by Lucy Score
“Very funny. Although how anyone can live without fresh bagel and coffee delivery is beyond me,” she said, crouching down to examine a weed. “Sorry for waking you. I just had a break and forgot what it’s like to be human and sleep past six.”
“No, it’s fine. I have an early shoot at the museum. Romero’s in town for his exhibit’s opening, and I have the pleasure of doing the meet and greet and a couple publicity shots. Where are you by the way?”
Summer stood up and looked around. Rolling hills, a hulking silhouette of the huge stone barn, and a tree line whispering with the warm breeze. “I’m in the middle of a soybean field.”
“Sounds horrible.”
“It’s really kind of beautiful. You’re going to love shooting out here.”
“Are you drunk on raw goat’s milk?”
“Very funny, smart ass.”
Nikolai yawned again in her ear. “How are you feeling otherwise? Are you taking it easy or being an idiot and pushing yourself too hard?”
“I feel… good.” She really did. She was exhausted every night, but it was a satisfying fatigue that came from using her body. “There might be something to be said about not sitting at a desk ten hours a day.”
“Just make sure you’re not overdoing it.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“I miss your face,” he told her. “Don’t fall for a farmer and forget to come home, okay?”
She thought of the other night. Of holding Carter’s hand in the moonlight. “I’ll do my best.”
Summer tucked her phone back into her jeans and finished her crop inspection before heading toward the little barn. Her job on this warm and bright Saturday—because apparently farmers didn’t take the weekend off—was to help Phoebe distribute the first shares of produce to their subscribers.
All 250 of them.
Phoebe had beaten her to the barn and was already double-checking the alphabetical list of subscribers against the contents of their crates.
“Good morning,” Summer called to her. “How’s Franklin?”
Phoebe pinked up and smiled. “Oh, he’s just wonderful. Thanks for asking. How are my boys doing with it all?”
“I think they’ll be okay,” Summer said evasively. They would be eventually. “Carter doesn’t seem to have any issues with him.”
“Carter doesn’t have any issues with anyone,” Phoebe said, checking off another box. “It’s the other two I’m worried about.”
“They’ll come around. They love you.”
“And I love them. Even when they act like fools. So I hear our Joey slapped the crap out of Jax.”
“She didn’t seem to appreciate his greeting,” Summer said, sliding the big barn door open to let in the sunshine.
“Those two are meant for each other,” Phoebe said, shaking her head. “They just don’t know it yet.”
“Maybe the Beautification Committee will work their magic,” Summer suggested.
“I hear they have someone else in their sights,” Phoebe winked.
“Can’t you set them straight? I mean, they have to understand that I’m only here for a few days. And in a professional capacity. I can’t just date the people I write about.” Summer crossed her arms in exasperation. “Why didn’t they pick someone from town?”
“Because my son doesn’t look at the girls in town like he looks at you,” Phoebe said, smiling at her clipboard. “If I were you, I wouldn’t fight the Beautification Committee. They usually know what they’re doing. Nice boots, by the way.”
Summer glanced down at her feet. She was happy to put them on every day, and when she looked at them, she thought of Carter. And her heart did a little flip flop every time those gray eyes met hers.
“Here comes our first customer,” Phoebe nodded toward the pickup that pulled up to the barn. “Let the games begin.”
It was exhausting work, but Summer enjoyed it. People filtered in and out all day. Some in beat-up pickups, others in leather-seated SUVs. All, however, knew the Pierce family.
Blue Moon was an extension of that family, Summer saw, as Phoebe and then Jax greeted friends and doled out boxes of leafy greens and fresh produce. The residents were abuzz with the return of Jackson Pierce. The welcome was much warmer than the one Joey had given him.
Summer caught more than a few “innocent” questions about where Joey was and if she was happy to have him back. With a lifetime of experience avoiding personal questions, Jax skillfully evaded even the most persistent visitors.
They were into their last hour of pick-up when a Mrs. Elvira Eustace popped by in her Prius.
“It’s a shame about Carson, isn’t it?” she whispered conspiratorially to Phoebe.
“What trouble has he gotten himself into now?” Phoebe asked, rearranging the last few crates.
“He broke his leg yesterday being a damn fool,” Elvira sighed, studying a radish. “He was trying to clean the gutter on his front porch, and off that ladder he fell. Right into the hydrangeas.”
“That stubborn-headed farmer. He’s what? Eighty years old?”
“Eighty-one last February,” Elvira corrected, smoothing down her salt and pepper curls. “Eighty-one and still climbing around on ladders. I guess that’s what happens when your kids grow up and move away.”
“Who’s going to help him out on the farm?” Phoebe frowned.
“He’s got a son and a nephew flying in next week. He was planning to harvest this weekend. I’m afraid he’s going to try to get it done himself with that big ol’ cast.”
Phoebe turned to Summer. “Summer, do me a favor and track down Carter, will you?”
Summer hurried off in search of the man who had been conspicuously absent from the day.
She found him taking soil samples of the cornfield.
“Are you hiding out here?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t see Willa or the Berkowiczes today.”
