Chapter 17
chapter
seventeen
Darren loved the cooler weather of autumn. It was his favorite time of year, no matter where he and his brothers had worked. Reno didn’t really have a fall season, and he’d missed it while there.
But Vermont did, and he loved the crisp morning air, the chill in the blue sky as the sun rose toward its pinnacle.
The scent of leaves and dirt and pumpkin-flavored things.
He enjoyed working outside when the weather was cooler, and he’d spent the last several evenings at the Bybee’s, helping them chop wood for their boutique.
They needed it to keep the water temperature at a toasty eighty-two degrees all winter long. He’d eaten dinner with them every night, but Farrah had never stayed.
He hadn’t seen much of her at all, though she texted him back when he contacted her. As he practically fell into his chair after the last load of wood had been stored, Corey said, “You work yourself too hard.”
He gave her a lazy grin and reached for the rolls he’d smelled when he’d arrived earlier that afternoon. “I like to work hard.”
“Don’t give the boy trouble about working hard,” Jim said.
“I’m not giving him trouble.” Corey nudged the butter dish closer to Darren. “I’m just saying he has his own farm to look after.”
“Not my farm,” Darren corrected her. He’d toyed with the idea of buying one, but nothing had come together in his mind. He loved Steeple Ridge and the horses there, and for now, it was where he fit.
“Do you want a farm?” Jim asked.
“I don’t know.” Darren volleyed his gaze from Corey to Jim and back. “What’s goin’ on?” She was definitely wearing a look that said something, but Darren didn’t know what.
“Nothing’s going on.” She lifted her chin. “Let’s say grace so we can eat. Corn doesn’t stay hot for long, you know.”
Jim chuckled and said the prayer over the food. Darren barely heard him. He didn’t like the unsettled feeling he had, and he hated it even more that he felt it here at the Bybees. This place had become a refuge for him, and he craved that peace, that solidity, that comfort.
So though Corey had made roast beef and crispy potatoes—two of his favorite foods—he could only scoop them onto his plate. He couldn’t eat them. “Corey,” he said. “Something is going on.”
“Meagan doesn’t want the farm,” Jim said, tucking into his own food like he’d simply said the sky is blue.
He chewed while Darren tried to work out what that meant.
“Corey’s fishing to see if you want it.” He gave his wife a wry glare.
“I told her she should just come right out and ask you, but well, we all have our own tactics.”
Darren could only stare at Corey, who wore a tiny smile. She lifted one shoulder as if to say Well?
Through a narrow throat, Darren said, “Meagan loves this farm. She works here every day.”
“She wants to raise her twins, not grow cilantro.” Jim stated it matter-of-factly, but Corey flinched.
“She’s having twins?”
“She just found out.” The joy on Corey’s face wasn’t hard to find. “And she should stay home and take care of those babies. The doctor said they’re going to be preemies.” She pushed the cobs of corn closer to him. “Go on, Darren. Aren’t you hungry?”
He looked at his food, then the corn. He scooped some onto his plate, because Corey expected him to. “So…Meagan’s not coming back to the farm at all?”
Jim’s face said no, and Corey vocalized it.
“But she’s still here right now,” Darren said. “Does she really run the whole thing?”
“No, she just does the botanical boutique,” Corey said, spearing her husband with a look that said they’d had this conversation many times. “We need someone to run the farm.”
“I’m—”
“Sixty-eight years old.”
Darren took that opportunity to stuff his mouth full of roast beef. After all, he didn’t get to get into this argument when it wasn’t his.
But what about taking over a farm that wasn’t his? Could he do that? Did he even want to?
And Darren knew that he did. That if Jim offered him the farm at a fair price, he’d buy it. Heck, he wanted it even if Jim asked too much for it.
The meal ended, and Jim started to clear the dishes. His nightly ritual. He’d start the coffee and clean up what Corey had made. Once, he’d told Darren that stacking the dishes in the sink was the least he could do for Corey, who kept the entire household running.
Darren leaned back in his chair, satisfied physically but his mind still churning. “How much are you asking for the farm?”
Jim paused near the doorway, his hands full. He smiled at Corey, who sat beaming at Darren.
“Oh, Darren, we’d love for you to have it.”
“How much?”
“Jim hasn’t specified a number.” She stood too and came around the table to run her hand down the side of Darren’s face. “He wants this farm to be yours so badly. He just won’t say it out loud. So I said it for him.”
