It was fall. We always came in fall. The first time, I was pregnant. The trip was a last-minute one, just an overnight, but our eyes had met in matching desperation, unspoken agreement that we needed a break. Our parents were driving us nuts. Mine were scandalized that I was pregnant before I was married. Terrified that a bump might show when I walked down the aisle, they had rushed to make arrangements at the church, and although I was in charge of the rest, they phoned multiple times a day asking whether I had called the photographer, the caterer, the florist, the priest. Since Edward was paying for the groom’s part himself, his parents should have just been along for the ride. But they were newly divorced, and neither one particularly wanted to see the other. His mother was trying to one-up his father by badgering Edward on where the rehearsal dinner should be held, what should be served, and who should give toasts. His father wanted to know what his mother was pushing so that he could push for the reverse.
We chose a getaway in upstate New York that, having a late cancellation, gave us a bargain rate. We had our own luxury cabin, our own butler on call, our own masseuse. The farm was a mile from the resort. We had to pass it coming and going, and Edward hadn’t been eager to stop. He had grown up on a farm and, at that moment, didn’t want a reminder of his father. Then we saw fields of pumpkins and kale, a corn maze, and cars filled with kids. There were no cows in sight, not a one. So we stopped.
That first year, we walked through the fields and bought a jug of cider at the farm store. The next year, with six-month-old Lily asleep in a BABYBJÖRN on Edward’s chest, we picked a peck of Macouns and bought another jug of cider. Lily was eighteen months the following year and wanted no part of a carrier. She sat still for a hayride, but otherwise ran wherever other children were running. At two-and-a-half, she was helping with the picking, and a year later, after declaring that she needed not one, not two, but three pumpkins so that we could carve a daddy, a mommy, and a little girl, she made her choices from high on Edward’s shoulders, one hand pointing out her choices, the other clutching his hair like it was the mane of a horse. By the time she was four-and-a-half, from the first pumpkin sighting at our supermarket, she was the one begging to visit the farm. We did it all that year—hayride, corn maze, apples, cider donuts—and it was so good.
We never got there again.
* * *
I returned to the present with a pain in my chest. How a memory could simultaneously be beautiful and horrific, I didn’t know, but this one tore me apart.
Thoughts are just thoughts, CALM said. Let them come and go.
It was easier said than done. The pain in my chest remained, so I put a hand there to soothe it. The movement tipped him off. His head turned, gaze shifted, realization hit.
He went still, which was only fair, since I couldn’t move, either. I didn’t know what he was thinking, whether he was back in the past of his own childhood or Lily’s, whether he felt happiness or angst, heard laughter or screams.
As he looked at me, though, memory began to break apart. Here and now, dressed down but standing tall, looking older and tired, Edward remained striking.
I don’t know what made one man my type and another not—why only Edward’s brand of tall and dark turned me on—why he had always done it when no other man could. I don’t know why my pulse raced at the sight of windblown brown hair or lean hips in jeans. I didn’t want to feel any pull at all. But there it was. I couldn’t look away.
Then he hitched his chin, inviting me closer, and the spell broke. With a single shake of my head, I turned my back on him and faced the pen. In the next frantic breath, though, I spun back around. He had taken me off guard three times now, which was three times too many. I wanted to see where he was and know if he approached. He might have some new, mysterious, even vengeful purpose in Devon. But. Devon. Was. Mine.