Weekends in Carolina (23 page)

Trey walked back over to where Max slept and caressed her hair, which was coarse and springy under his hand. He would miss her hair. He would miss her freckles.

She stirred but didn’t wake. He gave her hair one last squeeze, patted his pockets for his keys and wallet and headed out the door.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

T
REY
USED
THE
first ping sounding through the audiobook he was listening to on his phone as a signal to increase the speed on the treadmill. At the second ping, he wiped his dripping face with the gym’s towel. At the third, he increased the incline. If he kept going at this rate, he’d be too exhausted to read the texts from Kelly—because Trey was sure that was what those dings were. The fourth ping had Trey changing the program from straight running to interval. Even if he was able to read the texts, he would be too worn out to process them.

The towel was soaked with his sweat and fairly useless, but Trey tried mopping his face anyway. The only other option was to get off the treadmill and respond to his brother. But that would mean thinking about Max. And the farm. And Max. He raised the volume, letting the mind-numbing voice of the narrator ruin what would otherwise be an interesting book on inner-city education and drown out any thought of the farm. And Max.

Kelly had sent him some emails marked with a little red “important” exclamation point. Trey had ignored those. Then Kelly had changed the subject heading from “Dad and the farm” to “READ THIS!!!” and finally to “STOP STICKING YOUR FUCKING HEAD IN THE SAND.” Trey had left all of those emails unread. He’d sold the land to Max; it was no longer his problem. His ties had dissolved when he signed those papers. Family had never been enough to tie him to his past, and that hadn’t changed.

Max might have been enough. Max could have been enough.
Max would have been enough.

The volume coming through his headphones was as loud as he could stand it without going deaf, so Trey turned his gaze from the television screens in front of him to the screen on the treadmill and ticked down the seconds in his head with each pound of his feet.
Two. One. Sixty. Fifty-nine. Fifty-eight.
If he could control his breathing, he could call what he was doing “meditating” instead of “avoiding.”

The screen on his phone changed with the incoming call. From Kelly. When Trey forced his gaze from the treadmill screen back up to the TVs and tried to read the running headlines on CNN, he could no longer lie to himself. At ten o’clock in the morning on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, in an almost empty gym, Trey could ignore the no-cell-phone rule. He lowered the speed of the treadmill to where he could huff out words and answered the phone with “What?”

“That answers my question about whether or not you even read my emails.”

“The Harris’s tobacco farm is now officially Max’s Vegetable Patch. Why would I read emails about it? I don’t care about it.”
I care about Max.
He swabbed his face with the dripping towel, scrubbing as best he could while trying to run and talk on the phone at the same time, but the thought didn’t disappear.

“I can barely understand you. What are you doing?”

“Running. I’ll call you back when I’m not busy.” Running while holding the phone to his ear was easier than he’d thought. He upped the speed of the treadmill.

“Dammit.” Kelly’s voice interrupted the movement of Trey’s finger across the air to cancel the call. “You’ll always find some excuse to not hear what I have to say, so I’ll just get on with it. I found the will.”

“What did you say?” Trey was only half listening.

“I found the will. Dad kept his promise to Max. He left the farm to you, on the condition that you offered her a new three-year lease.”

Trey stopped running. When his heels curved over the back of the treadmill he lurched forward, smacking his fist down on the red emergency-stop button. The machine stopped with a jolt that rocked through his body. Only the tightness in his chest kept him from smashing forward. “What did you say?”

“Dad’s new will. He’d shoved it into Mama’s Bible. We only searched the attic. Neither of us thought about searching the box I’d taken home.”

Trey left his towel hanging on the side of the treadmill. He’d come back later to grab it and wipe down the machine. What he needed now was a place he could talk without falling over. He headed into the empty yoga studio and sat in the corner on the cool parquet floor.

He couldn’t keep one small promise to you.

“I don’t care about where you found it. What did you say was in it?”

“He kept his promise to Max. The new will stated that you were to inherit the land on the condition that you offer Max another three-year lease.”

“And what if I wasn’t willing to?”

“Then the land would go to Uncle Garner and Aunt Lois.”

Who would have offered Max another lease without being asked.... “I’ve sold the land. This shouldn’t matter.”

