three
Darren escapedfrom the lovey-dovey Sam and Bonnie, a crushing load of guilt in his chest. He should be happy for his brother, and he was. Honest, he was. He just couldn’t breathe when he was with them for want of what they had.
Or maybe it was the suffocating feelings of abandonment that kept him from taking a true lungful of air.
He’d tried telling himself over the past several months that he was being unreasonable. Intellectually, he knew his brothers hadn’t abandoned him. But emotionally and mentally, he hadn’t quite arrived at the same conclusion yet.
So he drove north and west from Steeple Ridge, from Island Park, until he found the single-lane road out to the farm where he’d been spending more and more time since Logan had left. He’d come before Logan had left too, but not nearly as often as he did now. The owners let him come in the evenings and check on the plants. Sometimes he helped them harvest firewood they’d use to keep their fish tanks toasty during the long, cold Vermont winters. He always took home something they’d grown, along with their love and acceptance, and a lighter heart.
He didn’t dare tell any of his brothers that Jim and Corey Bybee had almost become surrogate parents for him. Thebrothers had been so united in their grief after their parents had died that Darren felt disloyal needing someone else. But he absolutely neededsomeone. And if that meant he spent his evenings on an organic farm with two people old enough to be his parents, he’d take them.
And they had taken him, too. Just the way he was. Surly sometimes. Quiet always. Sure, Corey asked him questions until he thought he’d explode, but she seemed just as satisfied with one-word answers as she did when he gave her a whole sentence.
Jim sat on the porch most evenings, whittling, something Darren had always wanted to learn to do. He parked in front of the giant farmhouse and grabbed his knife—a birthday gift from Jim last January—from the middle console. If he could just find the right piece of wood, take his chair on the porch, and get his fingers working, maybe he could forget about the encounter with Farrah at the cemetery. Maybe he wouldn’t feel so flattened by Sam and Bonnie’s wedded and pregnant bliss.
Jim wasn’t on the porch, but Darren didn’t care. He didn’t need an invitation anymore. He could enter their house if he wanted to, open the fridge and find something to eat. Heck, Corey would chastise him if he didn’t do that.
He went around to the backyard instead, scanning the ground for a good piece of basswood. Jim grew the trees in clumps, and made marvelous things from them. Dressers, tables, chairs, the mailbox at the end of the lane. Anything he could envision, he could mold out of wood. Today, Darren just wanted something small, and he spotted a long switch of wood that would make a perfect spoon for Bonnie.
Just touching it soothed him, and he settled on the front porch to strip away the bark and start carving the form he wanted. The handle emerged, and he added flowers to it, his fingers working without direction from his mind. He thought ofBonnie, and what she’d like, and the spoon simply presented itself.
He’d just started the bowl when the front door opened and Jim stepped out. Darren had never seen the man wearing anything but a pair of jean overalls and a gray T-shirt, at least when out on the farm. Today was no different.
“Hey, bud.” He grinned down at Darren as if he was truly happy to see him. “Didn’t think I’d see you for a few days. Aren’t your brother and his wife in town?”
“Yep.” Darren kept the knife going, the shavings gathering against his cowboy boots. He angled his head down a bit to ensure the brim of his hat hid his face.
“Corey put together a basket for them.” Jim sighed as he settled into his chair, but he didn’t have a knife this evening.
“Great.” Darren didn’t want to talk about Sam and Bonnie. Didn’t want to talk at all.
“Staying for dinner?”
“If I can.”
“Of course you can.” Jim got the hint after that, because he didn’t say anything else. Soon enough, soft snores came from the chair on the other side of the small table that Corey kept decorated with flowers from the farm. During the winter, one of Jim’s ice sculptures became the centerpiece.
Darren slowed his knife and looked up. Across the road stretched fields and trees, all part of the Bybee’s land. He’d never felt such peace in all his life. He loved Vermont, especially this little corner of it, and he closed his eyes and offered a prayer of gratitude that God had brought him here.
Even if it had taken a plane crash to kill his parents. Even if it had taken his three brothers leaving him behind. Even if.
He opened his eyes as the sound of a vehicle approached. A few minutes passed before the ritzy, black sedan rounded the bend in the road and kept on coming.
Darren dropped his knife, glad it didn’t impale his foot when it hit the porch with athud. He knew that car. Knew the woman wearing the oversized shades behind the wheel.
Couldn’t believe Farrah had come out to this farm when she wouldn’t come to his.
But sure enough, tall and blonde, so-beautiful-it-hurt, Farrah Irvine unfolded herself from the car and scanned the fields opposite the house before turning and settling her gaze on him.
She gasped when she recognized him sitting there, but Darren couldn’t even move. Fury flooded him. What was she doing here? Was she determined to ruin every ounce of solitude and peace he had?
He rose, a roar starting in his mind, but Meagan, the Bybee’s daughter, squealed as she came around from the back of the house. “You made it!” The two women hugged, though Farrah didn’t exactly look like that was normal for them. “So Audra’s got the specs to show you. And you’re going to die when you taste dinner.”
The worddinnerhaunted him as Meagan led Farrah right past him and into the backyard. She threw him a helpless look over her shoulder, but what was he supposed to do? She’d come out here of her own free will.
And now she was going to stay for dinner?
Darren collapsed back into his chair, dislodging it so it made a loud screech against the porch. Jim startled and yelped as he woke, jumping to his feet and scanning the countryside.
