Weekends in Carolina (20 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

T
HE
HOUSE
WAS
silent when Trey let himself in after his drive, which was unusual; Max had been waiting up for him in the kitchen the past several weekends he’d driven down from D.C. She’d left the kitchen light on, so she was expecting him. He took off his shoes and left them with his bag at the kitchen table, then made his way through the house to her bedroom.

Ashes barely stirred as Trey walked past the old dog. If it hadn’t been for the twitching of the dog’s feet, he wouldn’t be certain the dog was alive at all. In her bedroom, Max’s dead sleep matched that of her dog’s. Her hair was in its usual braid and—also as Trey was coming to expect—most of her curls had popped out of the braid and were wild about her face. In the moonlight coming through the open curtains, Max’s hair was an otherworldly color.

Trey peeled off his clothes and slid under the sheets. Even though Max didn’t wake up, she stirred enough to snuggle closer to him and throw an arm over his chest. He rested his hand on hers, feeling the lift of both of their hands with the rise and fall of his chest. He closed his eyes. His last coherent thought before falling asleep was to wonder whether he could dispense with the bag nonsense and just leave some clothes at the farm. Would that violate their understanding?

* * *

A
T
THE
SOUND
of stirring from the bedroom, Max smiled. She got out a mug and poured Trey a cup of coffee. It was her coffee, so he’d grimace. But if he wanted to be certain his first cup of the morning was coffee he approved of, he could beat her to the coffeepot.

She found it amusing that even after the many weekends he’d been staying here he couldn’t wake up before she did. Though working the farmers’ market with her on Saturday mornings meant he was getting closer. She’d told him once to prepare the coffee when he got in on Friday nights and she’d push a button in the morning, but he’d replied that he usually had more important things on his mind after his drive.

He’d been unzipping her jeans when she’d told him to make the coffee. He’d been pushing her onto the couch when he’d told her that he had better things to do.

She could learn to make coffee with his fancy coffeepot. If she was being honest with herself, she could also taste a difference between his coffee and her “sludge.” But why learn to make coffee in a pot that will go away once she signed the mortgage papers? And why grow accustomed to fancy coffee she was too cheap to buy?

Max didn’t share any of these worries with Trey when he stumbled into the kitchen, bleary-eyed and rubbing his face. He was here now. He had driven five hours after work to wake up early the next morning and help her buy her dream. For that, she would always love him. Even when he walked out the door, never to cross the Virginia–North Carolina border again.

He grimaced in anticipation when she handed him his cup, but his eyes perked up at his first sip. After he’d drunk about half the mug, he declared himself awake enough to make “real coffee”—as soon as he’d had his good-morning kiss.

Trey, who was so angry when he talked about his father, his childhood or the farm, could be so sweet when caught off guard. She’d sometimes catch herself wondering what he’d be like if he hadn’t grown up with such hatred and resentment, but then she’d remember that his bitterness had given him his drive to succeed.

She took a sip of her coffee before her mind ran away with her. Philosophy was appropriate for hoeing tomatoes and eggplants, not so much for stale coffee on a rainy Saturday morning.

“What are you smiling about?” Trey asked as he turned around to face her after starting
his
coffee.

“Nothing. No, that’s not true. Thank you for coming down to help me at the market and for pushing me to buy the land. And the Kickstarter idea.” Not knowing what her life would look like after December was terrifying, but the thought of owning the land had taken on enough substance to dampen her fears—most of the time. “I just hope people invest in the Kickstarter. Otherwise, this whole plan is for naught.”

“You have the resources to buy the farm, even if the Kickstarter doesn’t succeed.” She made a face, but Trey wrapped his free arm around her and dropped a coffee-scented kiss on her lips before she could argue with him. “And as far as the Kickstarter is concerned, you’re only convincing them to pay for a product they already want, and I’ll help you do that. Besides—” he pulled away far enough to take a sip of his coffee “—I’ve gotten something out of this summer, too.”

Rid of the farm?
Those were ungrateful words, sown in anxiety and fear about the future. She should eradicate them while they were still too small to spread. “Fresh vegetables?” was what she said instead.

