7. Vaughn
SEVEN
VAUGHN
The coffee is the only thing keeping me upright. Damn jet lag.
I take a sip from my travel cup and walk from the back door of the house to the truck, breathing in the cool morning air and trying to convince my body that it is, in fact, morning.
My body disagrees. My body is fairly certain it’s the middle of the night in a time zone eight hours ahead of this one, and it would like to register its objection formally and at length.
From the house I can’t exactly hear all the noises of the farm, but I can see the activity.
The main house sits at the top of the property, its back porch looking out over the Pine Ridge valley, and from here I can see most of what I own.
The guest house to the left is partially hidden by the trees, which I’m leaving there once I’m finished renovating the smaller structure for Rowan.
I love having him in the house with me when he visits, but one day he’ll meet someone and might want some privacy.
The orchard runs alongside the property edge, the apple and pear trees already heavy with the last of the season’s fruit.
The vegetable patch is the place where I spend most of my time apart from the lab, and beyond all of it, the land stretches out to the east, where Clayton’s crops grow in long, orderly rows that tell me, even from this distance, it’s been a good season.
The lab is on the other side of the property, and it’s where I’m headed despite my body demanding I go back to bed.
I built the lab far away from the house deliberately. It has its own entrance off the back road so the team can come and go as they need while I get to keep my privacy. It also stops me from spending every waking hour of the day there.
I get in the truck and drive the long way around, following the track along the edge of the orchard. The apple trees are doing well this year. Everything that grows on the home side of the land is for personal use, so I make a mental note to pick apples later and take some to Tess, Clayton’s wife.
The lights are shining when I arrive at the lab, which means at least two of the team got here before me, which is not unusual.
My team has a collective tendency toward early mornings that I find both admirable and slightly exhausting.
Mostly because I tend to be in the lab until late and have a later start to the day.
I push open the door.
“He’s alive,” Priya says, without raising her eyes from her work.
“Barely,” I toss back.
“How was the conference?” Dom asks.
“Good. Productive.” I set my travel coffee cup on the nearest clear surface and shrug off my jacket. “The feedback on the presentation was positive. More interest than I expected from the European contingent.”
“We told you they’d be interested,” Priya says, now looking up. “We’ve been telling you that for months.”
“You have, and yes, you were right.”
Her eyebrows rise to the ceiling. “Can you say that again? Dom, are you recording this?”
“I’m busy,” Dom says.
“How are the seedlings?” I move toward the trays Dom is working with.
He steps back to let me see.
The seedlings in the photographs Priya sent while I was away were already promising, but in real life and only forty-eight hours later, they’re exceeding my expectations.
The root systems are visible through the transparent walls of the tray, the seedlings are standing straight, and the leaves are a deeper green than the control batch on the adjacent bench.
“They’ve grown since the photos,” I say.
“Yes. They’ve put on another four millimeters of root length since Tuesday.”
“That’s ahead of projection.”
Priya joins us. “By about twelve percent. We’re cautiously excited. There’s only been three group hugs, and we haven’t jumped up and down.”
Dom snorts. “You did so jump up and down.”
“I did not. Okay, maybe a little. Less than a millimeter off the floor.”
I study the seedlings for another moment, feeling that deep, quiet satisfaction of doing something that matters.
This is more than professional recognition or academic awards.
This is about bringing food to people who live in war-torn countries or where natural disasters have devastated their ecosystems. And the best thing is that it’s happening right now, in real time.
All I need is to figure out how to take it out into the world while keeping the vultures away from it.
“Good,” I say. “This is very good.”
“Now, more importantly,” Priya says, crossing her arms. “What did you bring us from Europe?”
I cock my head, playing ignorant.
“You know, gift things? Touristy things? You were in one of the most beautiful cities in Europe for five days, Vaughn.”
“I was at a conference for three of those days.”
“Everyone always brings something back from conferences,” Dom says. “It’s a social contract.”
I laugh, giving up the ruse. “Fine, I picked up some things at the airport. I’ll bring them tomorrow.”
Priya stares at me. “Airport gifts?”
“They had a very good selection—”
“He bought us airport gifts,” she repeats to Dom.
“Chocolate, probably,” Dom says.
“Vaughn. You were in Poland. There is an entire world of pierogi and amber jewelry and hand-painted pottery, and you went to the airport shop.”
