6. Chapter 6
Chapter six
Wyatt
The farmers market doesn't open until eight, but Ellie's up at five-thirty banging around the kitchen like the honey jars are going to sell themselves if she doesn't get there first.
“Uncle Wyatt.” She's already got her boots on, standing in my bedroom doorway with the impatience of a nine-year-old on a mission.
“The jars need fixing. Somebody put three of them backwards on the shelf and it's driving me insane.”
“Nobody put anything backwards on purpose.”
“I know. That's what makes it worse.”
I load the truck in the dark, jars clinking in their crates.
Every label has to face out. Every row has to be even. I gave up arguing about it two summers ago, back when she first started coming with me, because it turns out a nine-year-old with a system is more efficient than a grown man without one.
Moose rides in the truck bed the whole way into town, nose in the air, taking in every smell along the road like he's personally responsible for keeping track of Stonebridge.
He's three years old, a hundred pounds of Bernese Mountain Dog who spends most days following me around the farm and getting in the way of whatever I'm trying to accomplish.
By the time we get the booth set up under the string lights on the square, he's stretched out in the shade beside it, keeping one eye on me and the other on anybody carrying food.
“He's not even helping,” Ellie says, nudging him with her boot. He doesn't move.
“He's conserving energy.”
“For what?”
“For later. When people start petting him and he has to seem pathetic enough that they feel bad and buy honey.”
Ellie considers this with the seriousness of somebody weighing actual strategy.
“That's smart.”
“He's the smartest lazy dog I know.”
By eight, the square's filling up with customers. Ellie's got the honey jars arranged exactly how she wants them, three rows, labels forward, tallest in back, and she's already made two sales before I've even finished counting the cash box.
“You're better at this than me,” I tell her.
“I know.” She says it without an ounce of false modesty, counting change into an old woman's palm with total focus.
“People like buying honey from a kid. It's psychology.”
“Is that right?”
“That's what you said.”
“Then it must be true.”
She grins and goes back to counting change.
I'm elbow-deep in restocking the eggs when I hear Texie's voice cut across the square, loud enough that half the vendors probably hear it too.
“Wyatt Stapleton, is that dog asleep or dead?”
“Somewhere in between.”
She's got the whole crew with her — Millie a step behind, Luke and Ben already breaking off toward the funnel cake stand before anybody's told them they can, and Savannah bringing up the rear with a canvas bag over one shoulder, sunglasses pushed up into her hair.
I've had two days to get used to the sight of her being back in this town. I haven't managed it yet. My first thought isn't that she's beautiful, though she is — my first thought is that she looks like she's supposed to be here. Like the square just rearranged itself slightly to make room.
She finds me across the crates and jars before I've said a word.
Her smile changes.
Not much. Just enough that I notice.
And I guess mine does too, because Texie catches the exchange and gets the kind of expression that makes me immediately regret knowing her.
Then Texie starts talking about the pie contest, and the moment folds itself back into an ordinary Saturday morning.
“Luke,” Ellie shouts, already halfway across the grass, “come on, they've got the good kind today, the cinnamon sugar kind.”
She's gone before I can tell her to leave the cash box alone, off across the square with Luke and Ben, all three of them disappearing into the crowd the way kids do at these things.
Savannah watches her go, brow furrowed slightly, like she's trying to place a face that doesn't come with a memory attached.
“Who's that?”
I set the crate down. There's not really a smooth way into this, so I don't try to find one.
“That's Ellie. My niece.” I pause. “My daughter too, most days. She came to live with us after Casey died. About a year and a half in, she started calling me Dad once in a while. Most of the time it's still Uncle Wyatt.”
I shrug. “I answer to both.”
Savannah's whole face changes. “Your—”
“My sister's girl. Casey's.” I keep my eyes on the honey jars, straightening a row that doesn't need straightening.
“She passed about three years ago. Suddenly, nobody saw it coming. Ellie's dad was never really in the picture, so there wasn't much of a decision to make. Dad and I just — took her in. Wasn't a question.”
Savannah's quiet for a second, one hand pressed flat against her chest like she's trying to absorb the information physically.
“Wyatt, I didn't — I had no idea. About Casey. About any of it.”
“You'd already been gone a good while by then. Ten years, maybe more.”
“Wyatt, I'm so sorry. About Casey.”
She reaches out without seeming to think about it and touches my arm, just above the elbow, the way you'd steady somebody or steady yourself.
I don't move away from it. Neither does she, not right away.
“I know you are.”
And I do. That's the strange thing about grief this old — I don't need her to have known. I just needed her to know now. “She was good with kids that age. Ellie's got her laugh. Same exact one.”
Savannah spots Ellie near the funnel cake stand, cinnamon sugar already dusted across one cheek as she laughs at something Luke said.
“She's beautiful.”
“She's a lot of work disguised as beautiful. But yeah.”
Ellie comes jogging back a minute later, out of napkins, and pulls up short at the sight of Savannah standing there.
“Hi,” she says. Careful. Sizing up whether this stranger is worth the effort of being interested.
“Ellie, this is Savannah.”
I keep my voice even, ordinary, like this is any regular introduction and not one I've been quietly dreading for two days.
“She's an old friend.”
“Hi, Ellie.” Savannah crouches slightly, meeting her at eye level instead of talking down at her, which I notice, and which Ellie notices too, judging by the way her shoulders come down half an inch.
