by Lucy Score
Beckett whooped. “This is seriously like the best day of my life. Wanna come, guys?”
Carter grinned. “Wouldn’t miss it. Ernest Washington’s got some pretty nice rides on his lot.”
“Think he’d open up early for us?” Beckett asked John.
“He’s probably already heard your news and is picking out all the cars with big backseats,” John teased.
“You coming with us, Jax?” Beckett asked.
Jax was already nodding when five-and-a-half feet of leggy teenage brunette strolled up the drive wheeling her bike. “Morning,” she said, tossing her hair over her shoulder. “Thought I’d come out and visit the horses if you don’t mind.”
Phoebe smiled. Joey Greer was the closest thing she had to a daughter. She was in Jackson’s grade, and the two had been thick as thieves since kindergarten. She wouldn’t be surprised if someday Joey became her daughter-in-law.
John waved the girl up on the porch. “You’re always welcome here, Joey. And there’s ten bucks in it for you if you take Rusty out for a ride. He didn’t get out yesterday.”
“You don’t need to pay me,” she said dreamily. “I should be paying you.”
“Don’t be silly. We’ve got horses. You love horses. It’s the perfect arrangement.”
“Still, I’d feel better if you didn’t try to pay me all the time,” Joey said, all serious brown eyes.
“I’ll do my best not to pay you if you promise to be careful.”
“Ride with a helmet and always in view of the barn or house,” she recited.
“Good girl.”
“We’re going car shopping, Joey,” Beckett announced. “You want to come along?” She was as much a sister to Beckett as daughter to Phoebe and John.
Phoebe watched as Joey blushed, shaking her head. “Nah. Thanks though. I think I’ll take the horses out.”
“I think I’ll stay, too,” Jax said. “Maybe I’ll ride with you.”
Joey looked up at him like he’d just told her he was an astronaut who cured cancer. Grinning, Phoebe slid off the couch and snuck back into the kitchen.
When she pushed through the screen door, steaming cup of coffee in hand, John’s eyes lit up. The boys were busy trying to decide what kind of car Beckett should get. Joey was staring longingly at the barn. Sadie chased Tripod the three-legged cat under the fence into Leopold the donkey’s pasture.
“Thank you,” John whispered, accepting the mug.
She shook her head. “Uh-uh. Thank you.”
There just weren’t enough thank yous in this world. She had everything her heart ever could have wanted right here on this land.
She leaned in and kissed John long and hard until the boys all made vomiting noises.
Harvest
Chapter Twenty-Eight
2011
Phoebe rested her forehead against the glass of the car window and hoped that the coolness would quell the throbbing in her head. Carter, her quiet, steadfast rock, was behind the wheel. Beckett, the perpetual leader, and Jax, the creative troublemaker, rode silently in the backseat as they drove away from the hospital, away from John.
His death had been peaceful, beautiful almost. He’d passed with his sons surrounding his bed, his hand clasped in hers, and the faintest hint of a smile on his lips. With a quiet whisper of “thank you,” John Pierce was gone from her life forever.
From diagnosis to death, it had been a handful of months. Not nearly enough time to prepare.
She felt… Phoebe wasn’t sure how she felt. His suffering was over. Never again would he face another treatment more painful and withering than the disease it fought. Never again would he try to hide the bone-deep pain from those who hurt for him. He was finally free, and she was going home.
Home. The word rang flat in her head. Home was where John was. In the fields, on the tractor, in the bed they’d shared for twenty-six years. Where was home now? Where was her heart now?
Jax, eyes red-rimmed, leaned forward between the seats. “Maybe we should stop and get ice cream?”
The corner of her mouth tugged up. Jax took after her in the emotional eating department, and it looked as though three years in L.A. hadn’t changed that about him.
“Ice cream?” Beckett rumbled from the back, his voice raw. “You think ice cream is going to make you feel better right now?”
“It’s worth a shot,” Jax argued.
Beckett punched Jax in the shoulder. Jax retaliated with a blow to his brother’s thigh.
