“No, I didn’t.”
Drew’s headlights shone through the dark later that night as he drove, one wrist draped lazily over his steering wheel while the other arm stretched behind Savannah’s shoulders where she sat in the center of the bench seat.
“You know you missed the turn, right?” she asked softly, as if reluctant to break the silence.
“No, I didn’t.”
“Uh, yes, you did. My apartment is that way.”
“But we’re not going to your apartment yet.”
She sat up and looked around, instantly more alert than a moment before. “Where are we going?”
Drew felt the corners of his mouth tilt up.
“You’ll see. There’s something I want to show you.
” He trailed his hand down the length of her arm before twisting his fingers together with hers.
She didn’t object, and Drew marveled at the unexpected path his life was taking.
He’d been so determined to stay away from her, so determined to keep history from repeating itself, yet here he was anyway, willingly sinking in quicksand.
After a few more minutes, he turned onto a rough lane leading into the woods and released her hand. “Hold on,” he said as they hit the first rut in the dirt. The truck bumped on its suspension, and Savannah’s arm flew out to brace herself against the dashboard.
“Should I be worried?” she asked jokingly, and Drew shook his head, though his attention was more on the path in front of them.
Finally, they emerged through the narrow strip of trees, and a cleared pasture opened up.
Drew brought the truck to a stop on top of a small rise and turned the engine off.
It was nearly midnight, but a full moon gave enough light to see the tall grass that waved in front of them as the ground stretched away toward more woods on the far side.
A single, massive oak tree stood sentry near the middle, its branches stretching toward the sky as if trying to touch the stars themselves.
Everything was quiet, save for the low drone of a local country station on the radio.
Savannah unbuckled her seat belt and sat up straighter, peering out through the windshield and the window to her right. Then she turned and looked questioningly at him.
Drew cleared his throat and gestured toward the land around them. “This is mine,” he said simply.
She looked around again. “You mean this field?”
“Yeah.”
“But isn’t the whole farm yours?”
“Well, the farm is my family’s, but this piece right here belongs to me.
My great-grandmother gave it to me last summer,” he explained.
Then he chuckled under his breath, remembering.
“Actually, she didn’t give it to me. She said a man can’t feel ownership of land he got for free, so she sold it to me for whatever I had in my wallet at the time—which happened to be about fifty bucks.
Then she told me to go do something new with it. ”
Savannah turned and tucked one leg underneath herself. “Something new? What does that mean?” she asked.
Drew shrugged. He’d been asking himself the same thing for a year.
“No idea,” he admitted. Then his mouth twisted into a frown; he hated that Grandma Ruby hadn’t lived to see whatever it was he was supposed to create here.
“I’m pretty sure she wanted to see what I’d come up with, but I never had any good ideas—and then she died. ”
“I’m sorry,” Savannah whispered. “She was a nice lady; I liked her.”
“Yeah,” he answered. “I did too.”
“So, what are you going to do with it?”
He sighed. “Well, I cut hay on it this past summer, but that’s not ‘something new.’ Neither are row crops or cows.” Then he paused, suddenly unsure, but this question was why he’d brought her there—he had to ask. He shifted to face her. “What would you do with it?”
Savannah’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “Me? Oh, I don’t know anything about farming.”
“That’s okay. Still. What would you do with it?” Drew asked again. For some reason, her answer felt very important to him, even though he didn’t have any idea what she might say.
Savannah was quiet for a long time, and at some point, she pulled her knees up to her chin and wrapped her arms around them.
Finally, she spoke. “I think I’d build something fun,” she said.
“Someplace people could bring their families every year—like a pumpkin patch or a corn maze. Something that would give back to this area.”
Drew stared through the windshield in silence, trying to picture the image she’d painted. Surprisingly, it wasn’t that hard.
“Listen to your heart,” Grandma Ruby had told him. At the time, it had seemed like a fanciful comment from an elderly lady, but now it was starting to make sense. Alaina had wanted him to sell the land and spend the money, but Savannah . . . Savannah wanted to make it last.
And that meant something.