Daisy looked at the mounds and then squinted up at him. She adjusted her glasses, which got sand all over her face.
“Hokay,” she said. And returned to her own pursuits with her stick, which involved less building and more crafting some type of complex map and/or irrigation system.
By the time Luca returned with the pail, Emerson’s back had started to ache.
“Hey Daisy. Mind if Luca and I sit for a while? We’ll be right here.”
Daisy nodded without looking up.
“Locked in, Da-dee.”
With a snort of amusement, followed swiftly by a wince, Emerson stood and motioned Luca to a spot several yards back, farther up the tideline where the sand was drier. They dropped onto their butts, stretched out their legs, leaned their weight on their palms behind them. Emerson tried not to think about how close their pinkies were to each other, how close they had chosen to align themselves. How this, too, felt natural.
“Did she just say she waslocked in?”
Emerson smiled. “I’m sure Jayden taught her that one.”
“She really is, though,” Luca observed a moment later.
“I know.” Emerson watched his daughter in front of them,her bottom lip jutted out, almost consuming her top one, as happened when she was truly focused on a task.
“I’m glad she suggested this,” he said, voice softer, quieter, so only Luca could hear. “I have to remind myself sometimes to hold onto this. Not just because she’ll grow up so fast, which I know she will, but…” He sighed. “When she’s old enough to start attending school. She’ll probably go somewhere in Portland, by Jay. And I won’t?—”
Emerson shook his head, trying to keep the sudden swell of emotion at bay. This, he supposed, was why he never talked about this.
“It’ll be so much easier in terms of actually getting work done on the farm, and I’ll see her more during the summers, and we’ll switch off weekends, but…it won’t be like it is now. I’ll see her so much less for nine months of the year. So even when it’s hard right now, managing both her and the farm on the weeks she’s here…I don’t know. I need to do things like this more often. I can’t let it all just pass me by.”
“And that’s set in stone?” Luca asked after a moment. “Her attending school in Portland?”
“We haven’t talked about it in a while, but yeah. Pretty much. There’s one elementary school kind of nearby here, but by the time she reaches middle and high school—Greyfin Bay’s too small to have their own. It’s a trek here to get to school. The ones in Portland are bigger, more diverse, have more opportunity. Jayden can work dropoff and pickup into his work day pretty easily. It makes more sense. I mean.” Another shrug. “God willing I still have the farm by then. If not…”
Emerson trailed off.
Luca gave him a minute before he prompted, “What would you do? If you lost the farm. Not just with Daisy, but in general.”
Emerson’s gaze strayed from Daisy to the horizon. Thequestion didn’t send him into a panic. He had practically goaded Luca into asking. It was a question he was slowly, day by day, working on accepting the answer to.
“Probably find another farm to work at,” he said, “like I used to. Folks always need good farmhands.”
He could probably find a farm closer to Portland, like he had before. Be closer to Jayden and Daisy. Make it all easier, for everyone.
Except it wasn’t the same, working someone else’s land. It could still be gratifying, of course. No onetrulyowned land, anywhere. The land belonged to itself.
But it still wasn’t the same.
It wouldn’t ever be the same if it wasn’t here. In Greyfin Bay. With Jansel, and Liv at the IGA, and everyone else he’d met here. Fertile land, ten minutes from the ocean.
“Did growing up here inspire your book?” Emerson asked, wanting a new topic. Enough, now, of the same things that always rattled around in his brain. He wanted more of what rattled around Luca’s.
Emerson gestured behind them to where driftwood littered the dunes.
When his hand hit the sand again, it was possible their fingers were even closer to each other.
“Yeah. Not very original, probably.”
Luca looked away. Emerson wasn’t sure if he’d get anything else. And that was okay, too.
Emerson reached out his pinky. Brushed it against the side of Luca’s. After a second, Luca brushed back.
