Chapter 11
My parents’ house always used to smell like apples.
My aunt and uncle live on the same piece of property as my parents’ apple orchard, and my aunt runs a farm shop in a little building smack dab between the two houses.
She makes candles and soaps, potpourri and simmer pots kits.
And my mom has always been her tester, sampling out everything before it went in the store.
Or she used to be.
When Grandma moved in, mom packed up all the half-burned apple candles and tossed out the potpourri. She bought lavender scented essential oils and diffusers, just like Grandma always had in her house two hours away.
The little farmhouse I grew up in still smells amazing, but it doesn’t smell like home anymore.
I let myself in the front door—another change since Grandma’s bedroom is on the backside of the house and on her bad days, it can scare her when people come in through the back door unannounced.
I can smell roasted vegetables coming from the direction of the kitchen, and Dean Martin is playing on the record player in the living room.
I follow the noise and find my dad on the couch, lying on a heating pad, several prescription bottles on the table beside him, and a book in his hands.
He looks up when I walk in, giving me a smile that looks pinched. “Hey, honey. How’s my girl?”
Worry gnaws at me, and I lower myself onto the edge of the couch, careful not to bump him. “I’m good. What happened to you?”
He waves me off. “Nothing, just hurt my back a little. No big deal.”
My dad is tough as nails. When I was twelve, he suffered his first back injury on the farm.
Times were hard and he was doing more than he should.
He was in the hospital for days and they debated surgery, but ended up saying they could hold off as long as he hired some help to let him rest and recover.
He couldn’t, and for years he was in and out of doctor’s offices and emergency rooms. The worst injury happened when I was seventeen.
He spent eight days in the hospital recovering from the surgery that could no longer be avoided, then spent three months recovering in a rented hospital bed in our living room with nurses and physical therapists coming every day to help him.
We almost lost the farm, but Fontana Ridge stepped up.
They bought tickets and shopped at the farm stand.
They donated their time and money. They rallied together to hire help.
It’s been over a decade since that happened, and he still has his days and weeks where the pain flares, but for the most part, he’s able to run the farm again with help.
But every time I find him like this, I’m transported back to being seventeen, standing beside his bed in the hospital, wondering if he would ever be okay again.
“What happened?” I ask again.
His eyes, the exact color of mine, meet my own and soften at the worry I’m sure he finds there. He pats my knees with one of his large, work-roughened hands. “Really, Stevie, I’m okay. I was just fixing one of the tractors yesterday and overdid it.”
My heart is still racing, but it begins to slow a little. I nod, reassuring myself as much as him. “Do you need anything?”
“No,” he says with a shake of his head. “Now, how’s my girl? How’s your head?”
“Better. A lot better. I haven’t had to take any medicine in a few days, so Uncle Silas said I could finally come back to work.”
“When’s your first hike?”
“Tomorrow. Just an overnight.”
His eyebrows, once dark and now threaded through with gray, pinch together with concern. “You sure you’re ready for that?”
“More than ready,” I assure him. “I’ve been going stir crazy.”
Honestly, that’s only partly true. I’ve missed working, but I haven’t been as lonely as I expected. Jack and I really haven’t spent that much time together, but it’s almost…comforting to have him around.
“Be careful, okay?”
“I promise.”
He pats my knee again. “Good. Do you want to see if your mom needs any help finishing dinner? Mom is with her.”
“How is she today?” I ask.
His smile is relieved. “She’s having a good day. She helped your mom cook dinner and called her friend Joyce.”
My grandma’s Alzheimer's diagnosis was a surprise. She had been healthy and active until my grandpa died a few years ago. At first, we thought she was forgetting things and getting confused because she wasn’t sleeping or eating well after he passed.
But then she started getting lost while driving, forgetting that she’d already bought groceries and coming home with another load.
She was forgetting to pay her bills and losing her phone, so no one would be able to get a hold of her for days.
So last year, we packed up her things, sold her house in Virginia, and moved her in with my parents. Her disease is still only in the early to middle stage, but it wasn’t feasible for my parents to care for her the way she needed from so far away.
I follow the scent of roasting vegetables to the kitchen.
Mom is pulling a dish from the oven with a dish towel wrapped around her hand.
Beside her, Grandma is assembling a salad, humming softly to herself.
It’s quiet, calm. None of the frantic energy of when Grandma is confused or upset, and it settles some of the anxiety in my stomach.
“What can I do to help?”
Mom turns around, a smile on her face. My mother has always been stunning in the natural sort of way fitting of a farmer.
