“I’m going to miss you.”
His quiet words almost float away in the breeze before I can hear them, and everything in me stills as I stop walking.
He turns to face me with glassy eyes full of unshed tears, sparkling in the moonlight.
My own tears threaten to spill over as I nod. “I’m going to miss you too,” I whisper.
Silas sniffs, and a tear falls down his cheek.
I step forward and pull him into me, wrapping my arms tight around him as he does the same to me, and his shoulders shake.
I stare out at the moonlit ocean through blurred eyes and listen to the water crashing softly against the sand between hissniffs, as I try to hold back my own sobs and be strong for him. For us.
But I fail. The tears fall, and I release a shuddering breath.
“I’ll always be here for you, Si,” I say quietly. “Things may be changing… but we’re not.”
He pulls a shaky breath in, and I squeeze him tighter, making sure he feels my promise.
“Never.”
SEVEN
WE WERE NINETEEN
“Silas!”
I hop down from the tractor and look over at Peter as he waves me over to him and Keith near the garage.
I hold up a finger in a one-sec motion, and head to the back of the tractor to unhitch the hiller. After I’ve eased it back into its spot, I can’t help but give it a dirty look. We’ve been having a lot of rain lately, which is great for crops. But it also means the rows keep washing out, so I’ve been constantly rebuilding them. If I have to run the hiller through those fields one more time this week, I’m going to lose it.
Once everything is where it should be, I kill the engine in the tractor and head towards the garage.
Peter and Keith stand in front of one of the big commercial planters with several panels pulled off, chains exposed, and seed cups half-disassembled. Now that planting season is wrapped up, it’s time for inspection and maintenance of all the planting equipment.
“Take a look at this,” Keith says as I approach them, nodding towards the exposed seed metering assembly. “Looks like we have some shimming to do on this bad boy.”
I step around the open panel and crouch beside the planter to get a closer look. The bracket behind the second cup is sagging a bit, so it offsets the gear alignment where the drive chain catches, and there’s a hitch in the rotation.
“Hm,” I murmur, standing up again. “Needs a new bracket.”
Peter eyes me. “You think? If we shim it, we get another run out of it next year.”
My gaze drifts back to the panel. Yeah… a shim would pull it closer, and it would pass enough for fixed. But it’ll never sit flush like it should. It will just keep drifting and will drop potatoes unevenly for planting.
“Spit it out, kid,” Peter says with a smirk as he leans against the planter and wipes his hands on a rag.
I shift my stance, lift my hat, and drag a hand through my hair before setting it back on my head. “It’s torqued at the weld point. Even if you shim it and align the cups, the bracket’s already flexed past centre. So we’d be fixing a lot of uneven planting next season.”
Keith exhales through his nose and shakes his head. “Run it by the boss-man.”
“We’ll do that right now,” Peter says, gesturing with his chin as he looks over my shoulder.
I turn to see Dad crossing the lot towards us, his eyes already scanning the half-disassembled planter.
“So, what’s the damage?” he asks.
“The bracket on the seed assembly is shot,” Peter says. “Silas figures a fix won’t last.”
