Tears burn behind my eyes. It’s that torturous feeling you get when you’re little and you lose your parent, your hand slipping from theirs in a crowd of bodies, followed by your stomach sinking, your panic rising to fill the void it left.
But this time, the panic is laced with guilt.
Trees fly past as I hurry through each row, one after the other, calling for my father like a little girl. The strangled sound of his name feels too raw. And I know I’m freaking out, but despite every person I pass and every section of the farm I cover, the overwhelming feeling only grows. I have no way to rein it in.
Passing the last row, I slide to a halt when I reach the white wooden railing. The end of the tree field.
“Shit! God, how could I be so selfish?” I spin on the spot.
“Well, it is the time of the year to think of others. Maybe you temporarily forgot? Easy enough to do.” The low voice startles me, and I turn toward it.
I find a bundled-up man, beanie over his dark hair, blue eyes lit up. Is that an axe in his hand?
It’s now I read the name stitched over the Maple Acres logo on his vest.
Caleb. I almost didn’t recognize him.
“You looking for something in particular?” He tilts his head, studying my face.
I huff out a sigh, but it wobbles. “My father.”
His brows drop. “Did you try the barn?”
“Oh, no. I just kind of freaked out and started running around like an idiot.” I slide the beanie from my head and wring it through my hands.
“You were worried about him?”
“You could say that,” I utter, an icy cloud puffing from my lips.
“We talking about Hank Black?”
“Ah, yeah.”
“Celeste?”
He steps forward.
“Yes?”
“Huh. You probably don’t remember me, I was a few grades above you in high school.”
“Oh, yeah, sure.”
It all floods back. The face, the name. The fact that he’s taken over his family farm. Makes sense. Not all of us were as self-absorbed as I was to run off to the city and never look back.
“Let me just grab this tree out and I’ll give you a hand to look.”
“Oh, you don’t have to.”
“Nah, it’s no trouble. Besides, he’s always done a lot for our family. And this town.”
And the guilt is back as I realize my father spent his life helping others and being a great friend. And I missed it.
But the sentiment sounds about right. He’s always been a kind and generous man.
I swallow past the emotion that Caleb’s words evoked. Once he’s shouldered the medium-sized tree trunk, we walk back through the rows until the barn is in sight.
“How is it being back?” Caleb asks when we get closer to the barn. He glances at me, but his gaze swings to where my father sits on a hay bale, a small bundled-up child next to him as they both sip the mugs in their hands.
