“Driving,” he called back, leaning his elbow out the open window.
By the time we got to Traverse City, the sky was clear. The rain had given up and gone to Canada. Duke read Nelson’s directions aloud—a complicated series of poorly marked turns onto twisty roads. Finally up ahead we saw a small sign readingNELSONnailed to a post beside the drive. “He named the place for himself?”
“It’s his aunt and uncle’s farm,” I said. “Their last name is Nelson.”
Duke stuck his head out the window like a dog. “So I can call my cherry farm ‘Duke Acres’?”
“Dukedom,” Sebastian said.
The rutted drive was filled with rainwater. Every leaf and blade of grass was shining. Once we turned we quieted down. The towering woods to our left, the white clapboard house with blue shutters up ahead, the gentle hills of fruit trees to the right that spread out behind the house past where we could see—it looked like a sampler stitched by an eighteenth-century girl.
“They have a barn,” Pallace whispered.
It wasn’t as if I’d grown up in Los Angeles. I’d seen plenty of farms in my day, but never had I seen a place that made the tightness in my chest relax. The order in the rows of trees and the dark green of the lush grass beneath them soothed me like a hand brushing across my forehead.
Sebastian parked the car beside the gray Chevy we knew to be Nelson’s. Then the screen door of the house opened and Nelson came onto the porch and waved.
“Go tell him you invited us,” Duke said quietly, his eyes straight ahead.
I shook my head. “Not on your life.”
“He didn’t invite us?” Pallace lifted her sunglasses.
“Emily invited us,” Duke said.
I might have looped my purse strap around Duke’s neck but Nelson came to the car smiling. “You found us!” he said. “Those roads can be tricky.”
“You draw a good map.” I held the package lightly. The napkins weighed nothing. I suddenly thought how nice it would have been to have brought a gift for Nelson as well, for all he’d done for us, but I would have had no idea what to get him.
Sebastian held out his hand and introduced himself.
“You’re the tennis player,” Nelson said, smiling. “The other Duke. I’ve seen you at rehearsals.”
“I think we may be crashing the party,” Sebastian said.
Nelson laughed. “There is no party, or there’s always a party, depending on how you look at it. People on farms love company. The more people showing up, the better.” Pallace walked right up to Nelson and kissed his cheek like they were best friends. She kissed our director, who, in his blue T-shirt and jeans, looked nothing like the person who’d been telling us where to stand and how to speak for more than a month now. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen Nelson outside before.
Duke was making the slow rotation I had wanted to make the first day I came to Traverse City, and when he stopped he looked at Nelson. “I’m from Michigan,” he said.
“So am I,” Nelson said.
“But I’m not from this Michigan.”
Nelson nodded. “This is my uncle’s farm. I worked here in the summers when I was growing up. I took the bus here whenschool let out and then my parents would drive up from Grand Rapids at the end of the season and bring me home. As far as I was concerned, August fifteenth was the saddest day of the year.”
“I’ll bet it was.” Duke cast his gaze out over the cherry trees.
“It’s like Tom Lake,” Sebastian said, by which he meant we weren’t exactly driving over from Flint. We were trading beauty for beauty.
“I’ve got nothing but praise for Tom Lake,” Nelson said. “But it’s not like this.”
That was what Duke had meant. For all of Tom Lake’s splendor, this was superior by an order of magnitude. Nelson turned and led us up the stairs and into the house.
“Stop,” Emily says, raising up on her elbows. “Are you saying that Duke came to our house? You brought him to the house?”
“It wasn’t our house then but yes, he was here.”
“The happiest day of your life was the day Duke came to our house?”