Darren’s emotions tangled up and balled in his throat. He nodded once, because he thought if he did more than that, the tears would overflow. His heart swelled with how much he loved Corey and Jim.
“Farrah won’t stay for dinner,” Corey said next, causing a different kind of pain to radiate through his body. “Do you know why?”
“I—” He cleared his throat. “I’ve spoken to her this week. She’s a bit…distant, but nothing seems too off.” He wasn’t sure if texting counted as speaking, but Corey nodded, picked up a handful of dishes and followed Jim into the kitchen.
He pulled out his phone as Corey and Jim started singing together in the kitchen. Darren really wanted to have a life like theirs, one filled with dinner in the evenings, and songs in front of the sink, and love and laughter all year round.
Farrah answered, and she sounded tired. Maybe that was why she’d been leaving the farm before dinner. “Hey, sweetheart,” he said, his voice almost a coo. “How are you? We’ve been missing you at dinner this week.”
“Yeah, I’ve had tons of yard work to be ready for winter.”
“You really want to retain that beautification award, don’t you?”
“If I don’t win twice in a row, people will think my green thumb is a fluke.”
He chuckled. “So I already ate, but maybe you wouldn’t mind the company?”
She took longer to answer than Darren liked, and that distance he’d commented on roared between them.
He turned away from the kitchen though he could still hear Jim and Corey singing. “I have something I want to talk to you about.”
“Oh, yeah, I have something I want to talk to you about too.”
Relief seeped through him. “Great, so I’ll stop by for a few minutes.”
When he got to Farrah’s, the evidence of her work on the bushes, the shrubs, and the trees lay on the curb. He needed her prowess with a pair of tree shears out at Steeple Ridge.
Or maybe the Bybee’s….
A smile slipped across his face as he mounted the steps.
He knocked on the door, and Farrah took her sweet time answering the door.
When she did, she wore one work glove crusted with dirt and carried the other.
“Hey, I was in the backyard. Bolt kept scratching at the glass.” She gave him a quick smile but stepped out of his reach so he couldn’t kiss her hello.
Until that moment, he’d thought he might have been imagining the distance she’d put between them. She tucked her hair and ducked her head as he stepped inside.
“Everything okay?”
“Mm hm.” But she wouldn’t look at him, and alarms started sounding in his head.
“Yeah, I don’t think so.” He stopped two feet inside her house and shoved his hands in his pockets. Maybe if he’d spent more than five minutes with her this week, he’d have realized a chasm had opened between them. But he’d been busy too.
“Talk to me, Farrah,” he said as she retreated into the kitchen and turned her back to him so she could wash her hands.
She’d told him once that he was impatient and pushy, and he refused to be either of those in this moment. So he waited, silent and still, by the door so he could make a quick escape if he needed to.
The fact that he thought he might need to escape raised another red flag in his mind.
She exhaled, turned, and leaned into the counter. “I think—I need….”
Darren breathed. Tried to calm his hammering heart. Waited for her to continue. At least if she broke up with him now, he’d be able to see her face as she did it. Last time, she’d sent a text that had to be broken up into five messages, berating him for his actions, his audacity, his attitude.
She wouldn’t answer his calls, and he’d ended up apologizing to her voicemail a dozen times.
Farrah walked toward him, gathering up her hair and knotting it into a loose bun on top of her head. “I need to take things one at a time.”
“Yeah, mm-hm. You said that.”
Tears filled her beautiful eyes, and Darren hated that he couldn’t soothe her. In a flash—a quick moment of thought—he wondered if she was simply too broken for a relationship. He couldn’t believe he’d fallen in love with her all over again.
“Darren, I—” She threw her hands up. “It’s not your turn.”
His chest caved in on itself, and he felt like someone had dumped red ants in his boots. He needed to leave. Now.
“All right.” He reached for the doorknob.
Farrah leapt in front of him and peered up at him with a tear-stained face. “All right?”
“What do you want from me, Farrah?” His fingers curled into fists. “I told you I love you. I told you we could unpack your baggage one item at a time. I—I—don’t know what else you want from me.” His voice cracked, and he drew in a breath that didn’t calm him in the slightest.
“I don’t know either.”
He nodded and couldn’t stop. “All right then. You call me when you know.” This time, when he made to step past her, she let him go. Every step away from her felt like a knife in the heart.
“Darren,” she called after him. “Don’t go.”
