Chapter 36
It’s the middle of December when I head over to my parents’ house for dinner.
I’ve been over a few times since Jack left, but I’ve also been trying to prioritize other things too.
I went to the bookstore in town last week and browsed the aisles, picking up anything that caught my eye.
I ended up with a thriller, which isn’t anything I would normally purchase, but stayed up all night reading it and told Jack about it when he called the next night.
I was knitting, something I’d picked up years ago and hadn’t done in ages, and we talked on speaker for hours while he attempted to make himself dinner at his rental cabin.
He ended up burning pasta, which I didn’t think was possible, and kept talking to me while he drove into town to pick up a burger.
I miss him, and I was hoping the ache of it would fade with time, but it’s just grown deeper roots.
The front door to my parents’ house creaks open when I turn the knob, letting myself in. It’s Grandma’s weekly bingo night, so it’s just us in the house. I love my grandmother with my whole heart, but it’s also nice to have these times just the three of us again.
“Hey,” I call out, heading down the hall toward the kitchen. The house smells of lavender, the scent now almost as familiar to me as the apple candles that always used to burn here growing up. Things have changed, but I’m finally adjusting to the new normal.
Stevie Nicks is playing on the old stereo in the kitchen, the one that has been on the counter for as long as I can remember, right beside the toaster oven, still miraculously working despite its age. I smile at the familiar tune, humming it beneath my breath.
I find Mom and Dad in the kitchen, cooking together.
Dad is flipping pancakes on the stove, and Mom is using tongs to remove bacon from the electric skillet.
I know there will be fresh maple syrup from the farm we trade with down the street and stewed apples saved from the harvest this year.
Breakfast is a Lynch family signature dinner.
Mom turns, seeing me, and a smile lights her face.
I think I can see faint smudges beneath her eyes, and they look a little red, but I decide not to comment on it.
I’m trying to navigate our boundaries better and stop trying to fix every problem that isn’t mine to solve.
If Mom wants to tell me what’s upsetting her, she will.
Later, I’ll be glad I didn’t ask, that I let the three of us enjoy the last bit of normalcy before things change forever.
We eat at the same seats we always have, my chair with one leg that’s a little shorter than the rest, making it wobble every time I move.
I could move, sit in the seat I’ve taken up since Grandma moved in, but I like the familiarity of this one, how I instinctively lean a little to the left to keep it from moving around.
Dad talks about how he can’t wait for the lake to freeze so he can go ice fishing, and Mom tells me she and Aunt Ava made spa appointments next month, and that she can’t wait for an entire day of relaxation.
“I can come over and be with Grandma if you need me to. I know a full day will be a lot to manage.” Grandma can be home alone, obviously, but she gets lonely, and when she’s by herself for too long, she tends to get more confused.
When Dad is working long days on the farm and Mom is out, it can be a lot on her.
Mom and Dad’s eyes slant toward each other, a silent conversation passing between them, and for a moment I think it’s because of my offer, that I’ve stepped over the line of this tenuous balance we’re trying to strike.
But when they look back at me, I know it’s something bigger.
I feel it in the swoop of my gut, the way my hands start sweating and my heart pounds in my throat.
“Stevie, we need to tell you something,” Dad says.
“What?” My pulse pounds quicker, a beat of an ever-loudening drum in my ears, as I look between them, trying to guess what they’re going to say before they say it.
I wouldn’t have, though. I would have never guessed.
“Honey, we’ve sold the farm.”
My tears have dried, but my heart still feels scraped raw when I get home after dinner.
There’s an ache in my chest and grit in my eyes.
I close the door behind me and lean against it in the dark.
The silence is heavy and vast, only the sound of my refrigerator whirring in the background and my breathing breaking it up.
I don’t think before I call him, and he doesn’t hesitate to answer.
“Hey,” Jack says, and I can hear the smile in his voice. It makes the ache deepen, the longing to have him here, just so I won’t be alone in my sadness, overwhelming me.
“My parents are selling the farm.” It sounds hollow, even to my own ears.
“What?”
“Actually, they’ve already sold it.” I think that’s what hurts more.
For so long, I’ve done everything I can to help my parents because the farm is their dream.
They bought the land before I was born and have poured so much of themselves into it, and I did too.
But they sold it without discussing it with me first, or even telling me they were considering it.
“Stevie,” Jack says, and his tone is so soft it makes my eyes sting again with incoming tears. “I’m so sorry. Why? What happened?”
I sink to the floor, my back still against the cool metal door, my elbows resting on my knees. “It’s too much for them. Between running it and taking care of Grandma, it’s too much. I guess they’ve been thinking about it for a while. My dad wants to ice fish.”
“Ice fish?” He sounds confused.
“Aren’t you from Montana?”
He pauses. “Yes?”
