A Walk in the Sun Read online

  “Okay, Dad,” she said. “I’ll see you inside.”

  They parted ways at the back of the house, her dad skirting the garden to the kitchen door while Rose headed for the front of the house and her work boots in the foyer.

  She didn’t bother changing, just slipped her boots on and headed to the barn in her shorts and bathing suit top. She was almost there when she heard the footsteps behind her.

  She turned quickly, thinking it might be Will. But it wasn’t. It was the guy from Tractor Supply. The one who’d tried to tell her what to buy for Buttercup.

  She shook her head, then crossed her arms over her chest, self-conscious about the bikini top. “What are you doing here?”

  He looked down at a piece of paper in his hand, then at the house, before he turned back to her. “Is this the Darrow farm?”

  She nodded. “So?” She wondered if it was her imagination that he was fighting a smile.

  “So,” he said, “I’m Bodhi Lowell, and I’m here to work for the summer.”

  Ten

  At first she’d just been surprised, her face turning one shade paler, the spray of freckles across her nose standing out against her skin. Then she’d buttoned a flannel shirt over her bathing suit top, and told Bodhi to follow her.

  Now they were on their way to one of the barns, and it was obvious she was pissed, her pace fast enough to suggest that she wouldn’t have been disappointed if she turned around to find him gone. Of course, it wasn’t really hard to keep up given that she was a good six inches shorter than him. He just lengthened his stride a little as she forged ahead.

  So this was Sweet Rose. He wasn’t all that surprised. It was a small world, and he suspected Milford was smaller than most. And what was it Maggie Ryland had said? That Rose Darrow’s mother had passed on? He looked at the graceful bend of the girl’s neck, slender and fragile atop a spine of steel, and felt a surge of sympathy move through him.

  Since she didn’t feel like talking, he used the time to get a look at the farm, or what he could see of it at least. The first thing he noticed was the silence. Working farms weren’t usually so quiet, what with the roar of machinery and men hollering back and forth across the fields. There was a large pasture across the drive in front of the house and what looked like an orchard across the road, plus a smaller field between the two barns, one of which they were headed for right now. He caught a glimpse of open space at the back of the house and wondered if that was part of the Darrow operation, too. If it was, Marty Jacobsen had been right; they were sorely in need of help.

  Rose Darrow walked quickly beside him, her long legs eating up the ground between the house and the barn almost as fast as his. Her braid was wet now and had turned a darker shade of copper, like an old penny.

  They came to the bigger of the two barns, and Rose stepped through the open doors and into the shade. Bodhi inhaled, sucking in the familiar scent of hay, the earthy musk of animal fur and sweat.

  “Something wrong?” Rose asked. There was a challenge in the question, like she expected an insult.

  Bodhi shook his head. “Not a thing. It’s like coming home is all.”

  “What is?”

  “All of it,” he said. “The barn, the smell.”

  She seemed to think about that before speaking again. “Come on. I’ll show you to the bunk room so you can get settled.” She led him past the long, empty galleries on either side of the walkway to a door at the back of the barn. “The animals are still out to pasture. I was getting ready to bring them in when you got here.”

  “I’ll drop my stuff and take care of it.”

  She stopped at the door and turned to look at him. “There are forty head right now.”

  “You got a horse I can use?”

  “They’re in the smaller barn on the other side of the east pasture. Just don’t use the black mare in the first stall. She’s mine.” She bit her lip. “Actually, don’t use the palomino either.”

  He lifted an eyebrow, waiting for an explanation. She didn’t give one, and he nodded slowly. “All right.”

  She opened the door and Bodhi was hit with a blast of cool air. The room was utilitarian, but it was clean and large, and a soft breeze was blowing in from the open window near the bunks.

  She looked around. “It’s not much, but it stays fairly cool in the summer, and I changed the sheets this morning and left you clean towels.”

  “It’s fine,” he said.