He turned back, apparently enjoying the extreme torture of getting his heart ripped out. She ran down the front steps and he swept her into his arms. She cried against his chest, and he held her right there on the sidewalk while she did.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “I’m a huge mess, and it’s just not fair to you when I just can’t—I can’t—I don’t want to hurt you.” She pulled back. “That makes sense, doesn’t it?”
Unable to speak, he shook his head. It made no sense. Breaking up with her hurt. Holding her when she wasn’t his hurt. Not being able to discuss a possible purchase of the Bybee’s farm hurt.
“I have to go,” he said.
“You had something to tell me.”
“I—” He released her and stepped back, his heart absolutely fissuring, a bunch of tiny little cracks spreading out and up and down, the way ice did just before it broke completely. “I can’t.”
He turned and practically ran to his truck, getting out of her driveway as quickly as possible. He just drove, trying to figure out what to do, where to go, how to be, without Farrah in his life.
She’d broken up with him before, but for some reason, he hadn’t truly believed he’d never get her back. Now, though…. He really did wonder if she was even capable of being in a relationship like the one he wanted.
He drove through the dark streets, the shapes of old buildings, and mature trees, and the beautiful countryside slipping by without his full attention. Turn after turn, and Darren still couldn’t sort out his thoughts.
His truck seemed to take him to Ben’s house, where a light shone in the front window. Darren got out and walked slowly toward the steps. He sat on the concrete and looked up at the stars.
“Will I get her back?” he whispered to the cosmos, hoping God was there and would answer him.
His brothers seemed to have found their happily-ever-afters without half this much pain.
Of course, Darren didn’t really know what Sam had gone through when he’d left Vermont—and the woman he’d loved—behind.
Nor did he know what it took to travel all the way across the country to California when your girlfriend had decided to stay here and keep her clinic.
And he had no idea how Ben had managed to slither in between Rae and her job.
So maybe his brothers hadn’t had a yellow brick road to romance. Darren still felt like his journey was taking twice as long and the terrain was twice as rough.
That’s because it’s worth it, he thought. He wasn’t sure if it was his own mind or a thought from a higher power, but it existed. He also wasn’t sure if such a thing was really true. Farrah may never be ready to be with him, share her life with him, start a family with him.
“What are you doin’ on my steps?” Ben nudged Darren with his boot and sat down beside him. “Rough night out at the Bybee’s?”
“No.” Darren shook his head. “Great night out there. Got all the wood in for the winter, and Jim practically offered me their farm.”
Ben whistled through his teeth and let a few seconds pass in silence. “Wow. Like, they want you to buy it?”
“Yep.”
“So…are you gonna buy it?”
“Yep.” The word sprang from Darren’s mouth without him having to overanalyze it. “I love that farm, and if I can have it….” A wave of gratitude overcame him. He couldn’t actually believe he could have what the Bybee’s did. But he wanted it. Wanted it real bad.
“So why are you sittin’ on my steps?”
“Farrah broke up with me again.”
“She did not.” Ben’s hushed tone conveyed more disbelief than Darren thought possible. “But I thought things were going well. She told Rae things were going well.”
“She did?”
“At bunko night.”
“That was over a week ago.”
“So what? What happened?”
“Nothing.” And Darren honestly couldn’t think of a single thing. They’d spent time together. Talked. Texted. She’d come out to Steeple Ridge and told him about her father, about her inheritance. She was talking about buying horses, for crying out loud.
“Did she say why?”
“Said it wasn’t my turn.”
“What does that even mean?”
Darren didn’t want to get into it. Number one, he respected Farrah’s privacy, and it wasn’t his place to tell Ben anything. “It means she came home with a lot of baggage, and she needs time to unpack it.”
As he spoke, a calm, comforting feeling flowed over him with the gentleness of spring rain water. And he knew in that moment that he’d get Farrah back. She just needed time. Possibly a lot of it.
Help me be patient, he pleaded as Ben stood and said, “Well, you want coffee or anything? Rae brought home some of that dark roast from Montpelier.”
“Yeah, I’ll be in soon.”
Ben left, and Darren contemplated the stars again.
He found it amazing that someone had looked up and noticed patterns, found constellations, and named them.
The sky just looked like a jumbled mess of lights to him.
He desperately wanted God to show him the path to take—the one that would lead him back to Farrah for good.
But all he saw were stars.
“Thank you for the stars,” he muttered as he stood. They were beautiful, and Darren did need to focus on being more thankful for what he did have, especially if he were to have the patience to endure what he didn’t.