“Ouch!”
“If you two assholes don’t knock it off right now, I’m going to dump you on the side of the road, and then Mom and I are going for ice cream,” Carter said calmly. He held his hurt further under the surface, Phoebe had noted. Even with everything else happening around them, she’d seen the shadows in her son’s eyes. His hurried arrival at the hospital yesterday came on the tail end of twenty-three hours of frantic travel from his assignment in Afghanistan.
Sorries were grumbled from the backseat.
Well, at least that part of her life was intact, familiar. Her sons loved and fought with the same ferociousness. Arguments and tussles should have been left behind them, each one an adult now. But old habits—or family traditions—died hard. And Phoebe tried to take temporary comfort in the familiarity of it.
The bickering picked back up five miles from home. Law student Beckett was trying to discuss the next steps: funeral home, estate lawyer, obituary. Jax weighed in with his opinion that now wasn’t the time to start berating their mother with details. Carter mentioned that maybe they both should get their heads out of their asses.
It’s important to know what you want. She heard John’s voice, clear as day in her head. She let out the breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. He was with her. She could feel his calming presence and wished their boys would shut the hell up and feel it to.
It’s important to know what you want. He’d told her that their first summer together when she’d been convinced that she had life all figured out. What she would have missed out on had she stayed the course.
If John wanted her to do what she wanted then she’d… well, right this second she wanted some quiet time. Silence. She wanted to lay down on that big bed, on the sheets that still smelled like her husband, her best friend, her partner in life. And she wanted to weep until she had nothing left inside her. And then she wanted to sleep until she could stand the thought of waking up to a world without John.
By the time they pulled into the farm’s drive, Phoebe’s headache had dug in like a pickaxe behind her eye, and everyone else was yelling. She just needed to get inside, lock the boys out, and let them fight it out in the yard like the old days.
She wanted peace.
But there was a car in the driveway. And her dearest friend Elvira Eustace was sitting on the porch swing holding a casserole dish in her lap. A bottle of wine sat on the cushion next to her.
Phoebe slipped out of the car, leaving her bickering boys behind, and trudged toward the house. Elvira met her at the foot of the porch steps. With the knowing that came from a long friendship, Elvira simply wrapped her arms around Phoebe’s shoulders and held her tight.
“He’s gone,” Phoebe said the words out loud and felt her world crumble just a little more.
“Beckett called,” Elvira said.
“It was beautiful and peaceful, and now he’s gone, and I don’t have an anchor.”
“Yes, you do.” Elvira’s arms tightened around her. “Yes, you do.”
Phoebe clung to her friend like a rock in the storm and let loose the tears she’d tamped down. “What am I going to do, El?”
“Whatever the fuck you want, honey.”
Phoebe hiccupped out a laugh. “You sound just like him.”
“Honey, John Pierce has been spreading his wisdom for years. We all sound like him.”
Phoebe heard what Elvira wasn’t saying. She wasn’t the only one who’d lost something wonder
ful today. They’d all lost him. A father, a friend, a mentor, a neighbor.
“What’s in the casserole dish?” Phoebe sniffled.
“Chicken and dumplings.”
Phoebe pulled back, swiping her sleeve over her eyes. “John’s favorite.”
“I figured we could either eat it or dump it on the ground in homage to him.”
Laughter through tears was good medicine, Phoebe decided.
“Mom?”
Phoebe turned to face Carter. Her sons stood behind her, broken in their own grief yet ready to hold her together.
“We’ve got more company,” Beckett said, tilting his head toward the parade of cars and trucks turning into their lane.
“Holy shit,” Jax muttered.
Elvira’s eyes widened. “I swear I didn’t tell anyone.”
Carter looked guilty. “I may have texted Cardona.”
Leading the pack was Michael and Hazel Cardona in Michael’s pride and joy, a shiny new red pick-up. Their son, Donovan, followed in his ancient Tahoe. Behind him was another dozen cars.
“Oh, my,” Phoebe whispered.