“There’s others,” he paused and took a swig from his water bottle. “So what’s up? Are you done already?”
“No, we still have half an hour for pick-ups. But your mom wants you. She’s talking to Elvira about someone named Carson.”
“I heard he broke his leg.”
“How did you hear out here in the middle of a field?”
“I joined that stupid fucking Facebook group.”
Summer snickered. “Come on. You can walk back with me.”
“And set off the town rumor mill? By the way, since I took you for ice cream the other night, they’re predicting a November wedding. You’d better walk ten paces in front of me and pretend you don’t know me.”
They returned to the barn, and it took Carter a good five minutes to work his way through the greetings before he made it to his mother. “This is why I don’t do pick-up day,” he muttered to Summer.
“There’s my favorite son,” Phoebe grinned, tucking her arm through Carter’s. “What are you doing tomorrow?”
13
Blue Moon residents mobilized as fast as, if not faster than, the National Guard. They converged on Carson’s property in droves Sunday morning.
Those with strong backs and a working knowledge of farming equipment broke off with the Pierce brothers to tackle the winter wheat harvest. The rest descended on the house. Carson, who was indeed 81 and adorable in a John Deere hat and suspenders, was put in a seat of honor under the great oak in his front yard and waited on hand and foot while his house was cleaned top to bottom.
Summer washed windows and weeded the flowerbeds. She even helped Joey finish cleaning the gutters that Carson had started.
A pack of teenagers mowed the vast expanse of lawn while broken fence posts and loose shingles were replaced. Freezer meals aplenty arrived and were safely tucked away in the kitchen and the basement chest freezer.
Elvira stopped by with eight gallons of lemonade and six pairs of sweatpants with one leg cut off at the knee to accommodate Carson’s cast.
Rainbow Berkowicz popped in to lend a han
d with his bill paying for the month while her husband Gordon cheerfully edged the flowerbeds and watered plants. Children chased the barn cats around the front yard and played on the tire swing that had seen more than one generation in its time.
By evening, everyone was tired, dirty, and happy. And Carson was speechless.
Franklin left his restaurant early and showed up on the farm with an SUV full of Italian catering, paper plates, and plastic utensils. A gentleman named Julius drove up in a ying-yang painted delivery van and dropped off a keg, several cases of soda, and even a few boxes of wine “for the ladies.”
A full-blown, town-wide picnic was being set up on the lawn when Carter and the rest of the harvesting crew ambled out of the barn to give Carson an update.
“You’re all set,” Carter said, clapping the farmer on the shoulder. “It’s all in the bins, and we’ll come out and check the moisture levels.”
Summer watched Carson’s throat work as he blinked back tears. “I thank ya. I just can’t thank everyone enough.”
He was immediately surrounded by women of all ages fussing over him. Someone brought out a guitar and someone else a harmonica, and in no time, there was music.
Summer found Beckett sitting on the tailgate of a truck eating a plate full of pasta.
“That’s Franklin’s baked ziti you’re inhaling there,” she warned him.
“Damn it.” Beckett paused. He frowned at his plate, shrugged, and went back to devouring it. “Maybe he’s not totally a horrible human being.”
Phoebe, having the hearing of a mother of three boys, snuck up next to him and kissed him on the cheek. “That’s my favorite son.”
Summer wandered further across the lawn to the edge of the shadows where grass met field. Here she could watch the happenings. Her throat was tight and her heart full.
Community.
That is what she had been missing. With the article and possibly even beyond the words she had been searching for.
There were no strangers here. Only neighbors helping neighbors and having a damn good time doing it.
On impulse, she pulled out her phone and dialed.
Her mother answered cheerfully. “Hello?”
“Hi, Mom.”
Annette Lentz’s voice brightened. “Summer! I didn’t have my reading glasses on. I couldn’t see who was calling.”
“How’s Alaska?”
“Breathtaking,” she sighed. “Your father had me up at six this morning to catch a sunrise flight with the bush pilot he’s interviewing.”
“How is Dad?” Summer asked, already feeling the slick mix of guilt and anger churn in her stomach.
“Oh, you know your father,” she said lamely.
Summer certainly did.
“Now, where are you? I see on your blog that you’re on a farm somewhere?”
At least one of her parents was interested enough to follow what she was doing. “I’m on an assignment for the magazine. It’s a piece on an organic family farm upstate.”
“That farmer doesn’t look like any of the ones I grew up around,” her mom teased. Annette had grown up in a small Pennsylvania farming community north of Philadelphia.
“He isn’t like anything I imagined,” Summer confessed.
Her mother must have detected something in her tone. “Are you seeing anyone?”
“I don’t really have time, Mom. Work has been so busy.”
“Work, work, work. You’re so much like your father.”
The words were both balm and burn.
“Well, you eventually wore him down and got him to take a good look at you,” Summer reminded her. “Maybe someday someone will wear me down, too.” Her parents, both career-oriented professionals, hadn’t met and married until their mid-thirties.
“Darling, as long as you’re happy. That’s all I want. I don’t care what it looks like. Just be happy.”
Summer smiled. “I will do my very best.”
“Good girl. Now, do you want to talk to your father?”