  She nodded. “The bathroom is to the right, and you can help yourself to the kitchen in the house. The door’s never locked.”

  “Thank you.”

  An uncomfortable silence descended on the room in the moment before she crossed her arms over her chest.

  “Did you know?” There was an accusatory edge to her voice. “Back at the Tractor Supply.”

  He shook his head. “No, ma’am.”

  She sighed, obviously exasperated. “Ma’am? What am I? Sixty? You’re probably older than me and you’re calling me ma’am?”

  He tried to suppress the grin that was fighting its way to his lips. “Force of habit with the boss.”

  “Well, I’m not the boss,” she snapped, then seemed to relent. “That would be my aunt Marty.”

  “Is she around?” he asked. “I should probably introduce myself, let her know I’m here.”

  “She doesn’t live here,” Rose said. “I’ll let her know you’ve arrived. I’m sure she’ll come by to check on you sometime soon.”

  “All right.”

  “Well, I better go. Is there anything else I can get you?”

  “I think I’m good.”

  She nodded. “Cattle are in this barn here. You should find everything where you need it.”

  “Thank you.”

  She turned and left without another word, arms still crossed in front of her. Bodhi puzzled over the situation as he watched her go. Marty was the boss. Rose’s mother had passed on. But where was Rose’s father?

  Eleven

  She watched from the window of her bedroom as he walked to the little barn. He emerged twenty minutes later riding Mason, her father’s chestnut gelding. She felt guilty when she saw the way Mason pranced. It had been too long since he’d been exercised properly.

  Bodhi Lowell sat tall and easy in the saddle. She could tell even from the window that he held the reins lightly, that he knew how to ride. So not a hippie Kerouac wannabe after all. A spoiled rancher’s son on an introspective road trip funded by Mom and Dad then.

  Rose hurried to the window of the guest room as Bodhi disappeared around the house. She was being a brat and she knew it. Forty head was a lot for one person to bring in on his own, especially someone new to the farm. She knew because she’d done it more times than she could count, and she always finished the job exhausted just as the sun was setting. She should have offered to help, should have saddled up Raven and gone along, showing Bodhi parts of the farm as they went. That’s what her mother would have told her to do. But his presence rankled for some reason. Maybe it was because of their interaction at Tractor Supply. Or because he seemed completely at ease in what was obviously an awkward situation while she felt strangely mortified. Either way, there was nothing she wanted less than to ride with Bodhi Lowell.

  She watched as he herded the animals across the dirt pathway into the barn. It hadn’t rained much this spring, and the cows kicked up so much dust as they went that Bodhi was sometimes almost obscured by it. But his face remained impassive, even when he had to holler at the animals to get them to behave.

  When the last of the cows disappeared into the barn, Bodhi dismounted and wiped an arm across his forehead to clear the sweat. Rose would have to tell him about the pond, just in case he needed to cool off during the summer. The realization hit her like a sudden, strong wind: This was Bodhi Lowell. And he would be here all summer, walking and riding the farm, working right alongside her, even eating in her kitchen.

  She looked at her phone. Seven o’clock. Would Bodhi come into
the house for dinner tonight? She hadn’t seen a car, and it was too far to walk into town just for a meal. She tried to imagine eating dinner with him, tried to imagine reading her book while he sat across from her doing . . . what? Chewing? Staring at her? Trying to make conversation? She almost shuddered at the thought.

  Hurrying from the room, she walked to the half-open door of her parents’ room and peered inside. Her dad was lying on the bed, his hands folded over his chest in a posture almost exactly like the one her mother had been in during her wake. Rose had tried not to look, but she’d been expected to be there, to comfort the people who had known and loved her mother, to sit beside her father, very nearly propping him up with her own body when he seemed about to fall over from the weight of his grief.

  She swallowed hard against the sudden memory. Her dad was just asleep. She could tell because his chest rose and fell at regular intervals, and his mouth was half open as he breathed. It was one of the few times she was relieved not to count on him for dinner, and she made her way quickly down the stairs, feeling like a thief.

