Chapter 35
Noah
Students will be able to confess everything.
The last two hours of our drive home were terrible.
We hit miles of pointless traffic and then chased a storm through Connecticut and into Rhode Island, and Gennie was irritable the whole way.
By the time we exited the highway toward Friendship, she was kicking the seat back and yell-singing an annoying theme song from a kids show.
My head was just about to split open when we finally reached Old Windmill Hill Road.
I had a difficult relationship with my family’s farm and this town but I couldn’t deny that I was relieved to be home.
And it wasn’t simply a matter of coming home after an exhausting trip with a handful of a child.
I was relieved to return to this home, to this land, to the life I had here.
The life we had together, me and Gennie and Shay.
I was going to tell Shay the truth tonight. I was going to tell her that I loved her, that I’d always loved her. All the way back to the beginning. Even if I dropped dead from admitting that I’d loved her in silence for years, I wanted her to know. And I wanted her to stay.
“I want to see the doggies,” Gennie wailed as I turned down the gravel lane. “And my kitties too.”
I scanned the dark clouds overhead. We were in for a downpour but this kid needed to run around. “You can visit with them until the rain starts. The minute you feel a raindrop, you come inside.”
“What if I don’t feel any raindrops? What if the rain doesn’t drop on me?”
I glanced at her in the rearview mirror. She didn’t notice. “If there are any raindrops falling near you, it’s time to come inside.”
“What if I don’t notice because they aren’t close enough for me to notice?”
“Imogen.”
“Yeah?”
I turned off the ignition. “If you can’t recognize when it’s raining, you can’t wander around the farm alone. Got it?”
She banged her feet against the passenger seat back again. “Yep.”
“Go ahead,” I said, “but I don’t want to see you soaked to the bone in an hour.”
“Aye aye.” She unbuckled from her booster seat and opened the door, darting off toward the dog run at full speed.
If I was lucky, I’d get an uninterrupted half hour with Shay.
I needed every minute of that time. I grabbed our bags and carted them inside.
When I didn’t find Shay on the first floor, I headed for her bedroom.
It wouldn’t be her bedroom for long. If this went the way I wanted, we’d stop pretending that we could cleave anything into hers or mine. It was all ours .
I pushed the door open and found her sitting on the floor, surrounded by—everything. Clothes, books, earrings, shoes. Everything . Then she startled, jumping a bit and scrambling back, a hand pressed to her chest. She tugged out her earbuds, saying, “I didn’t expect you for another hour or two.”
I reached down and offered my hand. “We hit the road early.”
She stood and brushed off the seat of her jeans. “How was it? How did Gennie handle it?”
I wanted to yank her into my arms but small mountains of sweaters and books separated us. Instead, I brought my hand to the back of my neck. “Better than I could’ve expected.”
“That’s good,” she said. “That’s really good.”
“Gennie went to visit the animals. She needed to run around after the drive.”
“That makes sense.”
I studied her mountains for a minute. The closet was empty and the drawers too. There was a system in place that I couldn’t decipher and I had the sinking sense this was a precursor to packing. She was getting ready to leave. She’d decided this wouldn’t work.
I gestured to the mountains as my stomach dropped to the floor. “What’s going on here?”
“Summer is very much over.” She dropped her hands to her hips. “I’m trying to get organized.”
“Organized.” I nodded. My stomach was in the basement. “To move back to Thomas House?”
She parted her lips to speak but stopped herself.
She tapped her phone and slipped her earbuds back into their case.
Then, “We did this all wrong, Noah. Maybe it was for the right reasons but—” She looked away, out the window facing the orchards.
“I’ve fallen for you—and your niece and your farm and even this wonky town—but you married me so I could inherit Lollie’s land.
” My heart jumped into my throat. “You rescued me like you rescue everyone.”
“You are not everyone, Shay. Not even close.”
Staring down at her hands, she said, “I have a lot of experience convincing myself that people love me. I don’t even realize I’m doing it until those people make it painfully clear that they don’t love me, they never loved me.
But I can’t convince myself that you would’ve chosen this if not for Lollie’s wacky will and the land, even if you say you don’t want it, and all of the things that mixed together to make this situation.
And I can’t convince myself that you would’ve chosen me. ”
“You’re wrong about that.”
“But you can’t prove it, can you?” She finally met my gaze and I felt all the agony in her dark eyes.
“That’s what I need. Proof. I have all these people who give me fractions and fragments of themselves and swear it’s the whole.
I tell myself to believe them, to take those pathetic little pieces and make something real from them.
And I do. I make relationships and promises and futures.
I make everything and I make myself believe.
” She held up her hands and let them fall to her sides.
“I don’t want to do that to myself anymore. ”
I felt like I was being ripped apart from the inside out. “Then let me give you something better.”
She layered both hands over her heart. “I can’t let you rescue me again. I cannot be one more person who expects you to save the world. I have to save my own world.”
We stared at each other for a long moment, the ridge of her books and clothes dividing us.
Thunder rumbled in the distance and wind whipped through the trees.
I brought my hand to the back of my neck again and dug a thumb into the knots there.
