“All right,” Adrian said.
And he turned and walked back into the house.
After a moment, Luca followed him. Said his goodbyes. He gave Dagny a particularly hard hug; his mom gave him a particularly hard one at the door. He drove back to his house, blasting his favorite album of his favorite metal band and repeating the line to himself the whole time—promise me you’ll be a farmer who’s still a storyteller—until he walked through the door and right to the nightstand beside his bed. He got out one of his journals, wrote it down so he wouldn’t forget.
Even if he had known ever since his dad said it—even if it was the only thing his father, mercifully, had asked of him—that it was a promise Luca wouldn’t be able to keep.
six
“No chickens got dead, right Da-dee?”Daisy asked without preamble on Monday morning as Emerson entered her room.
He shook his head, grateful he could start the day with good news.
“No chickens got dead this week, Daisy.”
As much as Daisy loved being on her dad’s farm, she’d also been awakened to harsh truths from an early age. Such as the brutal reality that chickens—as with all animals—often got dead.
“Is new farmer here yet?”
Emerson’s stomach went on a little joyride. Its approximate twentieth trip of the day. He picked up Daisy’s glasses from the dresser.
“Not yet. Come, now. Time to brush your teeth.”
A rumble echoed through the house as they walked into the kitchen, but Emerson’s stomach got a break. He knew this rumble: Jansel’s green pickup truck, lumbering down the drive.
“Hey boss,” Jansel said two minutes later, just as Emersonwas cracking eggs into a bowl. Jansel was tall and lean, with shaggy dark hair and light brown skin. He wore the same thing every day: Carhartt jacket, Carhartt pants. A worn baseball hat advertising a farm outside Portland, on Sauvie Island. Emerson had mentioned, once or twice, that they in fact sold Short King Farms hats, too. “But this one fits so good,” Jansel always said.
Jansel looked like a real farmer. Emerson was glad at least one of them did.
“Morning, Han-sell!” Daisy shouted at him. This was, for the most part, actually how you pronounced Jansel’s name, but Daisy always put a little extra emphasis on the SELL! that made both Jansel and Emerson smile.
“Morning,flor,” Jansel replied. And to Emerson, “New kid here yet?”
“Not yet.” Luca had only saidbe there as soon as I can, Monday morning.Emerson tried to calculate what normal, non-farming people considered morning. “Should be here by nine or ten, I think.”
Jansel whistled. “Halfway through the day, then.”
Emerson attempted to give a wry smile, ignoring the engine parts in his abdomen.
“Yeah, think he had some stuff to take care of first.”
Jansel took a sip of coffee from his travel mug, shoulders lifted toward his big ears to ward off the early morning chill that permeated even in August, even through the walls of the house. Sometimes, on his loneliest days, Emerson found himself charmed by those big ears, the way Jansel’s almost-black hair stuck out from under his hat. Even though he knew Jansel had a wife and two little kids in a small house a mile down the road and didn’t need Emerson King thinking about his ears.
“You still good having him shadow you today, if he does actually show?”
Emerson had cycled through a variety of emotions and plans in the hours since he’d left Jayden’s house on Saturday about how to handle this change in routine. Each minute, the bluster of confidence he’d tried to show Jay sank away like patches of sand at low tide.
Sometime yesterday, when his thoughts wandered a little too deep into how exactly Luca Yaeger would look in the fields—how his arms would look reaching into the crops, how the back of his neck would look in the sun—Emerson had decided that the smartest thing for him to do would be to delegate. Jansel could help show Luca the ropes today. He was better at most of this than Emerson was anyway.
And then Emerson could focus on Daisy and actually getting to work on clearing that wildflower field, on inspecting and cleaning out the old barn. That was why Luca was here, right? So Emerson could better prepare for the wedding. It made sense to have some space. For Luca to get adjusted to the job on his own, for Daisy to get adjusted to the idea of having a new person around.
Even though, ever since he’d shared the news on the drive back from Portland, Daisy had only been abuzz with excitement.
“Sure.” Jansel had already moved to the whiteboards behind the kitchen table where he and Emerson exchanged notes and plans each day about what was happening in each bed, each area of the farm, what needed to be done. He uncapped a dry erase marker with his thumb. “Could always use extra hands. Already miss Parker and Myriah.”
Emerson sighed as he scrambled eggs in a pan. “Me too.”
“Gonna start in C.” Jansel tapped the marker against the board. Took another sip of coffee.
