All right, maybe that’s a step too far, but… my dad has Parkinson’s. Don’t I have a right to be concerned?
In any case, either they don’t hear us, or they choose not to reply. Slowly, Josh closes the door.
“Well,” he says.
I nod glumly. “Well.”
He peers at me, concerned. “Are you okay?”
“I guess.” I feel too jumbled up inside to explain to him that this isn’t just about my dad, but everyone and everything. How time passes, and kids grow up. And yet somehow I’mstillhaving a baby.
It feels like some kind of paradox, but there we are.
“Hey,” William calls from the kitchen. “Where’s the tomato sauce? I can’t find it anywhere.”
“In the pantry, second shelf,” I call back. At least some things never change.
Chapter eleven
The next few weeks pass in a blur of busyness that keeps me from dwelling too much on all the things I feel like I should worry about. My dad’s date—he simply said he’d had a good time; as well as Bethany having moved out—Ben’s housewarming present was a framed photo of the two of them; and William’s college aspirations—he passed his GED and has been spending a lot of time online, researching various institutions.
I go online myself to look for a job, but it’s a halfhearted attempt at best. I simply don’t have the time or, frankly, the will. Who in their right mind is going to hire a woman who is coming onto five months pregnant?
So, I focus on the homestead, where there is always something to do. My potatoes have started to chit, and in the next week, I plan to begin planting them out in the garden, which is freshly plowed and composted. Josh has dredged and stocked the pond with largemouth bass. He’s doing a pond-dipping project with Rose, where they chart the number of minnows they can see, as well as vegetation. In the fall, he’ll add bluegill and channelcatfish; apparently, together these three species of fish keep a pond healthy. Who knew?
Rose and I head to Buckholt to get her two new Plymouth Rocks, and there is something so very heartwarming about seeing how her face lights up as she holds them in a box on her lap on the way home. Moonbeam and Celestia are welcome additions to her brood.
I sow our cool-season crops—carrots, radishes, lettuce, and arugula, more than we’ve ever planted before—in our bid to become self-sufficient. Our vegetable plot is nearly twice as big as it was last year, running all the way from the orchard to the barn and using every available inch. It’s going to take alotof work.
I deep clean the chicken coop and animal pens with Jack and Rose’s help—a dirty job at the best of times—and William power-washes the chicken tractor in preparation for the arrival of our fifty meat chickens.
Mabel is producing even more milk, and while we feed leftovers to the piglets, there is still plenty for making butter, cheese, and yogurt, which feels like a full-time job in itself. All in all, April passes in what feels like the blink of an eye, and I’m pretty sure May will be even busier as the garden really gets going.
Other things have been happening, too. Hooch has officially moved to Buckholt, and I’ve gone over to his place to check on it a couple of times, wondering when our new neighbor is going to move in. So far, there’s been no activity.
Bethany announces at dinner one night—she comes over most evenings, which soothes my battered soul—that she’s been accepted to the midwifery program at Shenandoah and plans to start in January, six months earlier than she expected, after completing the online modules. She’s already applied forfinancial aid and received a scholarship grant, so we don’t, she informs us, have to worry about tuition.
Josh and I are both fairly flummoxed. Once again, not a single word to us. Is this how kids usually behave? Maybe we’d just become used to the helicopter parenting of Princeton, New Jersey, where so many parents are intimately involved in every aspect of their kids’ lives. I’m glad Bethany is taking control of her life and proud of her for managing it all. But still… it would have been nice to have been alittlemore included.
And it’s not just Bethany who is making plans. Rose has, all by herself, filled out an application to sell her eggs at the farmer’s market that runs all spring and summer in Buckholt, which required her to arrange for our well to be tested and our coop inspected so she can apply for a cottage industry certification. Admittedly, William helped her with some of the online stuff, but I am very impressed by her enterprise. She even insists on paying the seventy-five-dollar fee for the well testing out of her own earnings. Clearly, this homesteading life is good for our kids’ independence, as well as resilience.
Jack, meanwhile, has continued to improve his carpentry skills as well as helping Josh outside. He built a feeder for the piglets—they destroyed the cheap one Josh had gotten from the feed store—and a bookcase for his bedroom, which admittedly is more than a little wobbly, but it’s still a very good first effort.
William has been working all hours, but I’ve taken him driving several times, and on the first of May, he passes his driver’s test. We’re all thrilled until Josh informs me how much our insurance premium is going to go up, which makes me worry about money yet again, although I do my best not to. If Josh can be laid-back about the very small amount in our checking, well then, so can I. He still hasn’t shared with me what his business plan is, though.
And then there’s my dad, who seems to beverygood friends with Jolene. He’s up and down to the community center forvarious social activities, and Jolene picks him up most Saturdays to go to bingo. There’s definitely a new spring in his step that I’m happy about… sort of.
“Are you jealous?” Josh asks bluntly one evening when my dad and Jolene have gone off together yet again.
“Jealous? No.” I semi-mock-glare at him. “That would be weird.”
“You know what I mean. It’s been just the two of you for a long time.”
“You might be forgetting my brother Ryan,” I point out, and Josh just shrugs. Ryan lives a high-powered life in New York, and neither my dad nor I have seen him all that often. “I guess,” I admit on a sigh. “It just feels strange. And Jolene seems nice, but also like… she’s not that interested in getting to know us.” Every time she’s come to the door, it’s been no more than a few seconds of chitchat before she spirits my dad away. At least, that’s what it hasfeltlike, but I know I might be overreacting. I probably am.
“Maybe she thinks you’re not interested in getting to know her,” Josh points out all too reasonably. “You know the solution to that?”
I eye him suspiciously. “What?”
