Durant:Mr. Baltimore, you’re in prison. You’re not currently in the business of anything.
Chapter 13
Jess
Adam Hawkins—huge, strapping, hard-working Adam Hawkins—grew up on a farm.
Afarm.
Since I’ve lived in Ohio my whole life, I amfamiliarwith farms; I have certainlydriven pastfarms. I’ve thought to myself, while looking out my car window on rare drives that took me outside of Columbus,Wow, that sure is a big farmorLook, that farm has cows.
But also, I have neverbeen toa farm. I have never known someonefroma farm.
“It’s under a hundred acres,” Adam is saying, as we bump down a long dirt drive. His tone is almost apologetic, and I don’t have the heart to tell him that neither Tegan nor I know the difference, in practical terms, between one hundred and one thousand acres. Both sound like a lot.
“It used to be bigger, but my mom and dad sold off a lot of acreage before I was born, and my oldest sister and her husband sold off some more when they took over five years ago. So now it’s just the vegetable crops, and the flower business my sister has started up. That does pretty well, actually, because she’s ended up supplying for a lot of florists. But mostly the—”
He breaks off, cuts his eyes over to me, and then, a second later, up to the rearview. I don’t have to look at Tegan to know she’s got the same look on her face as I do. I’ve been sneaking looks over my shoulder at her for at least the last twenty minutes, as Adam’s very determined farm chatter has picked up in speed and detail. We keep trading these little smiles, theseIsn’t this adorablesuppressed grins at each other as he talks, and every time it happens I imagine something healing between us.
I know it’s just a break; it’s just a detour.
But already, I’m so grateful for it.
“Are you laughing at me?” Adam says. “Is that what’s happening here?”
“Oh no,” says Tegan lightly. “We wouldnever.”
Adam looks at me again.
“Never,” I add solemnly.
He scoffs, but there’s a laugh behind it, because . . . because I guess it’s what the three of us do now.
One nice seaside dinner where Adam Hawkins bared a little bit of his soul for my sister’s benefit.
One loose end tied up—my mother’s old friend Julia had definitely not heard from her ten years ago, and never since—so that we could leave Florida like we planned.
One leisurely twelve-hour drive from Pensacola to a little place outside Springfield, Missouri, a couple of stops along the way.
And now, we actually laugh together.
It might be more accurate to say that Tegan and Adam laugh together, and I occasionally don’t succeed at hiding my smile, but still.
“A farm is serious business,” Adam adds. “This farm has been in my family for four generations!”
“Oh my God,” laughs Tegan, and once again I don’t succeed. It’s partly because I love the sound of her laugh, and partly because I know Adam is hamming it up for her.
Helping her.
At least I tell myself that this is what he’s been doing since we left Florida before dawn this morning, when I saw him pack the small bag of recording equipment in the trunk, rather than keeping it where Salem did, between her and Tegan’s seats. When he asked Tegan if she wanted to plug her phone in and pick the music. When he listened to her earnestly talk about K-pop—including the concert I took her to two years ago, which she said was the best birthday of her life—until she fell asleep (again). When I pulled into a rest stop at the halfway point and he rhapsodized about the “disgusting” candy he was going to buy, and then encouraged both of us to do the same.
I tell myself he’s working so hard to give her a real break. I have to believe he’s not doing it for me, because whenever I suspect that he is—when I catch him watching me with that same tentative softness I saw in his eyes at the restaurant, telling me he knew I was justletting off steam, telling me we could goaway from all this—I feel warm and wonderful all over, an unfamiliar flutter in my belly.
“There’s the house up ahead,” he says, interrupting my thoughts, and I squint out the now-dusty windshield, Tegan leaning forward from behind me. “My dad and my sisters and I built the screened porch on the side ourselves.”
Neither Tegan nor I tease about that, and I think that’s because both of us are more than a little stunned as the house comes into view: two-story, bright white siding, pretty cornflower-blue shutters and a gigantic front porch that’s lined with overflowing flower boxes. There are flags waving from the porch posts flanking the front door—both of them, I’m pretty sure, floral printed. Our house in Columbus—the one that my mom and dad lived in together before they split, the one she got in their divorce and that I eventually moved back into so I could take care of Tegan—is nice enough, and I know how lucky I am to have it. But any sane person would describe it as plain, nondescript. A small lawn I mow myself, squared-off hedges I only have to trim once a year. There’s nothing I’ve planted or added. I don’t even have a welcome mat on the front stoop. This past spring, when neighbors started setting out personalized congratulatory banners for their high school graduates, I’d thought,Why would I put Tegan’snamein our front yard?
“It’s nice,” Tegan whispers, and I don’t know if I can explain what happens to me when I hear her sound that way. It’s like when you hear about hypnosis, when some smooth-voiced doctor-type says,And on the count of three, you’ll awaken with no memory of this time. I hear Tegan sayIt’s nicewith that note of soft wonder in her voice and all of a sudden there’s no trace of warm and wonderful anymore.