“I thought you’d want to know. Dad wanted Max to have the land.” Why was his brother’s voice so chipper?

“You thought I’d want to know that by forcing Max to buy the land instead of leasing it, I exceeded Dad’s hopes and expectations?” Trey’s teeth were tight around the words coming out of his mouth. “Why would I want to know that?”

“I don’t know. I...”

“Does it piss you off? To know that Dad wasn’t going to leave the land to you, no matter what? Even if I had refused to obey his explicit wishes and he was still going to leave the land to someone else because you were the ‘gay son’?”

“Fuck you, Trey.” The curse hammered at Trey’s ears through the phone. “You think you know everything about me and everything about Dad because
you
have bad memories. You probably even think what you learned being at the farm with Max confirmed your beliefs about Dad. Sure, he wasn’t a drunk, but he was the same old bastard he always was and the proof of that is that he wasn’t going to leave the family farm to the
gay son.
Fuck you.”

“What? Am I wrong?”

“While he was revising his will, Dad asked me if I wanted it. I told him that he should sell it to Max and use the money to pay for his medical bills when he got older. He said he’d think about it.”

Trey didn’t believe a word of it—and yet, the laughing stories Max and Kelly had told at her party floated around in his head. “You’re telling me that when you challenged the will, you did so actually believing he left the farm to you?”

“No. I’m telling you that he liked what was being done with the farm and wanted Max to keep farming, but also that he was too set in his ways to sell the farm and be done with it. I didn’t know if he left me the farm, you the farm or even if he willed the damn thing to Max. But for the first time in his entire adult life, Dad had a vision beyond the next beer can.”

The hard edge to Kelly’s voice softened. “Dad didn’t fully have the guts to carry out his or Mom’s dream of the land. Hell, maybe he even thought you’d appreciate owning the family farm and being a part of its rebirth. I’m not saying the old man was perfect or even a winner of a guy, just that he’d changed, and maybe it’s time you stop letting who
he
was run
your
life.”

Trey pulled the phone away from his ear and stared at it. There was a photo of his brother on the screen. Even in the thumbnail photo, behind Kelly’s stupid face, Trey could see the farm. That goddamned farm that would never let him go, even after he’d sold the thing. It looked like a recent picture. This photo might have been taken by Sean, or even by Max.

The image he’d been fighting floated through his mind—all curly, red hair and freckles and hypnotic, green eyes. Strong and sure, brimming with vulnerability and fight. No matter how far he ran, he couldn’t escape the images of Max his mind could conjure. And her presence was enough to overwhelm any audiobook he listened to.

And Dad had finally kept his promise. For Max.

Standing in Max’s fields, Kelly stared back at him. Trey knew his brother couldn’t actually see him, but the reality of life didn’t matter. His field of vision narrowed until all he could see was the farm and Max’s face and all he could hear was his father promising to quit drinking and then the
click
of another beer can opening.

Somewhere in the room a man called out, “Hello? Trey? Are you still there?” Trey swiped the screen and the voice disappeared. The phone clattered on the floor and the room was silent. The floor was no longer cool. The wall he leaned against was no longer cool. The entire room burned. He banged his head against the wall behind him. All that did was add to his headache.

Trey took off his shirt, balled it up into a damp, stinky wad and threw it across the room. It barely made any noise at all when it landed. Having not gotten any relief, he kicked at his phone. It sailed across the smooth floor before crashing against the tower of aerobic steps. He hoped the damn thing was broken. Then he lowered his head onto his knees and cried for a man he’d never known and would never know.

* * *

M
AX
WAS
FIXING
dinner when the phone rang. It was the house phone, so she couldn’t check the caller ID. But she didn’t have to check to know it wasn’t Trey. He wasn’t calling her back. He wasn’t going to email her back. He wasn’t coming back. No matter what the deed said, in Trey’s eyes, this would always be Hank’s farm, and he could never come back to Hank’s farm.

She kept looking at the handset, almost willing it to flash red like a superhero’s phone. So she would know it was important. But all it did was ring. Finally, she picked it up. “Hello?”

“Max?” Kelly’s voice was at the other end of the line. “You’ll never guess what I found.”

