect or invite to take up residence on your farm shake his head every time he passes the window of said alpaca room like he thinks you’re insane?
One hundred percent.
What will you do with her poop?
TBD.
Lola gives me a slobbery, open-mouth, toddler kiss that momentarily heals a tiny piece of my heart, but that feeling is fleeting as Dr. Can’t-Take-a-Hint walks across Dinah’s field of vision on his way to mend the fence line that I absolutely did not ask him to mend, shaking his head again in disapproval at likely all my life’s decisions.
Dinah gasps, runs to the window and points, shouting loud enough for Jordan to stop in his tracks for a pause that tells me there’s no doubt he’s heard her.
“What is a man doing on your lawn?!”
Her enthusiastic disbelief over the man on my property versus the presence of an alpaca in my home feels disproportionate and, quite frankly, a little offensive.
“He won’t leave,” I snip, also loud enough for him to hear. Unfortunately, Molly—who’s been following Jordan around the yard like a baby duck for days—does, too. She glares at me as she trots behind him. Turns out, my daughter’s alliances are fickle at best and have clearly shifted.
“Mooomm.” She shakes her head—a lot like the man she’s emulating, actually—with all the disappointment a nine-year-old can muster for the woman who birthed her but also needs to be fed dinner by that same woman in about twenty minutes.
She chases Jordan after what, I’m assuming, Molly believes to be a respectable length of time for me to feel her displeasure.
I’ve used every excuse I can muster to explain to Molly why I don’t want her new bff working on our home.
He has a job. A life. He is very busy. Boys smell.
All to no avail. Because, though he hasn’t looked in on Pam again after I specifically asked for Dr. Rafferty, Jordan has shown up at the crack of dawn every day since, working through nightfall on odd jobs he’s found around the farm.
Fixing my porch steps, the railing, securing the hayloft of the barn, mending fences…
He just keeps coming back, and I’m honestly not sure he’s even leaving the farm at night when he’s done.
The Jordan I knew was never a quitter, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d been secretly sleeping next to Pamela in the barn the last two nights, then disappearing on my property to do odd jobs before I arrived for morning chores.
But the Jordan I knew also swore he’d be a cardiologist, that he wanted a hobby farm next to ours, and that he couldn’t wait to meet our daughter, yet none of those things turned out to be true.
Dinah barely notices my annoyance, gushing like she’s a teenager again.
“Oh my gosh. That’s Jordan Love! THAT IS JORDAN LOVE?
” She’s pointing again, with her nose smushed to the window for a better vantage point.
“You have got to get better at using descriptive language, Em. You really need to come to book club or at least read one romance. Just one.”
She points her finger into the air but doesn’t take her eyes off the man now giving my daughter a piggy back ride through the pasture on his way to the fence line with a small herd of female alpacas following him.
“Finely chiseled jaw. Eight feet tall. Muscled, tattooed forearms… and glasses! The man wears glasses now, Em… all while being pals with your daughter. You undersold it all. He’s the definition of a perfect MMC. ”
“He’s… barely tolerable,” I lie, quoting my sister’s favorite movie.
I’d have to be blind not to notice the fact that Jordan is, by all respects, nice to look at.
He did have the entire PTA chattering about him after all, so it isn’t a secret he’s considered kind of beautiful.
Objectively speaking. And the fact that he’s quickly fallen in love with my child does indeed endear him to me a teensy portion.
“He’s also still the guy that I once witnessed eat a slug for a ten dollar bet. Who, in college, overdrafted his bank account on cheap tacos. And, who disappeared from my life when I was pregnant and newly widowed… so… forgive me if I don’t care much about his jawline.”
Dinah grunts, tapping her forehead against the window a few times, earning a couple cheap chuckles from Lola. Pam, however, has lain down in her corner of the room, unamused by my sister’s dramatics.
“A beautiful man from your past has shown back up into your life, clearly loves your kid, and is helping you on your farm. In eighty-degree, musty, Georgia weather. There are bugs out there, Emory. Bugs! The girls even like him. Look.”
We both gaze out the window as Kelly and Meredith meander as close to Molly and Jordan as possible.
Kelly even goes as far as nudging her dark, furry face into Jordan’s side until he relents, chuckling and rubbing a hand down the length of her neck.
Molly looks as if she’s talking his ear off from where Jordan holds her on his shoulders.
“You know Kelly and Mer have never been good judges of character. Remember when they buddied up to that delivery kid who peed in my front yard.”
“Emory, Grayson Baker did not pee in your yard.”
“He did!” I give her a little shove with my hip. “You know he did. Right next to the barn. And he didn’t wash his hands either. I threw that pizza out so fast.”
“I bet you ate that pizza before Grayson Baker even got down the driveway.”
“The point is…” I say, watching those disloyal animals of mine follow Molly and her new bff, “the girls came right to the fence line for Grayson Baker and his pee hands, and look at them now. Falling at the feet of another random guy who… probably has some pee hands of his own.”
The hussies.
“Stop saying pee hands.”
“Urine?”
She gags. “Ew. No. That’s worse.”
I shrug. “Urine hands are gross, Dinah Belle.”
“But Jordan isn’t gross at all. He isn’t random, and he looks absolutely delighted to be carrying Molly through the field.” She sighs. “You might actually be hopeless.”
I know she’s teasing, but the comment stings.
Dinah can’t know, because I haven’t told her, but this weekend I felt about as hopeless as I have in years, and it has nothing to do with the man outside.
As soon as Dr. Rafferty ordered the meds, which were as costly as Jordan predicted, I called a land agent to begin the process of parceling out acreage of the farm.
The first posting will be listed this afternoon.
So not only am I losing my first girl… I’m officially losing another piece of James, too.
Of the life we wanted to build together.
And I’m so out of my depth, I’ve wordlessly accepted help from the last person on earth I want help from.
What would James do?
James would try to save the farm. He wouldn’t call his delinquent best friend beautiful or wax poetic about his forearms, but he would—no matter how much time had passed—welcome Jordan home with open arms. A prodigal brother, returning to the people who always hoped he’d come home.
And he would absolutely accept whatever help was offered to him.
Suspected pee hands or not. Something I clearly am not practiced in doing.
Dinah turns, always more in tune to my emotions than I give her credit for. “I didn’t mean that, Emory. That was super insensitive. I shouldn’t have implied…”
I shrug. “It’s fine.”
I give Pam a once-over, seeing little change in her demeanor since this morning.
She’s lethargic. One of her eyes is partially closed, and she’s taken to laying on her side, which is entirely unusual for her.
Molly put her favorite corsage collar on Pam as soon as she came home from school this afternoon, but not even accessories have seemed to brighten her spirits.
“Pam is dying,” I announce without preamble.
I want to be hopeful. To believe she’s going to be okay and that these meds and my efforts will nurse her back to a healthy life, but I can’t quite seem to put on those rose-colored glasses that I’d just love to borrow from my sister for a while.