Chapter 12
The farmhouse was nothing like the Andover house where Maggie had raised her children.
She woke before dawn on Saturday morning, disoriented by the unfamiliar sounds filtering through the windows.
A rooster crowing somewhere nearby, insistent and oddly melodic.
The lowing of cattle from a neighboring property.
The creak of old wood settling in ways that were different from the creaks she had known for twenty-three years in her suburban colonial.
The Andover house had been quiet in the mornings, nestled in a neighborhood where the loudest sound was the occasional car passing on its way to work.
Here, the world announced itself before the sun had fully risen, a symphony of animal calls and wind through bare branches and the particular silence of open land that wasn't really silence at all.
Maggie slipped out of bed without waking Paolo and made her way downstairs, navigating the unfamiliar layout in the gray pre-dawn light.
The stairs were steeper than she expected, the hallway narrower, the floorboards cold beneath her bare feet.
She found the kitchen by following the faint glow of a nightlight plugged into the wall near the stove.
Charlie, Gabriel’s chocolate lab, lifted his head from his bed by the fireplace and thumped his tail once in greeting before settling back to sleep.
The kitchen smelled of last night's dinner, something with rosemary and garlic, mingled with the earthier scents that seemed to permeate everything here.
Soil and hay and the faint musk of animals, even though the livestock belonged to neighbors rather than to Beth and Gabriel.
This was farm country. Real farm country, not the manicured suburbia Maggie had known. The realization settled over her as she stood at the kitchen window watching the sky lighten over the orchard.
She had never lived on a farm. Had never woken to roosters or fallen asleep to the rustle of wind through apple trees.
Her childhood had been spent in her mother's modest house, and her adult life had unfolded in the Andover colonial with its predictable rooms and familiar corners.
Even Captiva, with all its differences from Massachusetts, was not like this.
The island had its own wildness, but it was a coastal wildness, salt and sand and the endless rhythm of waves.
This was something else entirely. This was earth and growth and the patient cycle of seasons that farmers had followed for centuries.
The coffee maker was different from hers, a complicated machine with buttons she didn't recognize.
Maggie studied it for a moment, then found the grounds in a canister on the counter and figured out the basics.
Soon the kitchen filled with the familiar aroma of brewing coffee, a small anchor of normalcy in this unfamiliar space.
She poured herself a cup and returned to the window.
The orchard stretched across the hillside, row after row of bare branches reaching toward a sky that was shifting from gray to pink to pale gold.
In a few weeks, those branches would burst with blossoms. In a few months, they would hang heavy with fruit.
The cycle of growth and harvest, endlessly repeating, had been happening on this land long before Beth arrived and would continue long after.
It struck Maggie how different her daughter's life had become.
Beth had grown up in suburbia, had walked to school on paved sidewalks, had played in a backyard that was tidy and contained.
Now she lived on a working farm, surrounded by acres of land that required constant attention.
She had married a man who built furniture with his hands and tended apple trees that had been planted by his great-grandfather.
It was a good life. Maggie could see that. But it was also a life she didn't fully understand, a world she was only beginning to glimpse.
Footsteps on the stairs announced Paolo's arrival.
He appeared in the kitchen doorway, his hair rumpled from sleep, wearing the old sweater he had packed for the New England weather.
He looked as slightly disoriented as she felt, another Florida transplant trying to adjust to this colder, quieter, earthier place.
“You're up early,” he said.
“Couldn't sleep. The rooster woke me.”
“I heard it too. Very insistent bird.”
“Welcome to farm life.”
He crossed to her and kissed her cheek, then examined the coffee maker with the same puzzled expression she had worn minutes earlier. She showed him how to pour a cup, and they stood together at the window, looking out at a landscape that belonged to their daughter but felt foreign to them both.
“It's beautiful,” Paolo said after a moment. “Different from what I expected, but beautiful.”
“What did you expect?”
“I don't know. Something smaller maybe. More contained.” He gestured at the window, at the orchard and the fields and the distant tree line. “This feels vast. Like there's so much space to get lost in.”
“Beth seems to love it.”
