Maybe it was weird that I still lived at home, but my brother was a damn good roommate. He didn’t charge me rent, which meant I had healthy savings and had set up a good retirement plan by thirty, and the fridge was always stocked.
It was convenient too. I spent as many hours working on the farm as I did on shift most weeks. The trees, the animals, and the limited crops we grew kept us busy. We were working off an endless to-do list. I’d known at an early age that I had no interest in being a full-time farmer, but I’d been tapping trees and feeding chickens since I was three years old.
Josh was the smart one. He’d headed straight to the Ivy League after high school and then to Wall Street. He made a bunch of money, but then something happened—what, he won’t say—and he moved back here and took over the farm.
My sister Jess was in the process of converting one of the small barns into a summer home for her family. The designs were nice. I figured I’d so something similar someday.
But now I had Vincent. I gave myself a moment to remember the warmth and weight of him in my arms. I guess someday was now. I had a lot to sort out.
From the sound of things, my siblings were in the kitchen. Again, I considered avoiding them. But when the smell of coffee hit me, I decided to take my chances.
“Finally,” Jenn said when I walked in. Her arms were crossed, her expression stern. “Did your phone die? I’ve texted you about five hundred times.”
Josh dipped his chin and reached for a mug. Silently, he got to work in front of his fancy espresso machine. I had a couple of heavy machinery licenses, and even I couldn’t operate that thing, so I left him to it. Josh wasn’t a big talker, but I did enough for the both of us, and we’d figured out our flow long ago.
Jenn had three legal pads fanned out like playing cards on the butcher block island, each with scribbles and highlightsbleeding through the pages. She hovered over them and pressed a button.
A second later, Jess’s voice filled the kitchen. “What is going on?” she chided. “I’ve got my candles lit. Josh, have you saged the sap barn yet?”
I smiled. Jess was the best. She was a social worker slash yoga instructor who lived in New York and was, blessedly, a fellow glass-half-full person. Together we balanced out Jenn and Josh.
“It’s gonna require a hell of a lot more than sage,” Jenn quipped as Josh slid a mug toward me.
I picked it up right away, scorching my tongue, desperate to get caffeine into my blood stream.
“Gabe is on his way.” Jenn turned toward me, a hand on her hip. “Now start talking, because the rumors are flying and your cryptic texts have taken years off my life.”
Josh propped his elbows on the table and gave me “the look.” It was the one my father had invented and perfected, and by some genetic lottery, Josh had inherited it.
“I have a son.”
Silence. Even the espresso machine seemed to stop its strangled hissing.
Josh’s eyes widened and Jenn gasped. I swore a gray hair even sprouted from her head.
“Oh myGod,” Jess squealed, the sound ear-piercing. “What’s his name? Tell me everything.”
Jenn clicked her pen twice. “So the rumors are true.” Her tone was one of pure disappointment. “Why didn’t you tell us you were having a baby?”
My stomach lurched. “He’s not a package I ordered from Amazon,” I snapped.
Jess giggled, her voice tinny through the phone.
“I mean—” Blowing out a breath, I roughed a hand down my face. “It was a surprise. For everyone. Me. Her. It’s messy.”
With every word, I deflated, running out of steam, but I didn’t stop, afraid that if I did, I wouldn’t find the words again.
“His name is Vincent,” I said, taking in the shocked expressions on my siblings’ faces. “And he’s perfect.”
“Of course he is,” Jess said. “I’m going shopping today. This is so exciting. Is he wearing newborn sizes? Or should I size up?”
Josh leaned on the table, his knuckles braced. “The mother?”
“Evie Marino,” I said, as if two words could convey the entire messy story. One night and too much heat followed by nine months of silence and avoidance and an emergency call to the pizzeria where her water had broken.
While a corpse in a vat of sap had upended the town, Vincent had arrived.
“I didn’t know you had a girlfriend,” Jess said.
