Chapter Thirty-One
Bright and early the next morning, David found himself crammed into a limo with Evelyn, Jared Sparks and six members of his entourage. While the rock star and his buddies were clearly having a grand ole time, he could tell that Evelyn was in a mood.
Sitting beside him, her arms were pinned in a defensive stance across her chest. She kept trying to angle her body away from him, prevent their thighs from accidentally touching. She had spent most of the ride either glaring at Jared or staring out the window.
“Would you like some?” Jared said, lifting a bottle of champagne in Evelyn’s direction.
Evelyn returned her attention to the rock star. “It’s barely ten.”
“Should we have started earlier?” Jared asked seriously.
“You know what,” David said, leaning over to take the bottle from Jared. “I’ll take some, if you don’t mind.”
He needed it. Evelyn was stressing him out. It was like something had shifted between them last night. One minute they were getting somewhere, talking about things, working together as friends—and this morning, she had returned to hating his guts.
He tried to remind himself of the obvious.
Evelyn was stressed. She had one gazillion things on her plate and on her mind.
The last thing she wanted to do was take a day off to play tour guide to a rock star.
Still, he couldn’t help but feel that the silent treatment she had been giving him that morning was personal.
Jared shrugged, unfazed, and began pouring glasses of champagne for everyone else.
“You were never a drinker,” Evelyn mumbled in the seat beside him.
He tried to break the tension with a smile. “I’m still not, but when in Rome, right?”
“Cooking, day drinking . . . next you’re going to tell me you’ve started antiquing on the weekends.”
He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. David had, in fact, started antiquing.
It was one of his new favorite hobbies since moving to Pennsylvania, up there with long hikes on Sundays with his rescue dogs.
All of which he would have loved to be talking about with his ex-wife, but she returned to staring out the window.
“David,” Jared said, “tell me about the rescue chickens again.”
David began telling him about the minyan of chickens he owned, all named after heroines of the Hebrew Bible. “Well, there’s Naomi, Ruth, Miriam, Sara, Dina, Rachel, Leah, Esther, Devorah and Delilah. Don’t go near Delilah though . . . She’s got a mean chicken temper.”
Jared laughed, amused. “What about the alpacas?”
“They eat a lot. Especially pregnant ones.”
“I think that after the grand tour,” Jared mused thoughtfully, “I’d like to spend some time meditating alongside Miracle.
Do you think that would be possible, David?
Before dinner.” Jared and his entourage were planning to stay for dinner before all of them would head back.
“I find that being so close to new life really refreshes the spirit.”
“I’m sure we could work something out,” David said.
Jared beamed. “I think this trip will be exactly what my soul needs to play the role of Ebenezer Scrooge. Yes, yes . . . I’m already feeling the energy, the intensity . . .” Jared’s eyes rolled into the back of his head. His neck hinged backward, before he went full-on catatonic in his seat.
The entire limo fell quiet.
“Is he dead?” Evelyn asked.
The entourage began shushing her.
“Don’t you see? Jared is communing.”
“It requires all his focus and energy.”
“Rino, get your nipple ready.”
“For crying out loud!” Evelyn suddenly shot up in her seat. “Can you shut up about the nipples already!”
All at once, the entire entourage snapped their heads and aimed their eyes toward Evelyn.
In the silence that followed, a woman with spiky black hair full-on hissed at his ex-wife.
Thankfully, they were only a few more miles from his home.
As they took the long and bumpy dirt road up to the main house, Jared returned to planet Earth just in time for their arrival.
Leila, his farm manager, was waiting for them outside.
“Everyone,” David said, trying to quickly go through the introductions, “this is Leila.”
The first time David met Leila, she had put him in his place about the difficulty of running a working farm, even one full of rescue animals. “It’s a terrible idea,” she had said with all the gentleness of an executioner. “Unless you enjoy aching arms and bankruptcy.”
From there, Leila quickly pointed out every farm disaster waiting to happen.
The broken fence by the main drive out of his property.
The tiny holes in the roof of the barn. The brown recluse spiders lingering around the entry of a storage shed.
But David was adamant. He had a dream, even if his practical experience was limited.
He hired Leila on the spot and, nearly two years later, David had grown from city slicker to some form of respectable farmer.