It didn’t help. I couldn’t imagine anything would ever help.
“You want proof,” I said. “I’ll show you proof.”
Shay shook her head. “Can we set this aside for tonight? I need to take a shower and finish some laundry and work on my lesson plans because this week’s schedule has changed again. And you’ve had such a long day—a long week, really—and I’m sure you want to get Gennie back on her regular routine.”
Shower. Laundry. Lesson plans. Routine. I stared, waiting for her to realize that we weren’t going to set this aside for the night.
When I couldn’t stand it anymore, when the pressure was so intense the only thing I could do was hit the release valve or wait to explode, I said, “I love you. I mean, I fucking love you, Shay. I’ve loved you for years upon fucking years and none of the garbage leftover from your ex or your mother or anyone else is going to change that. You will not change that.”
A breath whispered out of her and her brows fell as if she didn’t understand. “Noah, I—”
“No. Don’t say anything. Don’t tell me I’m wrong or I don’t know what I’m talking about.” I took a step back and held up a hand. “You asked for proof. I’ll give you proof.”
I didn’t wait for a response. I jogged down the stairs, across the kitchen, into the small den where I stored my books from college and law school and everything else I wanted to keep separate from farm business. On the farthest corner of the highest shelf sat one of my dad’s old cigar boxes.
The last time I’d thought about this box was a few years ago when construction on this house ended and I’d moved in. I’d raked myself over the coals for keeping it that long but even then I hadn’t been able to let it go. I’d never been able to let her go.
My phone vibrated in my pocket and I tucked the box under my arm to answer. “What?” I growled.
“Welcome home. We got some goats on the loose,” Bones said.
“The wind is really slapping our asses today. It took out fencing all over the property. We got most of the goats back in but it looks like two are pulling an REO Speedwagon taking it on the run. We’ve got some guys patching up the fence but we’re also dealing with a few fallen trees behind the farm stand so we’re shorthanded.
” He cleared his throat. “Any chance you want to fetch some goats before the skies open up?”
I ran a hand down my face. “Motherfuck,” I groaned.
“That’s the kind of enthusiasm I like to hear.”
“Any idea where these goats are headed?”
“Goats don’t announce their plans,” he said with a cackle. “They’re probably tearing up whatever is left of the pumpkin patches.”
“I don’t have time for this today,” I grumbled. “Catch me on the radio if these goats figure out what’s good for them and go home before I find them.”
“Unlikely, but I’ll do it,” he said.
I ended the call and slapped a sticky note on the cigar box, scrawling a quick message for my wife, the woman who didn’t see family birthdays and fresh bread, and ice cream scoopers sent to organize her classroom and general contractors sent to overhaul her farm as evidence of my love for her.
As bottomless devotion. Just as soon as I rounded up these goats, we’d have a good long talk about the real reason—the only reason—I married her.
The shower was running when I climbed the stairs.
It was better this way. I didn’t think I could pull together the appropriate words to explain this box or why I’d held on to the contents all these years.
I needed Shay to figure it out for herself.
I needed her to remember and maybe then she’d understand.
Then she’d believe me. Then she’d have all the proof she could ever want.
I stepped into her room. The mountains were exactly where I’d left them.
Sweaters and jeans on one side, sundresses and shorts on the other.
I set the cigar box on her bed, the hot pink note on top screaming for attention.
I paused for a minute, the weight of all the vulnerabilities contained in that box pulling me back.
If this didn’t work, we’d never recover. I’d never recover.
With that realization heavy in my chest, I walked down the stairs and out into the storm.
November afternoons had a way of turning into night in the blink of an eye, and the storm clouds only intensified the darkness overhead.
Rain was spitting down sideways and the wind was howling.
Any late season apples we had left were likely to fall tonight.
I found Gennie hurrying out of the shed, Blackie and Brownie watching her as they paced near the door. “There’s no rain on me,” she called.
That was not true but I didn’t care. “I have to check on some fencing,” I said, intentionally avoiding all mention of her goat friends. “Stay inside. Play with your iPad. I’ll be back soon.”
“Is it okay if I read a book?”
“What?” I peered at her, certain I’d misheard in the roar of the wind.
“Can I read a book in my room instead of playing on the iPad?”
“Yeah, of course. Why would you need permission to do that?”
“You said I should use the iPad but I want to read instead and I didn’t want to blow off your directions.” She shrugged before skipping off toward the house.
“Who is that kid and what the actual fuck is happening to my life?” I muttered as I settled behind the wheel of my ATV.
When I started up the machine, I realized I hadn’t grabbed my radio on my way out. I patted my pockets for my phone but didn’t find that either. I probably left it on my desk in the den.
But I couldn’t run back inside now. I’d have to deal with Gennie or Shay—who would want a ton of answers that I didn’t have the time to give her.
Instead, I drove down the hill, past the orchards and toward the pumpkin patch on the border of Twin Tulip land as rain and wind lashed me from all sides.
I was wet and tired when I spotted the first goat picking her way through the remaining gourds. The second goat came out of nowhere and darted across the beam of my headlights. I swerved around her—and promptly rolled the ATV into a stream.