The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope - By Rhonda Riley Page 0,130
a while, but we’re spending money and not making it. Wallace needs help or fewer horses. The feed crops should go in soon if they’re going.”
I nodded.
The phone rang. Pauline picked it up and, stretching the cord out to its full length, winked at me as she disappeared into her bedroom. We were cramping her style. We couldn’t stay much longer.
We strolled out to her screened porch. She lived on one of the hills near Micanopy. I turned off the light so its glare would not obscure the view. I looked out at the trunks of tall oaks and the hollow of a dry creek bed. “This neighborhood reminds me of North Carolina a little. I feel more at home here than any part of Florida we’ve seen so far,” I said.
Adam studied the trees and yard a moment. “I can see that. But it feels very different to me. Very different.” He bounced up and down on his heels. “The ground is lighter. More—buoyant?” He glanced at me for confirmation, then leaned against the frame of the door and stared out into Pauline’s moonlit backyard. “Every time I looked out our back door at the farm, I saw where Jennie lay by the tractor.” He paused at her name, his voice sliding down. “And if Frank ever showed up again, I don’t know.” He took my hands, his voice was unsteady, but then he pulled himself together and went on. “I don’t know if I could trust myself around him again.”
We both turned toward a noise from the living room. Rosie stood at the kitchen door, tears in her eyes. “Daddy,” she cried. “What about the horses? What about Beau?” Beau was her favorite, a big, sweet gelding.
Adam returned to the table and pulled Rosie into his lap as he sat down. “Wallace is doing a good job, Rosie. I talk to him every day. Tomorrow, you can talk to him yourself and ask him about Beau. Do you know anyone who’d be good to help Wallace? It’s a lot for one man to handle. Think about it and see if you can come up with some names.”
Rosie let me lead her back to the bedroom and her pallet on the floor. “We’re not going back home, are we, Momma?”
“We’re figuring that out, Rosie. Good night, now. You go to sleep.” I kissed her and returned to Adam.
He stood at the back door again. “The crickets are already out down here,” he said. And we stood listening for a while. “When we stopped on the side of the road to look at that farm near Micanopy and I saw those horses grazing on beautiful green slopes in March, I thought to myself, ‘This is not a bad place. I could live here.’ ” He put his arm around me and drew me closer. “And then I saw the springs, so blue and pretty they looked like the source of sky. You know there might be a river underground, right below us, now, where we’re standing? A river that bubbles up into a spring miles from here. Isn’t that something?”
The interest I heard in his voice then, the precursor of love, was all I needed to convince me, but he continued. “I feel different. I like the smell of the air here and the ground feels good under my feet.”
I felt the evidence of his words as I leaned against his chest. The tightness that had thrummed through him for months had quieted.
“We will miss the farm,” I said.
“Just thinking about it feels a little like being unfaithful to the farm, doesn’t it?” Adam whispered. “That land has been like a good woman to me.”
We listened to the night sounds. An owl bellowed in the distance. “I think maybe Florida could want me—all of me,” Adam said.
“She’s calling your name, huh?”
He waved his hand. “What kind of place is this?”
“A warm place?” I offered. He raised his eyebrows. “Hot place?” He sighed and rolled his eyes. “A place with horses and rolling green hills?” He gave me his broad smile. Finally, I got it: “A good woman calling your name?”
He nodded. “Call my name.” He kissed me, my reward, and I said his name.
“Tomorrow, I’ll go look,” he said, his voice sober again. “See what work there is. And whether this is the kind of place where my wife can grow beans, tomatoes, and flowers.”
“Have you looked at the dirt here? I don’t know. We’ll have to see if Florida