  In the kitchen, her gaze landed briefly on her mother’s cookbook. She missed her mom’s cooking, missed the familiarity of her food, and even more than that, the feel of her in the kitchen, a presence Rose could sense as soon as she came inside after doing chores. Her mother’s recipes were in the book, some of them going back to Rose’s great-grandmother. And while Rose wasn’t as competent in the kitchen as her mother, she could follow a recipe. She could open the cookbook right now, make her mother’s goulash or chicken marsala, maybe even an icebox cake for dessert.

  She left it where it was, opting instead to stand in front of the freezer like she did every other night, choosing from the casserole dishes that had been brought over in the days following her mom’s death. There was nothing exotic. Just the frozen meat loaves and tuna casseroles and chicken-and-rice bakes she’d eaten all her life, but somehow they all tasted just a little bit strange. Still, it was easier than facing the cookbook, than trying to conjure her mother’s presence out of a bunch of old recipes when Rose knew it wouldn’t bring her back. Worse, it would force Rose to face the reality that her mother was gone, and that was something she just didn’t need.

  The skin on her arms grew cold. How long had she been standing here, staring into the freezer like a zombie? And how much longer before Bodhi came in to make himself food? The thought finally got her moving, and she pulled a half-eaten casserole from the fridge (she had no idea who had made it or what it was, something with noodles) and spooned some onto a plate. She waited impatiently while the microwave heated it up, then took the plate to her room and picked at the food while she tried to do her homework.

  Less than half an hour later the front door opened and she heard Bodhi Lowell’s hesitant, heavy footsteps in the foyer. She froze, biting her lip as guilt washed through her. She was being ridiculous. She could hear her mother’s voice in her head telling her to go downstairs, make Bodhi Lowell feel welcome, show him where everything was in the kitchen. Or better yet, make him something to eat. But she couldn’t seem to move. There was all this stuff she was supposed to do. Take care of the farm and the animals, take care of her dad, keep a good face on things for all the people who looked at her with pity and sadness, who wanted to comfort her when she didn’t want to be comforted. And now there was this one more thing. This playing the nice hostess for Bodhi Lowell. A stranger. A stranger who would, for all intents and purposes, be living with her this summer. And she just couldn’t do it. Not now. Not yet.

  She just couldn’t.

  Twelve

  There was a partially eaten noodle dish in the fridge and not much else. Milk, some ketchup and mustard, a few oranges already gone soft, some lettuce that had seen better days. He didn’t know what to make of it. Farms required a lot of energy to run. A lot of human energy. Most of the places he’d worked had multiple hands on the payroll during the summer. Big dinners and packed refrigerators were part of the bargain. Who was doing the cooking here? And what were they cooking?

  It wasn’t until he closed the fridge and opened the freezer that he recalled Maggie Ryland’s words outside Tractor Supply.

  I’ve brought enough casseroles and pies over there to feed an army, and I suspect she hasn’t eaten a single one of them.

  The freezer was packed. There were old-fashioned glass casserole dishes, chipped and well used, and plastic containers with lids. Disposable metal pans topped with foil and labeled with masking tape (Chicken Enchilada Bake—350 degrees for one hour, Beef Stew—pan warm) shared space with obviously repurposed to-go containers. Bodhi was pretty sure they weren’t all from Maggie Ryland, which meant the whole town had been keeping Rose Darrow and her father in food. Not that it did much good. From the looks of things, nobody on the Darrow farm was eating much these days.

  He tried to imagine what it would feel like, losing a parent you loved. One who loved you. He couldn’t. Love was too good and simple a word to describe the way he felt about his father, not to mention the mother he barely remembered. And while he knew there was no guarantee Rose Darrow’s relationship with her mother had been a good one, he thought that it probably had been. He could feel it lingering in the air like faded perfume, could see it in the pictures that lined the walls and shelves and in the worn surface of a countertop that had seen plenty of meals and cups of coffee and early-morning conversations.