“Well,” he offered, “my vegetable intake does increase on the weekends I visit, but I come to see you. Working the farmers’ market is just a side pleasure.”

It was on the tip of her tongue to ask what would happen to their relationship after she signed the mortgage papers, but they’d already talked about it, so she chickened out.

Max ate some cereal before they left, but Trey preferred to search out his breakfast at the market. After they were both full of coffee, Max packed into the truck with Norma Jean while Trey got in his car to follow behind. At the market, the three of them unloaded the tables and tents, then proceeded to set up the vegetables.

It was raining. Again.

“There’s not a lot,” Trey whispered to her when they started pulling the vegetables out of the back of the truck.

“I know.” She tried to say the words with a layer of optimism, but the sheer sadness of the season encumbered her voice. “The rains have hit us hard this summer.”

“But I was here just three weekends ago and there was plenty.”

“And we didn’t have one fully sunny day in those three weeks since.” She lifted a box of green tomatoes onto the table and laid them out in baskets. All she had were green tomatoes because her first planting had been overcome by blight and her second planting wasn’t ripe yet. Picking some of the tomatoes while green to sell would cut into future harvests, but she had to offer
something,
and with the way the weather had been going, she might not get red tomatoes out of her second planting anyway. To help sales, Max had printed out two recipes: one for fried green tomatoes and one for a green-tomato curry.

She had no melons to offer, no summer squash, eggplant or basil. The peppers had done okay with all the rain and the onions had been harvested before the worst of it started, but her winter squash crop had been cut in half. Everything was rotting in the fields—everything except the weeds.

“And I miss Sean,” she said, not fully believing that she was confessing such a thing. Sidney and Norma Jean were fine. They were hard workers and they were both interested in learning about farming. But Sean had put his soul into the work; Max had felt it each and every time they worked the land together.

Trey stopped pulling vegetables out of the truck and pulled Max into his arms for a hug.

“I feel like I shouldn’t miss him, because he got drunk knowing I would fire him and intending for me to do so. But I still do.” She turned her face into his shirt, hoping her next confession would be lost in the cotton. “And I’m afraid to call Kelly and ask how Sean is, because I’m afraid he ruined that, too.”

Max could feel the pressure of Trey’s kiss through her hair, even if his lips never reached her skin. “You did the right thing. The hard thing, but the right thing.”

“Maybe I should’ve never let him stay after that first time.” It was so easy to look back and question past decisions, especially now that she could see the results.

He straightened his arms and she was able to look directly into his eyes. “When you let Sean stay the first time, you gave him a second chance. That was a hard decision, one I’m not sure I would have the ability to make. After all the weekends I’ve spent with you on the farm, I think you made the right one then. And you made the right one now.”

She could feel the truth of his words in his grip on her shoulders. Trey didn’t like Sean, had hated that he was dating Kelly and despised the man’s alcohol abuse. He’d doubted her decision to give Sean another chance originally, so it was nice to hear a confirmation of it even after the consequences had become apparent. “Thank you.”

Trey gave her a kiss on her lips, then went back to unloading the truck. After a couple minutes, sounding more like an afterthought, he asked, “And your finances?”

Max’s heart sank a little further. In their daily—sometimes hourly—email and text exchanges, Trey hadn’t once asked about her finances. She didn’t want to tell him how tenuous this summer had made her bank account. She hadn’t eaten into her savings account—yet—but she hadn’t added anything to it, either. In the summer she ate mostly what she grew, and this summer there wasn’t much to eat. The downpours had even done the impossible and made the chickens look depressed with their muddy feet and rain dripping off their beaks and combs.

“I’ll still be able to buy the farm—”
so long as we get sunny days for the rest of the summer and I can get some quick fall crops in
“—if that’s what you’re worried about.” Max was worried about so many things. She couldn’t use any Kickstarter money to buy real estate and every time she looked at her bank statement, she saw how close her savings was getting to the breaking point. And yet, when the time came, she’d probably still try to buy the land, even if it took every penny she had.