Summer’s stomach plunged. She wanted to say no. She wanted to end the call on a high note. She was tired of trying. Tired of disappointing.
“Oh, he must have just ducked out. Phil!” Annette yelled for her husband.
“Don’t bother him, Mom,” Summer insisted. She imagined her father had left the room the second he heard Annette offer him up for a conversation. Maybe he was tired of the disappointment, too.
“Well, I’d better go,” Summer said with forced brightness.
“Thanks for calling, sweetie. Talk soon.”
Summer hung up and stuffed the phone into her back pocket.
“Now you’re the one hiding.” The voice behind her, so familiar in such a short time, sent a warm tingle up her spine.
Summer turned to Carter, his face shadowed in the waning evening light.
“Hi,” she said quietly.
“Did you get anything to eat?” he asked.
“I’m not really hungry,” Summer admitted.
Carter nodded, studying her. “Your parents?”
“Eavesdrop much?”
“I live in Blue Moon. They teach a class on it in junior high.”
“It was my mom. I was just checking in with her.”
“And that made you sad?”
It was unsettling to have someone see her. Really see her. In the city, she could walk down the street sobbing and not be bothered by a soul. But here with Carter she wasn’t just another stranger.
“My relationship with them is… strained.” She chose her words carefully.
“Let’s take a walk.” Carter slung his arm over her shoulders and led her further away from the house.
She let him. For just a few minutes, she wanted to pretend to have someone to lean on. Someone she could trust. She wondered if Carter felt that way about all of Blue Moon.
“You’re all very lucky to have each other. I never knew it could be like this. Back home, we don’t trust anyone. Not our neighbors, not our co-workers, and certainly not strangers on the street. Sometimes not even family. We kind of operate like everyone else could be out to get us.”
“It’s not healthy, seeing everyone as a potential threat,” he ventured.
Summer nodded. “You know, I’ve never met my next door neighbor. And the only conversation I’ve had with the lady across the hall is when she accused me of stealing her cat.”
“Did you?”
Summer smiled. “No. Her ex-husband did. But look what you have. A whole town turned out today to help a man who didn’t even ask for it. And now it’s a party with music, and food, and a campfire.” She gestured toward a clump of Mooners who were dancing and swaying and giggling under a cloud of blue smoke.
Carter sniffed the air. “Honey, that’s not a campfire.”
“Oh.”
“What about your family? Do you have siblings?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Only child.”
“What are your parents like?”
“They’re RV-ing in Alaska right now.”
“That’s what they’re doing. That’s not what they’re like.”
Summer weighed her words. “They’re retired. My mom was a social worker, and my dad was a journalist turned journalism professor. We used to be really close, my dad and I. He’d read the Sunday paper to me like it was a bedtime story. He was old-school journalism, you know? Independent, unbiased, advertisers and politics be damned.”
“What happened?” Carter kept their pace slow and even as they followed the edge of the field.
“I was supposed to follow in his footsteps. Be the New York Times’ second-generation Lentz.”
“But you didn’t want that?”
She shook her head. “So much had changed in journalism by then. It was one of the reasons my father left the paper and started teaching. Where he saw a decline in print, I saw an opportunity for growth on the digital side. Newspapers weren’t quick to change, so I set my sights on magazines. They were faster to adapt to th
e demand for digital resources.”
She closed her eyes, remembering the conversation. The argument. The hurt.
“I expected some resistance from him. You can’t expect a newsman to just forget about the newsprint that’s been in his blood for twenty-five years. But he dug in so deep, and I didn’t expect it. He was very disappointed when I shifted my focus in college and even more so when I took the job at Indulgence.”
Disappointed was a kind word.
When she changed her major her junior year, he cut off her college funding after a spectacular Thanksgiving dinner argument. Phil Lentz was used to getting his way. Used to having his little girl agree with his well-formed and well-communicated opinions.
But didn’t she deserve to stand on her own two feet?
“How are things now?” Carter skimmed his hand down her arm.
“Chilly,” she said, with a grim smile. “A little better now that we don’t see each other twice a month for Sunday dinner anymore. Less disappointment to be felt by all.”
“He’s disappointed in you and your choices, but does your father know that he disappointed you?”
Leave it to Carter to get to the heart of the matter.
She shook her head. “No. When he refused to listen to my reasons for going into magazine work, I refused to keep defending my decision. We don’t talk much now.” She looked up and out over the gentle shadows of hills and fields.
She leaned into Carter, wanting to feel that solid presence.
Summer smiled sadly. “I bet your mom wouldn’t let something like that happen.”
Carter’s laugh was soft. “No, Phoebe Pierce would not stand for estrangement. She’d show up at your door every day for as long as it would take for you to let her in again.”
“She’s a wonderful person.”
“We are very lucky to have her. Lucky to have had our dad, too. Together, they were something. I think that’s why none of us have gotten close to marriage yet. They set the bar pretty damn high, and none of us want to settle for anything less.”
“I love how close you all are,” Summer said, envy in her tone. “Sometimes in a city of millions I feel like I’m all alone. Maybe more often than not.” She looked down at her feet.