“This isn’t a damn party,” Carter muttered, and Phoebe heard the hurt behind his words. She laid a hand on his arm.
“Carter, they all lost him, too.”
He clenched his jaw and nodded, but she saw the tears glassy in his eyes. His father’s eyes, she thought.
“Let them do this. They need it as much as we do,” she whispered.
He swiped an arm over his eyes, the exact way she had. He’d gotten pieces of them both, she supposed.
“Okay. I’ll go dig out the tables.”
“Take Jax with you so he doesn’t start stress eating everything.”
Carter pressed a gentle kiss to her temple. “Love you, Mom.”
She couldn’t say anything for a moment. Her throat was too tight. So, she just hung on. She released him and patted him on the chest. “I love you, Carter. Now, go on. Might as well get the canopies out, too.”
She watched as Carter caught Jax in a friendly headlock and dragged his brother in the direction of the barn. Beckett stepped up and put his hands on her shoulders. “Whenever you want them gone, just say the word,” he told her.
“I think this is exactly what we need,” she promised him.
“I do, too,” he agreed. “Thanks for raising us here, Mom. I can’t imagine a better home.”
Her eyes clouded for the umpteenth time today. “You better start complaining about your brothers before I start crying again.”
Hazel climbed out of the truck. She held a shopping bag of hot dog and hamburger buns. Michael slid a case of beer out of the backseat and looped another bag over his fingers. His eyes were red, his jaw set.
Best friends from birth. That’s what John and Michael had been. Everyone here had a history that was rooted around everyone else. It was the beauty and the pain of Blue Moon.
Beckett dropped a kiss on the top of her head. “Love you, Mom. I’m gonna help here, and then I’m going to go fix the canopies. Those two idiots are setting them up all wrong.” He winked at her and took the load from Michael. Phoebe pulled the man in for a long, hard hug. She felt his shoulders shake once in a shared grief so sharp it cut the air, making it hurt to breathe.
Michael pulled back half a step. His mouth worked open and closed a few times, but nothing came out. Phoebe patted his cheek. “I feel exactly the same way,” she promised him. “Now, go get the grill off the porch and fire it up.”
Grief called for movement. Anything to keep you going forward one step and a time.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
There were tears and watery smiles as an entire town gathered to grieve one of their beloved on the land he’d tended.
For Phoebe, the pain and love curled together into something bright and hot that was fighting to escape her chest. She took a minute to herself, walking back down the drive that John had once wondered if they should pave. But she had loved the cheerful clouds of dust that followed them as they came and went.
Every inch of this farm was home to her. And yet it would never be the same. Not without John Pierce striding through the fields with two dogs and at least one kid on his heels. Not without him taking a moment in the middle of a corn field to just stop, breathe, to honor the pulse of nature. Not without him in their bed or in the kitchen peeking at whatever recipe she’d cooked up for dinner that night.
There wasn’t one hole where the man had been. There were a thousand.
She stopped and turned, facing the farm. The pretty little farm house had truly become a home, full to bursting at the seams with love and boys’ sports equipment. The red barn had been added on to as their menagerie of pets grew. Melanie II had finally gotten a friend. And then another and another. They had four retired dairy cows that enjoyed sunning themselves in grassy pastures. Leopold the donkey occupied the front pasture and tolerated the dogs and cats that snuck beneath his fence.
She’d wanted chickens but now? Now she wasn’t sure. Could she stay here? Could she run Pierce Acres herself? Would she even want to? The appeal of this life had been John. Now what was the appeal?
She heard the engine of a station wagon easing off the shoulder of the road behind Bill Fitzsimmons’ Gremlin. The driver was a stranger with fear in his eyes.
“Excuse me, I don’t mean to interrupt your party.” He was a good-looking man, broad of shoulder and clean-shaven. His hair was graying around the temples, and his eyes crinkled when he smiled up at her. “I was hoping you could tell me how to get to Cleary before my three daughters murder me for insisting that a day trip would be more fun without any technology.”