“She does. I can see it in her face when she talks about the property, about the trees, about the plans they have.” Paolo sipped his coffee. “She's found her place.”
Maggie nodded, though the words stirred something complicated in her chest. Her youngest daughter had found her place, and that place was here, in this farmhouse in rural Massachusetts, surrounded by land and animals and a life that Maggie had never imagined for her.
It was good. It was right. But it was also far away, in every sense of the word.
“I keep thinking about what comes next,” Maggie said. “After the birth, after we go through the Andover house. Everything is changing so fast.”
“Change is not always bad.”
“I know. But it's always hard.” She leaned into him slightly. “I remember when Lauren was born. Michael was only two, and suddenly I had two children under three, and I thought I would never sleep again. I cried every day for a month.”
“And now both Lauren and Michael have families of their own and Christopher is buying his first house. Building a life with Becca and Eloise.”
“Exactly. That's what I mean. Time moves so fast. You think you're in the middle of something that will last forever, and then you blink and it's over.”
Paolo was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “This is why we came. Not just for the babies, but for this. To be present for these moments before they become memories.”
Maggie nodded. He understood her, this man. Understood the complicated tangle of joy and grief that came with watching your children grow up and move on. Understood that being happy for them didn't mean you weren't also mourning something you could never get back.
The kitchen door opened, bringing a rush of cold air and the smell of outdoors. Gabriel appeared, dressed in work clothes and boots, his cheeks ruddy from the morning chill. He stamped his feet on the mat and looked surprised to find them already awake.
“You're up early,” he said.
“Old habits,” Maggie replied. “I've always been an early riser.”
“Same. I already checked on the chickens and walked the fence line. The mornings are the best time, before the day gets away from you.” He glanced toward the stairs. “Beth's been sleeping more these last few days. The doctor says it's normal, that her body is storing up rest before the birth.”
“That's good. She needs it.”
Gabriel poured himself a cup of coffee and stood by the counter, not quite meeting Maggie's eyes. There was something on his mind; she could tell. He had the look of a man who wanted to say something but wasn't sure how to begin.
“Gabriel,” she said gently. “What is it?”
He looked up, startled. “What do you mean?”
“You have something you want to talk about. I can see it.”
A small smile crossed his face. “Beth said you could do that. Read people. She said you always knew when something was wrong, even when she tried to hide it.”
“It's a mother's skill. We develop it out of necessity.”
Gabriel set down his coffee cup and leaned against the counter. “I'm concerned about her. About what happens after the babies come. She's so determined to do everything herself, to prove that she can handle it. But twins are a lot. More than a lot. And she's already exhausted.”
“That's why we're here. To help.”
“I know. But you won't be here forever. Eventually you'll go back to Florida, and it will just be us. Me and Beth and two newborns and all the responsibilities we already have.” He shook his head. “I don't know how we're going to manage it.”
Maggie studied her son-in-law. She had liked Gabriel from the moment Beth brought him home, had seen the steadiness in him, the quiet strength. He was not a man who complained or asked for help easily. The fact that he was confiding in her now meant the weight had grown too heavy to carry alone.
“Beth mentioned that Emily offered to come stay,” Maggie said carefully. “To help with the babies and the orchard.”
Gabriel's expression shifted, something guarded entering his eyes. He nodded. “Yes, I’ve agreed to it but…”
“You don't sound enthusiastic.”
He was quiet for a moment, turning his coffee cup in his hands. “It's not that I don't like Emily. I do. The few times we've met, she's been...interesting. Smart. Direct.”
“But?”
“But I don't know her. Not really.” Gabriel looked up at Maggie.
“Beth talks about her like she's already part of the family, like inviting her to live with us is the most natural thing in the world.
And maybe for Beth it is. But for me, it feels like a big step.
We're about to have twins. Our lives are about to turn upside down.
And in the middle of all that, we're going to add another person to the household?
Someone I've only met a handful of times?”
Maggie nodded slowly. “Those are valid concerns.”
“I want to do the right thing. For Beth, for the babies, for Emily too. But I don't want to decide out of obligation that we end up regretting.”