When she looked up at Trey, his eyes managed to be both warm with sympathy and cold with anger. “I don’t care about you being able to buy the farm. I care about you.” The box Trey was holding dropped with a thud onto the table—luckily it held onions. “Why do you think I’ve been coming down to the farm on all my free weekends?”

“I don’t know.” Now, as people were starting to walk up to the various farmers for their vegetables, was not the time for this conversation. But Max had chickened out during all the appropriate times. “Sometimes I wonder if you’re softening on your stance against moving. I know you’ll never be a farmer, but I wonder if you could lobby at the General Assembly or if that would be a step down. I wonder if you could stand to live in the farmhouse.”

When Trey’s eyes softened with pity and his mouth opened to politely turn her down, Max rushed to finish her thought. “But then I wonder if it would be my parents all over again. If the person you are right now is dependent on you living somewhere other than Durham. My mom may
say
she didn’t resent moving to Illinois, that it was worth it for the two children she’d borne, but I don’t always believe her.”

Trey had closed his mouth and he was silent for several seconds. “Max, we agreed that our relationship was a temporary thing.”

“I know. And I’m not trying to back out or renegotiate, I’m just...” What was she doing anyway? Trey hadn’t yet given her an outright no, but he would if she pressed the matter—and no amount of unburdening of her soul was worth how she’d feel when he did. She smiled; it was a weak smile, but the corners of her mouth lifted and she showed teeth, so it counted. “You said I should think big and not worry about reality.” She shook her head. “That’s all this is.”

“Max, I never wanted to disappoint you, and it’s not about you.”

“Can we not talk about this now?” she asked, interrupting him. “Customers are going to start arriving any minute.”

Trey huffed and gave her a disgusted, disappointed look, but he said, “Sure.” Then he put on his “I can sell a fur coat in the Mohave” face and turned to meet the crowd.

It had taken all of Norma Jean’s merchandising abilities to turn the Patch’s meager crop into something enticing. Bounty it wasn’t, but neither did it look to be the last scraps before the apocalypse. Which was how it felt.

The financial loss wasn’t only one problem. She also worried that she was losing the faith of her CSA customers, especially the ones who’d just joined this year and didn’t have the previous years’ experience of what she could provide during a normal summer. And then there was the simple emotional toll.

For most of the summer, all the work they had put in felt like a waste.

Max pulled herself out of her wretched and self-destructive musings long enough to notice Trey talking to someone. Not a customer, or at least not a regular one. The slight African-American man had a goatee and was wearing a Carolina T-shirt. Attached to each of his hands was a small child—a girl and a boy. The little girl was wearing a pink princess dress, complete with sparkles and lace, with enough confidence that Max felt underdressed. The man looked vaguely familiar, though she didn’t recognize the woman holding the infant and standing at his side.

“I heard a rumor from my sister that you were working the farmers’ market some weekends,” the man said. “I told her that she was a fool and a liar, but now I see it’s true. I’d make you give me some of the money I just lost in a bet, but I’m afraid it will scare you back North.”

“D.C. is hardly North.” Trey said the words with a smile and a Southern accent so thick Max could have painted walls with it.

“It may be a Southern city, but it’s not exactly the South,” the man said with a smile and a shake of his head. “Introduce me to the farmer who convinced you to come down without basketball tickets as a bribe.”

Trey laughed. It wasn’t the laugh he let loose when he was about to convince you to buy something; it was his genuine, “I’m happy to see you” laugh. This man was a friend. Trey claimed he had no ties to North Carolina other than Kelly and the farm he couldn’t wait to get rid of, but that was a lie. However loose, this man was still a tie.

“Max Bergstrom, meet Jerome Harris. Jerome and I went to high school together. He’s now a fancy professor at U.N.C. He’s the guy I was supposed to go to the basketball game with.”

“Oh, right.” Max shook Jerome’s hand. “The game was lots of fun. Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me. Thank the germs the students pass around for making me intimate with my bathroom. I hope to never be that sick again.”