Phoebe found a genuine smile for the man trapped with three annoyed redheads.
One of the girls gave an exasperated sigh. “Dad, I told you we need our phones. They have GPS!”
“He’s doing the best he can, Em. Your bad vibes aren’t helping,” the girl in the front seat said, fiddling with the fringes on her halter top. She looked like she belonged in Blue Moon.
“People have been crossing continents for centuries without that beeping, obnoxious ‘Make a U-turn’ technology,” the man argued, mimicking a snooty techno tone.
Phoebe laughed, and it felt like a few knots inside her loosened up enough that she could breathe.
“Serves me right for wanting some uninterrupted quality family time,” he sighed out the window to Phoebe.
“They grow up fast,” Phoebe said, thinking of her own sons. “Force them into these things as long as it’s legal,” she advised.
His smile was warm, almost familiar.
The youngest daughter crawled over her sister and stuck her head out the rear window. “Maybe we should stick around here for the day?”
Phoebe followed the girl’s gaze to where all six-feet-four-inches of handsome Donovan Cardona wandered past with a deli platter balanced on top of a case of beer. Donovan was as much one of her sons as the three bickering men she’d been tempted to lock out of the house today. However, he generally had more sense.
“Do you have a piece of paper?” Phoebe interrupted the brewing argument in the car. “I can write down the directions for you.”
The man pawed through the glove box of his ancient station wagon with desperate hope and triumphantly produced a tablet and a stubby golf pencil.
“I can’t thank you enough,” he whispered fervently. “You’re saving my life right now. They were minutes away from tying me to the roof rack and giving up on the whole adventure.”
Phoebe smiled as she scrawled the directions and prominent milestones on the paper. “I’m happy to save a life today.”
“If you’re ever in Hastings, Connecticut, looking for Italian food, I have a restaurant, and you’ll eat for free,” he promised. “Amore Italian.”
Phoebe handed the paper and pencil over. “I’ll keep that in mind,” she promised.
“It’s amazing food,” t
he girl in the front seat announced.
“You won’t regret it.”
“He’s crap with directions but magic in the kitchen.” The girls poured the praise on, love over a glossy coat of annoyance, and Phoebe smiled. At least for some, life was beautifully, blessedly normal right now.
The man grinned up at her. “Disaster averted. You have my eternal gratitude, my directional angel of rural upstate New York.”
She laughed again, surprised that she was still capable. “It was my pleasure, lost stranger. Good luck on your travels.”
A van bumped past them down the lane, and Phoebe spotted three of the kids that made up the Wild Nigels, Blue Moon’s best—and only—garage band.
“We’ll let you get back to your celebration,” he said.
It wasn’t a celebration. It was how Blue Moon mourned. She wanted to tell him that but wanted more for the man to have his peace with his daughters. Phoebe waved as they eased down the lane toward the road. She watched them pull out of the drive before starting back the lane to survey the chaos that was her yard and house.
People poured out onto the porch into the front yard. Tables had magically appeared under the ancient oak and were laden with miles of food and gallons of alcohol. There was one measly case of water in a sea of beer and wine.
Phoebe pressed her fingers to her lips, swamped with feeling.
It really was a celebration. John Pierce, that beautiful man, had lived a beautiful life. And his friends and neighbors had turned out to mark the occasion and to show their support. She wasn’t alone. No one ever really was in Blue Moon.
She was surrounded, smothered in love freely given. She was woven into the fabric of this town as tightly as if she’d been born here. The town that had saved her family and given her the option to stay.
She’d given back in every way she could think of. She’d been a founding member of the Beautification Committee, finding creative ways to improve the quality of life for townspeople, including a little matchmaking here and there. Seven years ago, she and John had started up Blue Moon’s farmer’s market on a trial run, and it had been going strong ever since, occupying every square inch of One Love Park Sundays from spring to fall. And, as Mrs. Nordemann and Elvira had once done for her, she’d spent countless nights stepping in for other exhausted couples with small children.