mean he was going to stop.
“I’m pretty simple. My dreams for the farm are modest: a winter CSA, a renovated tobacco barn and land I can count as mine.”
“What’s wrong with saying that?”
“What are your dreams, Trey?”
Trey stopped and stared at the farmhouse. His mouth opened to speak but drizzle dripped off his nose into the emptiness of what he couldn’t say and he had to shut his mouth before he drowned. He either said what he didn’t even want to admit to himself or never speak again. “All I ever wanted was to get away from my father and this farm.”
“And after you moved away, how did you decide what to do next if you didn’t have dreams?”
Max’s eyes were clear and bright, even through the fading light and the spit coming down from the heavens. Trey started walking again, to the farmhouse. He’d never imagined wanting to enter those doors, but the house was dry. And warm.
When Max and Ashes caught up with him on the enclosed porch, he could feel the cowardly way he hadn’t answered her question in the prickle in his spine. The drips off the metal roof were louder now than the sound of the rain, but neither noise was loud enough to drown out the truth he didn’t want to admit to himself.
“Since I packed up my car and left North Carolina, I haven’t had a single dream for my life. I’ve taken logical and practical steps to further my career and the agendas of my employers, but nothing I’ve done has been my dream.”
Ashes’s wet tail made a squishing noise as it swept back and forth on the concrete floor. Max was silent.
“Kelly’s coming over soon so we can do more packing. I should go inside.” Trey hadn’t looked at her during his confession. He didn’t want to see pity in her eyes.
The irony of the situation wasn’t lost on him as he watched Max and Ashes shuffle down the steps and around the back of the house. Max had one very simple dream, and he owned it. He had had one simple dream, too, and owning Max’s dream meant he hadn’t fully realized his.
CHAPTER SIX
“ARE YOU SURE you don’t want to drive?” Max asked with a smile in her voice as Trey opened the passenger door to the truck late the next morning.
“No, I’m comfortable enough in my masculinity to let you drive.”
Trey had looked in the cab while they were filling the bed with his dad’s crap. The rust around the gearshift hadn’t given him much hope that the transmission actually worked, though he’d seen Max drive the beast around the farm. This would be the first time he’d seen her drive the truck—instead of her small sedan—off the property. When Max hopped up into the seat and caught him eyeing the stick shift with suspicion, he knew his answer hadn’t fooled her.
“Your car is a standard, so I know you can drive one.”
“My car also doesn’t have rust.” Or a thick layer of dirt and torn seats, but he didn’t say any of that. This was a working farm truck and it wasn’t meant to be beautiful.
“Well, make sure you have your cell phone,” she said as the engine cranked, “in case we need to be rescued.” She seemed to be using all of her arm strength to shift the truck into Reverse, though the mischief in her voice made him wonder if this, including her asking if he wanted to drive, was all an act. Another side to his farmer?
“You’re not helping. One of your dreams for the farm should be a new truck.” He was guessing this hunk of metal was from the eighties.
“Bertha is from one of Ford’s greatest ever truck years.” Her struggle with the gearshift had clearly been an act. She had easily shifted into first gear, too busy defending her truck to fake difficulty this time. “She’s a collector’s item.”
“Does that include the price archeologists would pay to carbon date the dirt they scrape from the floor?” He said the words lightly, so she would know he was teasing. And she laughed.
Everyone’s mood was lighter today, it seemed. The clouds from the day before had evaporated, though the water it had left behind still gave everything a sparkle in the bright winter sun. The birds seemed to chirp a little louder this morning, as if they knew that this load of junk would mean the farmhouse was almost completely cleared out.
Important-looking papers had been sorted and shoved into boxes that went up into the attic, along with the family pictures Kelly hadn’t wanted. Anything that Kelly had felt a sentimental twinge for also went in a box and into the attic. They’d already made several trips to the Goodwill with anything that still had a use, and this should be the only trip they had to make to the dump.
Trey rolled down the window enough to let a little breeze in then settled into the torn seats and the dust for the novelty of being driven into town.
Max was apparently an experienced dump-goer, because she knew where to pull in to unload their hazardous materials, where to unload the boxes of broken electronics and where to dump the trash bags. Trey was just along for the ride because it was his father’s crap—and because spending his time with Max yesterday had been surprisingly relaxing. He wanted to see what she could do with a trip to the dump.
Lightened of its load, the truck seemed to drive better and Trey was settling in for the drive back when Max pulled into the small parking lot of a corner grocery store. “Do you mind?” she asked, though not until turning off the engine and engaging the parking brake.
The trip to the dump meant he was one chore closer to being back in D.C., so Trey said, “Of course not.” Given how old the store looked, complete with handwritten signs in the windows advertising the week’s specials, he must have passed this store a thousand times in his life as he drove up and down Roxboro Road. “What are we getting?”
“King’s has good local bread and milk, plus dried peaches for my oatmeal in the mornings,” Max said as she exited the truck and walked into the store, with Trey right behind her.
“Hey, sug,” the clerk called as Max grabbed a shopping basket. “How’s the farm?”
“Slow right now, but it’ll pick up soon.”
Trey trailed after Max through the aisles of the small store, content to play tourist and look around. The store had some items he expected, like bags of frozen chitterlings and other things that he didn’t know existed, like molasses in what had to be a ten-gallon bucket, and some things he’d never expected to see at a small grocery store in Durham, like bags of organic and fair-trade coffee.
Trey stopped in front of a packaged-meat case and stared at the small tubs of pimento cheese. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a pimento cheese sandwich, though they had been a staple of his childhood. Max came up behind him. “You should buy some. They make it fresh in the store.”
Her breath was soft and intimate in his ear, and suddenly the entire stop had a casually familiar feel. Stopping in for a few groceries was something couples did together. “Are you a regular here?” he asked, reaching forward to grab a tub, more to put some distance between them than because he actually wanted it.
“Anyone who comes here more than once is a regular.” She reached past him to grab her own tub, the movement defeating his desire for space. “Plus, they support local farms and businesses, so it’s hard not to return the favor.
“Do you sell here?”
Max waved at the butcher behind the counter before answering. “No, but I know the baker for some of the bread they sell here and the brewer of some of the Durham beer. If I gave up on the diversity of my farm and specialized in one product, maybe I would. Right now I don’t produce enough of any one thing to sell at a store.” She looked back over her shoulder at him. “I’m not sure I would want to.”
Here in the store, Max wasn’t just the farmer on his dad’s land, but a real person—related to the farm and his past