I bump his knee with mine and let the contact linger a bit longer than it needs to as my pulse quickens. But I shift back as he drops his hand and tips his head back against the wall again.
“Walk me through it,” I say. “From the beginning.”
Silas stares out at the field for a moment longer before he releases a breath through his nose and nods. “Ok.”
And I try my hardest to calm my racing heart and the surge of hope and joy in my chest at that simple word. I need to just stay in this moment as he leans on me, like he always used to. Like I always want him to.
“The new screen is a lot,” Silas says quietly. “I don’t know where to look… and it’s hard to find what I need.”
I nod, even though he’s not looking at me. I get that.
He’s quiet for a bit as he gets lost in thought once more, and just as I’m about to gently ask him what else, he starts again.
“I don’t understand the target versus actual rate,” he says. “You said it’s normal for it to keep changing, but I keep getting worried it’s a problem, and…” He trails off and starts fidgeting with his fingers again.
“And what?” I ask.
“It just feels like it’s doing everything for me, and I have no control over any of it anymore.”
I wince to myself, as his words land exactly where I knew they would. He feels like he’s losing the only thing he ever really had control over.
“Even when I knew a zone needed more seed pieces,” he adds.
I look over at him again. “What do you mean?”
His eyes drift out to the far field he planted today. “The strip along the west edge, where the wind comes straight off the water and dries it out. I’ve always put more seed through there.”
I shift my gaze out to the field as well and my brow furrows. In my maps that entire western edge sits inside onebig zone and shows the same rate for seeding. The soil samples from that corner folded into the rest, yield data from past seasons smoothed out the thin spots, and the algorithm ironed everything into an average. On the screen, it reads as a single block… and there are no data points to account for wind drying out a section of a zone.
“Did you override it?” I ask, turning to look at Silas again.
But he just shakes his head.
And that confuses me. He just let it go? Even though he knew what it needed?
“I didn’t know how,” he says.
But I showed him how…
“I didn’t know how to trust it.” Silas finally turns and looks at me, his eyes meeting mine with a sadness that damn near breaks my heart. “Or that I could do it.” Then he shrugs and looks away from me again. “Or maybe I just don’t understand any of it.”
“Silas…” I say, keeping my eyes on him as his drift over the farmland in front of us. “You can trust yourself.”
“I’m trying,” he says quietly.
“I know.” I let my head roll against the wall and tip my face to the sky. The last of the clouds stretch across the horizon, deepening from pale gold to purple as the light drains out of them and evening settles over the farm.
And I do know he’s trying. With everything. With me, with all this change, and with everything life throws at him.
“You should take over the hollow heart field,” he says.
My head drops, and I stare straight at him. But he doesn’t look at me, and just keeps his gaze locked somewhere distant.
“No,” I say firmly.
Silas sighs and turns his head to look at me.
“Why?” I ask, searching his gaze and finding nothing there but resignation.