Her light brown hair is starting to gray, and she rarely wears makeup, but she takes excellent care of her skin, so it’s always glowing beneath the smattering of freckles covering her nose and cheeks.
Her hands are work worn, but her nails are always manicured, the dirt from her garden scrubbed from beneath them.
She’s wearing an oversized button up, rolled to her elbows, over a plain white tee and a pair of practical utility pants.
“Hey, Stevie girl.” My mom’s voice is always the loudest in any room, but she has learned to soften it slightly since Grandma moved in with them. Still, it’s booming, enthusiastic, and always full of joy. “We’re finishing up, so you can just tell us how you’ve been.”
I take a seat at the island, leaning my elbows on the tile countertop that hasn’t been updated in at least twenty years. “I’ve been good. Mostly just resting up so that Uncle Silas would give me the all clear to come back to work.”
Grandma turns her focus on me, eyebrows knit in concern. “Why haven’t you been able to work?”
My eyes flick to Mom’s, a wordless conversation passing between us. “I had an accident in my Airstream a few weeks ago, remember?”
“Oh, right, right,” Grandma says, waving me off.
“Are you excited to get back to work?” Mom asks.
A soft laugh chuffs out of me. “Very.”
“And you’re still enjoying the cabin? It was very nice of Wren to let you stay there.”
“Yeah, it’s great. Cozy.”
“Does it make you want a place of your own?”
My parents have always been supportive of whatever I do, but they’ve never fully understood why I purchased and renovated the Airstream instead of building something more permanent on my land. And I’ve never really had a solid answer for them either.
I lift my shoulder in a shrug, tracing a line of grout on the countertop. “Not really. It is nice to have a full kitchen though.”
Grandma flashes a smile at me, one that looks so familiar it’s almost like she hasn’t changed at all. “I’m sure. You always have been such a good cook.”
“Thank you,” I murmur.
“And how is the roommate?” My parents were less than thrilled when I told them I was moving in with a stranger, even though I pointed out that Mom had met Jack before, but they had been supportive regardless.
Mom had even asked one of her friends who worked at the hospital about him, and they assured her that he seemed like a great guy.
“Jack is nice,” I tell her. “I haven’t spent much time with him, though. Our schedules haven’t lined up much.”
It’s not entirely true, but it’s not a lie either. We’ve fallen into an easy rhythm, even when we’re passing ships in the night. He’s incredibly easy to be around, and I’ve craved my alone time a lot less than I thought I would.
“Dinner is ready,” Mom says, pulling another dish from the oven, this one full of sizzling fall vegetables. “I’m going to make a plate and take it to your dad and then we can eat at the table.”
Worry spikes in my chest. “Is he that bad?”
Mom gives me a knowing look. “He says he’s not, but he’s hardly been able to walk. He slept on the couch last night because he couldn't make it up the stairs.”
I breathe in deeply through my nose, jaw tense, a swirl of anxiety wracking my gut.
“Don’t worry about it, Stevie,” Mom says, sounding firm. “We will be fine.”
I push up from the rickety wooden stool. “I’ll make him a plate. You two go ahead.”
Mom tries to protest, but I wave her off. “Really, I’ve got it.”
I step around them and begin to scoop food onto Dad’s plate—a roasted chicken thigh covered in fresh herbs and squash, sweet potato, and brussel sprouts covered in aromatic olive oil. “The veggies look great, Mom. Are they from the garden?”
She’s using tongs to plate her own piece of chicken. With a soft sigh, she says, “No, I haven’t had time to tend the garden. It’s overgrown with weeds.”
My gaze snaps to her, guilt pricking at me.
My dad handles most of the farming on the orchard, but my mom’s pride and joy is her garden.
She spends hours outside, her knees sunk into the foam kneeler I bought her years ago, hands sifting through deep brown soil, a huge sunhat tied beneath her chin.
I knew that she hasn’t been able to spend as much time there the past year trading off shifts caring for Grandma with Dad, but the fact that her prized garden is covered in weeds makes a mixture of guilt and sadness rip through me.
I haven’t helped enough.
Mom doesn’t look at me, too busy loading up her plate, but I notice the hunch to her shoulders, the dark circles that didn’t use to be beneath her eyes. The way her nails are bare, no longer chipped, but also not painted. She’s stressed, worn out. And I’ve been rotting on the couch for two weeks.
As I take the plate of dinner to my dad, I make a vow to myself to use any free time I have to help my parents out where I can.
Starting with the garden.