“I hear you're the one who decides how the jars get set up.”
“Labels forward,” Ellie says. “It's not that hard, but people mess it up anyway.”
“I respect that completely.”
Ellie studies her another second, decides something in her own private calculus, and grabs a fresh napkin off the table. “I have to go. Luke's saving me a spot.”
And she's gone again, off toward the funnel cakes.
Savannah’s smile gets a little bigger.
“How old is she?”
“Nine. Ten in the spring.”
“I've missed a lot,” Savannah says, quiet, mostly to herself.
Fifteen years is a long time.
Fifteen years of her life happened somewhere else. So did fifteen years of mine.
And now I want to know what I missed.
She picks up a jar of honey off the table, turning it slowly in the light.
“Iron Ridge Honey,” she reads.
“Wildflower. This batch is made by bees who are very proud of themselves.”
“Ellie's copywriting.”
“It's good.”
“Don't tell her that. I'll have to start paying her.”
Savannah smiles, but she's still studying the jar. The honey catches the morning light, deep gold against the handwritten label.
“You sell all of this here?”
“Most of it.”
“Just at the market?”
“Market. Couple local stores.”
Her eyebrows pull together for half a second.
“I'm buying this.”
She's already reaching for her wallet.
“You're not.”
“I am. I'm a paying customer, Wyatt. This is a business transaction.”
She sets a ten on the table like that settles it.
“I'm perfectly capable of giving away a jar of honey.”
“I'm perfectly capable of buying honey.”
“So am I.”
“I insist.”
“So do I.”
It becomes a battle.
She pushes the ten a little further across the table like that's going to change my mind.
I go to slide it back at the same second she pushes it forward again, and our hands end up stacked on top of the bill, hers on top of mine, for a beat longer than either of us needs.
“I forgot how stubborn you are,” she says, pulling her hand back first this time.
“I've gotten worse.”
“Somehow I believe that.”
She tucks the honey into her bag with a satisfied smile.
“Fine,” I say. “I'll donate the ten to the library festival fund instead, and you can consider the honey a gift you were forced into giving.”
“That I can live with.”
Ben comes barreling back over with a stick nearly as long as he is, determined to get Moose interested in a game of fetch that Moose has zero intention of participating in. He throws it, Moose watches it land three feet away and does not move.
“Come on, Moose.” Ben throws it again, same result. “Fetch. That's the whole job.”
Moose lifts his head, considers the stick, and lies back down with a sigh so dramatic it startles a laugh out of Savannah.
“He's waiting for somebody else to get it,” I say.
“What's his story?” Savannah asks.
“Ellie named him. He showed up full-grown, skinny and half-feral behind the barn about a year back, wouldn't leave, so now he's ours. Turns out the reason he wouldn't leave is he'd rather nap than hunt for his own food.”
“Smart dog.”
“Laziest smart dog in the county.” I nod toward him, still flat in the grass, utterly unbothered by his own reputation.
“Fits right in around here.”
Savannah goes quiet, taking in another piece of the life that went on here while she was somewhere else entirely.
A bluegrass trio starts up near the courthouse steps, and Savannah ends up beside me on one of the benches while Ellie disappears with Texie to find funnel cakes.
Moose drops at our feet.
“They still do this?” Savannah asks.
“Every market.”
“I forgot how much I liked it.”
The bench isn't built for two adults and a hundred-pound dog, so our shoulders keep bumping whenever one of us moves. Neither of us does much to fix it.
We stay through the whole performance.
I don't notice the cash until later, cleaning up the booth as the market starts winding down. A folded ten dollar bill, tucked into the honey box under the register tray, no note, nothing marking it as anything but what it obviously is.
Savannah's a few yards off, helping Ellie and Ben stack the empty crates, laughing at something Luke said, purse sitting open on the folding table beside her.
I don't say anything. I just fold the ten back up, walk over under the pretense of grabbing a crate, and slide it into the side pocket of her purse while she's busy directing Ben on crate-stacking technique. She doesn't notice. Nobody does.
Some habits fifteen years don’t touch. Hers is trying to pay for things she doesn't need to. Mine is making sure she never gets away with it.
By the time the market clears out, the sun's dropping low enough to turn the whole square gold, and Ellie's asleep sitting up in a folding chair with Moose's head in her lap, both of them worn out from a day of being, respectively, extremely industrious and extremely lazy.
Savannah helps me load the truck like she knows the routine already. When we're done she stands there a second longer than she needs to, hands in her back pockets.
I catch myself watching her a second too long, the low light doing something unfair to the whole scene, and I pull myself out of it before I say something I haven't earned the right to say yet.
“I told Texie I'd only stay a few weeks,” she says. “Get my head together, figure out next steps, go back to New York.”
“How's that going?”
“Terribly.”
She laughs.
“And now I'm finding out there's this little girl I never got to know. This whole part of your life I knew nothing about.”
That catches me off guard.
Turns out it catches her off guard too.
“That came out more personal than I meant it to.”
“Did it?”
“Don't make me explain it, Wyatt.”
I can't help smiling. “Wasn't going to.”
“Good.”
But I'm going to remember it.
“You're here now,” I say. “That's not nothing.”
She studies me for a moment.
“No,” she says. “I guess it's not.”