“I was busy,” I say, which is true, but I’m not going to tell them that in the only free time I had, I locked myself up in my hotel room gearing up for the first semi-date/probably hookup I’ve had in years only to have it turned upside down by the one man I want but can’t have.
I’m way too jet-lagged for this. “Let’s all get back to work, and tomorrow you’ll get to find out if I went to the cheap chocolate airport shop or the expensive chocolate airport shop. ”
They disperse, and for the next two hours I work through what accumulated while I was away.
The work is absorbing like always, pulling me into that deep focus mode I usually find hard to come out of.
Thankfully, the jet lag takes its toll, and instead of falling asleep at my desk, I decide to leave the lab and organize the other part of my life.
Mostly the fridge, because I have no food in the house.
Around noon I say goodbye to the team and get into the truck. I’m halfway back to the house when I see Clayton.
He’s at the edge of the field by the fence line with his hands in his pockets. When he sees the truck, he raises a hand, so I pull over and roll down the window.
“Welcome back, Vaughn,” he says, resting his forearms on the window frame. “How was the trip?”
“Good. Long. Wished I was here all that time.”
He laughs. “You won’t take me away from Pine Ridge for no money or glory.”
“Don’t blame you, my friend. These are beautiful crops. Who’d want to leave this behind?”
“Your advice paid off. Not a lot of pest pressure this year, and with the dry spell we had in August, I was worried, but”—he shakes his head—“everything held. We’re getting ready to harvest next week. Already have contracts with all the local grocers.”
“That’s excellent news.”
Clayton Briggs is about my age, broad-shouldered, with that kind of weathered look that comes from spending most of your life outdoors. He’s been renting the land from me for four years now, and in that time he’s become a great neighbor and friend.
Not only that, he’s been keen on working with me to improve the quality of the crops. He’s a sort of guinea pig to test if our methods work on large-scale farming.
“By the way, Tess has been baking up a storm all weekend. I’m just letting you know so you don’t go grocery shopping and come back with bread and cake when you’ll have enough arriving at your door to stock a bakery.”
“Tell her I appreciate it. No shop could hold a candle to her baked goods.”
“Oh, she knows.” He glances back at the field. “By the way, don’t forget about the pumpkin festival. It’s in three weeks. Last week of September.”
“I haven’t forgotten.” I usually make an excuse and try to miss it.
“Are you visiting your son this year?” he asks.
I laugh. “No.”
“Feeling healthy? No sniffles?”
I laugh harder; two years ago I came down with the flu and missed the festival again. Clayton won’t let me forget he thinks I did it on purpose.
I’m not a hermit, as my son likes to claim, but I’m also not the kind of person who gets involved in town business unless the situation calls for it.
After what went down months ago when a company tried to infiltrate Pine Ridge by seeking access to a data collecting project, I’ve become closer to some of the town residents.
It’s probably healthier to get out of the lab more.
“What have you got for the giant pumpkin competition?”
Clayton leans closer, like he’s about to tell a secret. “I have a good one. Brenda. She’s been growing since July, and if she keeps going the way she’s going, I think she’ll do good. You should come see her.”
“I’ll drop by this week. First I need to go into town and then catch up with my sleep before I turn into a zombie.”
He nods, satisfied, and steps back from the window. “Good to have you home, Vaughn.”
“Good to be home.”
Pine Ridge has that quality of small places where everyone knows you and stopping to say hello will take as long as it needs to take, whether you like it or not.
I run into David from the Bookshelf Café, who flags me down to say he’s just received a new shipment of the Ethiopian beans I like and he’s put a bag aside.
I spend longer than I want to in the grocery store because I stop to talk to Maria from Sunrise Bakery about the pumpkin festival, and she tells me her brother has opinions about the judging panel.
I may be a little bit of a hermit, but my home now isn’t just the farm. It extends to this welcoming small town I’ve lived in for the last five years. By the time I get home, despite the jet lag, I feel a little more like myself again.
I’m putting the groceries away when there’s a knock at the door. It must be Tess, which is perfect timing, because I would murder for a sandwich made with her bread, the ham I just bought, and the salad leaves from my patch.
When I open the door, however, it’s not Tess.
It’s Silas, standing on my porch with a bag at his feet and his hands in his jacket pockets, looking at me with those dark, unreadable eyes of his, and for a moment I genuinely cannot process what I’m seeing.
“This feels like déjà vu.”
“Hi,” he says.
I stare at him.
“You said the spare room would be ready,” he says, his voice confident as always. “I might have taken you literally.”