“Amazing,” Jared said, spinning to take in the full view of his home. “Look at this! This gorgeous little main farmhouse. The adorable little pile of split wood in the back. And that smell, so reminiscent of something earthy and familiar—”
“It’s crap,” Leila said abruptly.
Jared spun her way. “Excuse me?”
“Neighbor’s a dairy farmer,” she said. “On a cold day like this, the wind carries the smell over to our property. Cow crap, all day, every day. That’s what you’re smelling.”
David expected the rock star to be fully put off by farm life, but instead, he began shaking his head, exclaiming to the heavens that his trip to Pennsylvania was necessary for full and whole healing.
“Remarkable,” Jared said, shaking his head.
“Simply perfection! Yes, this is exactly what I wanted . . . real, and raw, and unfiltered farm life. And you,” he said, moving in the direction of Leila, “you are simply remarkable, too. What honest energy you have . . .” Jared fell to one knee, offering his hand.
“What the hell are you doing?” Leila asked.
“You,” Jared said. “You will be my muse. I want to see everything, Leila. I want to experience every detail of this raw and real life, the way you connect with animals, the plants, the land . . . the good and bad of it . . . the crap, too.”
Leila did not miss a beat. “Great,” she said, pulling her hand away from him, turning to trudge down a mud road. “Then let me show you where the rescue chickens live. They crap a lot, too. You’ll love it!” Jared and his entourage wasted no time following after her.
David was grateful for Leila’s help with the rock star and his crew. It gave him a few moments to talk to Evelyn, out of earshot of them.
“You okay?” David asked.
“I’m fine.”
“I just . . . I can’t help but feel like something’s shifted between us.”
A long silence settled between them, and he thought she was going to say something—communicate what had changed the friendly energy they had uncovered the previous evening at dinner into this morning’s cold shoulder.
But then, her lips closed. She backed off, shaking her head, returning the barricade between them.
“I’m fine, David,” she said. “Really. I just have a headache.”
Evelyn took off, charging down the dirt road after Jared, moving so quickly that David had to full-on sprint to catch up with her.
Evelyn was still thinking about the sixth heartbreak.
It had weighed on her all night and into the morning.
It had accompanied her while getting dressed and throughout the limo ride.
She kept trying to put the heartbreaks out of her mind.
Forget where they were leading her. But the reminder of what she had lost—the fact that she still had two more heartbreaks to go—was bearing down on her.
She didn’t want to relive her past.
Unfortunately, she couldn’t rely on her usual devices for dealing with her traumas.
Instead of disappearing into work, she was stuck on a farm in the middle of nowhere.
Instead of checking in with Demi on her phone, she had shoddy-ass cell reception.
Worst of all, everything was so quiet. There was nothing to do on his vast acreage except sit alone with her thoughts.
She was certain it would kill her. Everything about David’s farm full of rescue animals bothered her.
He had such a nice life. Everywhere she looked, she saw a mirror of the man she once loved.
The homely and quaint way the place was decorated, with wooden signs and an antique wheelbarrow at the front entrance.
His medical office was in the basement of the main house, but he was working on converting an old barn on the property into a place for seeing patients who needed physical therapy.
It was obvious he cared for and loved his rescue animals.
The livestock guardian dogs all raced to greet David upon seeing his return to the fields.
The alpacas looked up from their grass and stopped chewing.
Even the way he had decorated the chicken coop was so quintessentially David.
A sign above the entrance read, “You had me at first egg.”
Every building and animal—even the ones that were still a work in progress—were handled with the utmost love and care.
But he had done it. Moved on. Created a life on his own terms and without her.
For three hours, she got the grand tour, all while Jared Sparks oohed, aahed, and meditated over the evidence of their failed marriage.
All while David kept asking her how she was feeling.
She felt awful. Her head was hurting enough that she took a migraine med, leaving only one pill left in her bottle.
Jared Sparks was going to get her fired.
On top of all these things, she was expecting two more heartbreaks of Hanukkah.
She glanced up at the sky and found gray clouds.
Dusk would soon be approaching, and with it, the seventh night of Hanukkah.
When they approached the main house, Evelyn felt nauseous.