we know anyone from church who’s taking a gap year before college?” my mother asks. “Recruiting was easier when Daphne and Dylan still had high school friends.”
“This does get harder every year,” Griffin admits. “Kieran and Kyle used to give us hours. They’re both too busy now. Isaac moved away. I need a new plan.”
“Chass and I will still come home on the weekends,” my brother says. “We’re both available for U-pick season. If the bunkhouse is full, we can stay in my room.”
“I’m more worried that the bunkhouse will be empty,” Griffin says. “I’m going to call the guys at the agricultural extension and ask about hiring some Jamaican apple harvesters. I’ve never wanted to take on all that immigration paperwork, but we really need a new play.”
“I’ll come home on the weekends,” I hear myself offer.
Everyone blinks. “You never do that,” Dylan says.
“No kidding, I used to be three or four hours away. Besides, I’ll need a part-time job. Why should I work in a Burlington bookstore when I could be working at the farm stand instead?”
I can see that he doesn’t actually believe me. And that’s what I get for spending most of my teenage years telling everyone who’d listen that I couldn’t wait to get out of Vermont.
We had family meetings when I was a little girl, too. My father liked to gather everyone around the table, and explain whatever changes he was making for the new season. He’d tell us about his choices—whether or not to regraft a set of trees, or whether or not to buy a new cow. Then he’d ask our opinions.
“You choose, Daddy,” I’d always say. “I’m not a farmer.”
My views haven’t really changed, but my circumstances have. And since I’m not twelve years old anymore, I understand that sometimes you just have to pitch in and help your family.
They don’t believe me. They don’t trust that I’m sincere. That’s my fault too, I guess.
So many things are.
Twenty-One
Daphne
After the family meeting, I help Mom set up the tables and chairs outside for Thursday dinner. Then I take a basket of sandwiches and cold drinks out to where Dylan, Chastity, Zach, and Rickie are working.
Today is a scorcher, so the men are all shirtless, of course. I will not ogle Rickie’s tattoos. I will not ogle Rickie’s tattoos…
“Aren’t you going to eat lunch with us?” Chastity asks as I plunk the basket down and turn to go.
“Sorry, I’m in the middle of…a thing,” I say as Rickie climbs off a ladder, his hot body glistening in the sun. He’s wearing a pair of steel-gray shorts, and that’s basically it. Just sun-kissed skin and lean muscle as far as the eye can see. “Later guys!”
He gives me a smirk as I walk away.
But avoidance only gets me so far. After lunch, Zach and Griffin load up three juvenile bulls to deliver them to the slaughterhouse, while Dylan and Chastity head out to measure and map out the farmland we bought from the Abrahams, and plan their future together.
Rickie is sent back to the farmhouse to help prep for Thursday dinner with me and Mom.
“Put me to work,” he says, pulling his close-fitting T-shirt down over his head. As if that even helps dull my attraction.
“Fine.” I grab an apron off the pantry door and toss it to him. “Suit up. We’re making pies.”
He drops the apron over his head. It’s blue-and-white calico with a ruffle across the hem. I may have grabbed the girliest one we have, accidentally on purpose. But it doesn’t even put a dent in my hormone spike. He crosses those strong arms in front of his chest and smiles. “Teach me your ways.”
Wow. Just wow.
Dragging my eyes off him, I tug the kitchen scale into position and set a big mixing bowl on top. “First you sift the flour. Here.” I fetch the sifter out of a cupboard and set it on the work table. Then I heft the flour canister onto the table and open up the top. We buy flour by the fifty-pound bag because we use so much of it.
“What does this do?” Rickie picks up the sifter and squeezes the handle, which turns the mechanism.
“It makes the flour lighter and easier to work with,” my mother says. She’s arranging fresh cherries, blueberries, and frozen strawberries on the countertop.
“Awesome.” Rickie scoops the sifter into the flour and aims it at the big metal mixing bowl.