  He closed the freezer and pulled the noodle dish out of the fridge. After a quick search in the cupboards, he found the plates and piled one high with the rest of the casserole. He was getting ready to put it in the microwave when he thought about Rose and her dad. Had they eaten? The house was so quiet. It might as well have been midnight instead of seven thirty. Should he save them some of the casserole? He wasn’t sure, didn’t know what to do with the strange situation. Then he remembered the overstuffed freezer. He was probably doing them a favor.

  While his food was heating up, he poured himself a glass of milk, downed it, and poured another one.

  He thought about taking his food back to the bunkhouse, but he didn’t want to seem rude if someone came downstairs, so he sat at the wooden table under a window that looked out over an elaborate but slightly overgrown garden. He scanned the plants while he ate, taking in the early tomatoes, many of them still green. Lettuce sprang from the ground in tufts, bordered by leafy herbs and cucumbers, their vines trailing along the ground. He could make out berries on one side of the fence, the red and blue fruit dotting the landscape like forgotten Christmas lights.

  He ate quickly and in silence, making a mental note to bring his book in next time he was hungry. When he was finished, he filled the sink with dish soap and warm water and washed his dishes. He dried them with a dish towel that hung on the handle of the stove and put everything but the casserole dish back in the cupboard.

  He leaned against the counter, hesitating. It felt weird to just leave, go out to the barn and not say goodnight or thank you or anything else to Rose and her father. Then again, they didn’t exactly seem up for conversation. He would talk to Marty, ask her about the routines of the house so he didn’t step on any toes.

  Pushing off the counter, he made his way back to the foyer. He closed the front door behind him and stepped out into a warm and slightly humid night. That had surprised him about New York, that it was humid. Not unbearably so, but a lot more humid than out west where everything was either a desert or close enough that it felt like one. He didn’t mind the moisture in the air though. It made everything feel a little fresher, a little more alive.

  He looked around as he made his way back to the barn. The farm was pretty, a lot greener than he was used to, and the orchard had been a pleasant surprise. He was used to working cattle ranches where cows meant more money than anything else a rancher could raise, and money was king. Most ranchers couldn’t see devoting their land to growing apples when cattle would bring a hundred times more money.

  The Darrow property was intimate.
He was willing to bet the garden had sat outside the kitchen window for decades, and the trees in the orchard had probably been producing fruit for at least as long. He assumed the farm made some kind of money; after all, they’d hired him. But it didn’t seem that profit and loss was the number one priority, and that would take some getting used to.

  “Everyone settled in for the night?” he asked the cows as he walked past them on the way to the bunk room. They shuffled and chuffed. “Glad to hear it.”

  He stopped at the doorway of the bunk room and surveyed his quarters. The animals were at the other end of the barn, making the bunk room feel detached from the rest of the farm. It probably hadn’t been bad when more than one farmhand was on the payroll, but now the room was heavy with silence, the air cool and still. It felt untouched, entirely devoid of life for a place so teeming with it.

  As accustomed as he was to being alone, this was solitude of an altogether different brand.

  But he’d become good at making himself at home, and he crossed to the window and opened it wider, letting the summer breeze rush in through the open frame.

  Better already.

  Motivated by the small change, he emptied his pack before moving on to the bed. He inhaled deeply as he unfurled the sheets. They smelled like lavender and sunshine.

  Thirteen

  Rose stepped outside the next morning a full hour later than normal. The moon was still visible in the indigo sky, the horizon in the east a haze of pink and orange fire. She felt guilty about sleeping in on Bodhi’s first day on the farm, but it was the day before graduation, and finally, she didn’t have to worry about getting to school. Still, she hurried to the barn, braiding her hair as she went. The cows would be hungry.