“You didn’t grow up ice fishing in the tundra?”
His laughter fills the line, and it helps just hearing it. “I think you might be a little confused on the geography of Montana. But, yes, people ice fish here. I didn’t, but other people do. I was just asking why ice fishing.”
“I don’t know. Maybe a three-quarter life crisis.”
“Sounds reasonable.”
“They said they’re tired of working so hard, and they want to enjoy retirement.”
“That makes sense,” he says, tender.
I let out a sigh, running a hand over my face. “I know it does. I get it. They’ve worked so hard for so long. They deserve a chance to relax.”
“So what’s the problem?” He doesn’t ask it flippantly, more like he really wants to know what’s on my mind, why I feel so wrecked by this.
I toy with a loose thread on my sweater.
“I’m going to miss it. They’re not moving or anything.
They aren’t selling the couple of acres the house is on, and my aunt and uncle own their piece of land on the other side of the orchard.
They’re just selling the farm itself. They sold it to the farmer next door.
He’s nice, and he runs his farm with his kids.
They want to expand. So it’s not like it’s going away or anything. ”
“I get that,” he says. “It’s important to you. You grew up there.”
“Yeah.”
We’re quiet for a long moment, and then Jack asks, “Is there something else that’s upsetting you about it?”
I feel scrubbed raw, laid bare. Because yes, what I told him is true, but it’s not the thing that’s bothering me the most. It’s not what’s causing the fear roiling in my stomach or the ache right in the middle of my chest.
“They won’t need me anymore,” I say, and the words taste bitter, vile. I’m so ashamed of them that I want to snatch them back, but I can’t and they hang there in the silence.
“Stevie,” Jack says, and his voice is so soft that it makes hot tears spill over onto my cheeks.
“No,” I tell him. “That’s not the worst of it.
It’s that I’ve built my life here. I didn’t go to college or move away or do any of the things that I had planned because they needed me.
And I wanted to help them. I wanted to repay them for everything they did for me growing up.
They are such good parents, you know? But I built my life here around them, and now they won’t need me, and I’m not sure what I’m left with.
” The words flow out of me in a rush, stealing my breath.
“Maybe that’s part of why they’re selling. Maybe they want you to have more than just them, to have the freedom to do what you want.”
“I don’t know what I want anymore,” I reply, and it’s the truth.
“Sounds like we’re both trying to figure that out,” he says.
A shaky breath heaves out of me. “I’m sorry I called you and cried.”
His laugh is small, a huff of air into the speaker. “Anytime.”
“I wish you were here.”
It slips out of my mouth before I can think better of it, but I don’t regret it either.
I know he’s where he needs to be, and I’m glad that we didn’t let anything happen between us before he left.
It would be harder if I knew how he tastes, the way his scruff would feel against my neck.
But right now, I don’t wish for that. I wish he was here sitting beside me on the cold floor.
Being with him would be enough to make me feel lighter.
“I wish I was, too.”
It soothes something behind my sternum, hearing him say it.
“I’ll let you go,” I say.
“You can stay, if you want.”
“Okay.”
We talk as I get ready for bed, brushing my teeth and changing into my pajamas.
He tells me about getting to ride a horse on the ranch today and making hot chocolate with Clara after dinner last night.
He asks me what a six-year-old girl would want for Christmas.
I ask if he’s picked where he will go after New Year’s and he tells me he still hasn’t decided.
Hours have passed when my eyes start to droop, staring at the peel-and-stick stars on the ceiling of my Airstream. My heart feels lighter, and the tension in my body has unspooled into something languid.
“Tell me the stories about the stars,” I say. My voice slurs a little, drunk with tiredness.
“What story?” he asks. He got ready for bed, too, about an hour ago, and I had to stop myself from picturing him spread out beneath the sheets, warm skin against cool fabric.
“Any of them. You told me about Cassiopeia, Pegasus, and Andromeda.”
“You remember.” He sounds surprised but pleased.
“Mmhmm.”
“Okay,” he says, and he’s quiet a moment. “Do you know the story of Taurus?”
I shake my head in the dark, even though he can’t see it. “No.”
His voice is hypnotic. “Zeus fell in love with a princess. I can’t remember her name right now, but he turned himself into a white bull to try to win her affection.”
“Men either do too much or too little,” I say with a yawn, and smile when he laughs, warm and husky.
“When she climbed on his back, he ran to the sea and swam them to Crete, then placed Taurus in the sky to commemorate it.”
“Why do you like that one?”
He laughs again. “When I was a kid, I think I thought it was cool and romantic. But it’s stupid now that I’m older. You can’t just run off with the person you love.”
“No,” I agree, another yawn overtaking me. “Tell me another one.”
I fall asleep to the sound of his voice, telling me stories of the stars.