Chapter 42
Chapter Forty-Two
Autumn
I’m regretting my harshness with Mom before I reach the farm. Why did I talk to her like that? Why did I tell her to get over Dad?
My head aches with regret.
It takes me a minute to notice the extra cars and people on the farm. But there’s a crowd. Dessie always has a crowd on opening week though. People come for the scenery, the store, and Dessie’s cider.
I park and peer out at the people lining up for cider and cocoa to the side of the opened barn doors. I watch a little girl slip her hand into her mother’s before walking into the barn. The Linus Tree Farm has always been a happy place for the entire community.
I lean my head against the center of Mom’s steering wheel, breathing in the stale peanut scent that’s somehow accumulated in her old, abandoned car these past five years.
She isn’t wrong. Ezra is a grown man, and I can’t force him or manipulate him into anything.
A rap on my window has me flailing. My forehead presses into the horn on the wheel, and it beeps loudly and quick into the open air.
I peer out at Don staring in at me and then the crowd who have all turned my way.
I open up the door, ready to move my body, and turn away from the gawking visitors. Nothing to see here! Just a girl having a mental breakdown.
“Did you get some new wheels?” Don asks.
“Huh?”
“The car,” Don says. “Is it new?”
“Oh. Um.” I shake my head. “It’s my mom’s.” Ready to confess all my sins, I add, “I got upset with her and left.”
“So you’re sticking it to her by stealing her car?” Don knows my mother’s situation. He knows she hasn’t been out her front door in years. Stealing her car isn’t sticking it to her in any way.
“No. Ezra has my truck. I just needed to leave.” I sigh. “Except, now I think she might have been right.”
“Moms usually are.”
“Don, do you think it was wrong of me to let Ezra leave without the truth all those years ago?” I’ve never spoken so candidly about the subject—and yet, I know he knows what I’m talking about.
He sets an arm around my shoulders and leads me over to the main house. “I think you made the best choice you could have at the time.”
"You do?" I'm not sure why his words mean so much to me. Maybe because everyone else seems to think I was horridly wrong or that I need to own up to that choice as if it were a mistake.
“I do. That boy was in a rough spot. Had he stayed with his father, who knows what would have happened. We all know he’d never have left you. Not willingly.” My friend’s bushy gray brows pull together. “It was an impossible situation, my girl. You were a child making a very adult decision. You did your best. And while your best was painful, I don’t think you can look back with regret now.”
I hold a fist to my chest, forcing my emotions down. "But I feel regret, so much of it. And yet I don't think I'd do anything differently."
“How could you?”
I breathe a little easier. Someone agrees with me. Don, a man I love and respect, agrees with me. Ezra had to leave. He couldn’t stay here.
Don pushes his way inside the ranch style home and I follow. He leads me to their kitchen table. “Cider?” he asks.
“Sure.” Cider or something much stronger. I could use a drink.
I trace the wood grain on the tabletop. “But now, it’s… different. Right?”
“Sure,” he says. “I can see why you’d want to protect him still. But look at him, Autumn. He isn’t a boy anymore. And a man needs to make his own choices. That is, until he’s got a wife to make them for him. But until then, it’s important to his character, to his pride, to his soul that he does so.” He sets a mug in front of me. The one with GRANDPA written on the front, with a stick figure of him and his grandson.
The mug is warm and sweaty as I hold it in both my hands before bringing the rim to my lips. I take a small sip of the tangy, sweet liquid and then another. I love cider in October. It makes me feel like no matter how cold it is outside, I’ll always be warm and protected.
“So,” I say, setting my toasty mug back onto the table. “You’re saying I can’t tell him he has to leave. It has to be his choice. If he chooses to stay, I need to respect that.” My heart betrays me, giving me up. Yep, I hope he stays. Selfishly, I hope Mav Bennett dies in the night and Ezra never leaves me again.
“I’m not saying that. You are.” Don settles into the chair beside me. “But it sounds like good advice to me.” He brings his own mug to his lips and downs a gulp, not even flinching at the temperature. “One thing I know firsthand is that a beautiful girl who owns your heart has much more sway over you than a dirty, rotten cheat who never deserved to be your father.”
I swallow. “You think he’ll stay then?”
“I think he’s a grown man who isn’t going to allow Mav Bennett to influence him one way or the other anymore. He can live in the same town as that man, Autumn, and never even think of him.”
“You think?”
“I know so.” He takes another gulp, then reaches out, placing his hand over top of mine. “My home life wasn’t the greatest, you know.”
But I don’t know. I sit taller and peer at my friend. He said firsthand . He said he knew firsthand. Why didn’t that hit me before?
“It didn’t matter that my dysfunctional family lived in Love. Dessie and I still made a home here. A new life for ourselves. I suppose to some, it might matter. But Dessie was all I needed. I left that life behind. And started a new one. In the exact same town.” He lifts one shoulder and winks at me. Then, picking up my hand, he holds it to his lips, kissing the back of my hand.
“Wasn’t that hard though?”
“Sure. But Dessie was worth it. We both were. And so are you and Ezra.”