The key that would unlock Trey’s anger?
“No, I probably won’t.”

He sighed, but didn’t make her continue to play the game. “The will. I found Dad’s will.”

“Oh.” And did Hank disappoint her in the end, like he had done to both of his children? “Where was it?”

“Mom’s Bible. I’d taken it home with me and didn’t think to look there. Dad kept his promise to you.”

“I didn’t have to buy the farm.”

She didn’t realize that she’d spoken aloud until Kelly responded. “No, you didn’t have to buy the farm. Trey may have said he would’ve sold the farm out from under you and paid the penalty, but I think he would have changed his mind.”

“Oh.” Max sat in a chair, not quite ready to process what Kelly was saying.

“I’m sorry you had to go through the hassle, but I’m glad the farm’s in your hands. I think it’s probably what Dad wanted to happen eventually. But I don’t think he had the courage to do it while he was living.”

He’s not the only one who lacked courage.
“It doesn’t matter any longer. I own the farm. We can’t really go back.”

“No, but...” Kelly sounded disappointed. “I guess I thought both you and Trey would be happy. You know, that Dad eventually kept his promise.”

“You told Trey?”

“I found out this weekend. He finally stopped ignoring my calls today. Neither of you seem as pleased about the will as you should be.”

Between the bad summer season she’d had and the nearly empty bank account, Max wasn’t sure why she should be pleased that one small, different decision by Kelly to look in a different box may have meant that she wouldn’t have had to buy the property. She hadn’t been ready to buy the farm. She’d wanted those three extra years.

But you don’t want those three years any longer.
Max leaned into the back of her chair. If Kelly had found the will, she wouldn’t own Max’s Vegetable Patch. Trey had been intent on selling. She’d have been so focused on holding him to the lease that she wouldn’t have thought she could buy the farm. She wouldn’t have the Kickstarter money going to fix up the second barn, nor would she have the new customers the Kickstarter had brought in—partially making up for the ones she knew would leave because of the bad CSA year.

“I’m glad you didn’t find the will earlier, Kelly.”

“It would have saved you all this hassle.”

She shrugged. “It would have created new and different hassles. But I’m glad to know Hank kept his promise to me.”

On the other end of the line, Kelly snorted. “Knowing he kept his promise to you helps me, too. If he was able to keep his promise to you, then maybe he was being honest to me.”

“About?”

“About not caring that he had a gay son. About learning not to care that anyone had a gay son.”

“I didn’t realize...” Her words trailed off as the import of what Kelly was telling her sunk in. “You were just a good actor.” All those years Max had watched Kelly and wondered how he could be so easy with his father, knowing Hank as she did. Kelly hadn’t been easy with his father. Kelly had been acting with his father as if his father always acted properly toward him. Kelly had made that relationship work.

“Once Dad sobered up, I saw my chance. Not that Dad wasn’t an intolerant bastard while sober— despite his many attempts not to be—but drunkenness made his prejudice angry. Under all that anger, I hoped I had a father.”

Max took a deep breath and let Kelly’s words soak in. “I’m really impressed. I guess that sounds condescending, but I can’t imagine how hard that must have been for you. I don’t think I could’ve stood Hank long enough to do that.”

Hank had been a misogynist, but so long as he’d only ever saw Max doing farmwork and in farm clothes, he’d treated her as a farmer—his “lady farmer.” She’d been careful not to let him see her as feminine because wrangling that respect back from him would have been too exhausting. And Kelly had done it.

“Dad wasn’t a great guy.” His chuckle was cynical and rough. “Even sober, he was an asshole. But he was my father and the only one I have. And, ya’ know, given another thirty years, he might have even been ready to give me away when I got married.”

Max was stunned silent for a moment, then burst out laughing. Kelly joined her. “If you had to wait for Hank’s approval, you would have died an old maid.”

When they finally stopped laughing, Kelly spoke. “I’m sorry I didn’t find the will in time, Max.”

“I’m not. I would have continued to be afraid to buy the farm. And I’m glad I did. Sink or swim, I’m glad I did.”

“I hope Trey turns around. He’s more malleable than Dad, but they have the same core.”