Keepsake: True North #2 Page 2

  2

  Zach

  Thursday dinner required a great number of pots and pans. I washed them all, one by one, hanging them from the old hooks above the sink to dry.

  “Zach, honey?” Ruth came into the kitchen with the nearly empty pie plate. “You don’t have to do all of these yourself, you know.”

  “I don’t mind,” I said. The Lord knew I ate enough meals in this house. And most Thursdays Ruth had the neighbors over for dinner. It was a tradition that started because of me. A couple months before I made the big move down the road from the Abrahams’ to the Shipleys’, Ruth had started up with Thursday Dinner as a way for me to stay connected to my adoptive family.

  Ruth worked her butt off all week long, and then she threw a feast on Thursday, too. A few pots and pans were the least I could do.

  “While you’re here, I have some things for you,” Ruth said, setting a stack of books on the countertop. “The librarian had four of the ones you requested, but she’s still waiting on that C.S. Lewis title.”

  “Oh, awesome.”

  Ruth straightened the stack with the practiced hands of a mom who was used to tidying up after a big family. “Didn’t we have all the Harry Potter books, though?”

  “Nobody could find number six,” I said, rinsing soap off a pot.

  “Ah, okay. I also brought you a book you didn’t request. It’s something I picked up for you at the bookstore.”

  My heart sank when I saw the title: Acing the New GED Tests. She’d been urging me to take this set of tests which would result in a certificate that was almost a high school equivalency. I wasn’t looking forward to it. “Thanks,” I said anyway. “You didn’t have to do that.”

  “It’s my pleasure. You’re going to do well on these tests. You’ll see. The last thing I have for you is the final slice of apple cranberry pie.”

  “Now you’re talking,” I said, and she laughed. “That goes down easier than a test any day of the week.” I rinsed out the last saucepan and tipped it onto the rack to dry.

  “I’ll just find you a fork.” She put the piece of pie on yet another plate that would need washing. I would have been happy to eat it right out of the pan, but that wasn’t how Ruth did things. She always treated me as well as her own children, and I was grateful.

  I wasn’t a Shipley, though. It didn’t matter how hard I tried to pretend, this wasn’t my family. And the timing of the GED book’s appearance felt ominous. While I’d listened to Audrey’s plans to learn more about the cidermaking business, I’d realized that Griff was gaining a new business partner as well as a life partner. Audrey did part-time work for a farm-to-table program in Boston, but her real work seemed to be helping Griff grow his cidery.

  And now his brother Dylan had opted to go to college only part time, using his other hours to work for the family, too. The more help Griff got from his family, the less he’d need outsiders.

  No wonder they were urging me to figure out my next steps. While the Shipleys would always need seasonal help on the farm, I worried that my cushy live-in, year-round gig was drawing to a close.

  Feeling blue, I took my pie into the dining room. My seat had been taken, so I leaned up against the wall and took the first bite of heaven. Nobody made apple pie as good as Mrs. Shipley’s. The buttery crust crumbled when I broke it with my fork. And her secret ingredient—sweetened cranberries—burst on my tongue when I chewed.

  Before I came to Vermont, I didn’t know that food could be both plentiful and wonderful. When I was a child, there was never enough. Even after four years, I still felt a little stunned every time I sat down to another generous meal with the Abrahams or the Shipleys.

  Who wouldn’t want to stay right here until his ass was kicked out for good?

  I ate while eavesdropping on the conversations around me. Keeping tabs on everyone else was a skill I’d needed to survive my unusual upbringing. My giant, needy family had always been rife with factions and uprisings. Listening more often than I spoke was just common sense.

  But the listening I did at the Shipleys’ table was for entertainment value, not survival. Griffin and his cousins were arguing over where we should go out drinking tomorrow night.

  “Dude, the Goat is cheap, and it’s close,” Griffin said. “Don’t harsh on the Goat.”

  “Look,” argued his cousin Kyle. “I’m in favor of the four-dollar beers and the short drive. But I swear they named that place after the women who drink there.”

  “Naa-aay!” added Kieran.

  Griffin snorted. “Then why don’t your chances of hooking up improve whenever we drive over to the Gin Mill?”

  “How would I know? We’re always at the Goat!”

  I bit down on my smile. It was the same discussion every week. And invariably, we ended up at the Goat, because Griff would offer to be the designated driver, and because his ex still lived over the bar. He and Audrey liked to visit Zara and her new baby.

  I turned my attention to the women’s conversation, which was always more nuanced and revealing.

  “We could always make up a bed for Lark in the alcove,” Mrs. Shipley was saying. “Once upon a time we did all our bookkeeping on the kitchen table, anyway.”

  Lark shook her head. “I’ll be absolutely fine in the bunkhouse. Don’t worry about me.”

  My last bite of pie flipped over in my stomach. Lark was sleeping in the bunkhouse?

  All evening I’d been rationing my glances at May’s best friend. Now I helped myself to another one. And, yup. She was still just as breathtaking as I’d remembered.

  Lark was named for a bird that weighed less than three ounces, but there was nothing fragile about this girl. She had giant brown eyes over high cheekbones. Her skin was olive-toned and perfectly smooth, and her dark, shiny hair was cut in a way that showed off the length of her kissable neck.

  She looked vivid, as if God had painted her features with bolder paints than he used on the rest of the world. In addition to perfect skin, he’d softened her with lush curves and a full mouth.

  Lark must have felt the weight of my gaze, because her eyes tracked over to find me staring at her.

  Whoops. Busted.

  I felt myself flush as she studied me for a fleeting moment. Her expression was clouded by a flicker of something I couldn’t quite read, and then her gaze dropped to her hands. Since I’d already been caught staring, I didn’t bother looking away. I couldn’t have, anyhow. Lark was the most enchanting woman I’d ever met.

  She’d visited once before, back in March, during pruning season. I remembered exactly where I’d been when I’d first seen her—stacking branches outside the dairy barn after pruning all day in the orchard. The sun had been setting, which made the light gold and pink. May Shipley came walking toward the cider house door with a growler jug of cider in her hand. She was talking to somebody, but I didn’t pay much attention until I heard the sound of a truly beautiful laugh. It was low and musical and knowing.

  I’d looked up to see who could make such a noise. So the first view I ever had of Lark, she was smiling. Those dark eyes sparkled with mirth, and I caught myself smiling, too, even though I didn’t have the first clue what the two of them were laughing over.

  The girls had walked around the other side of the barn toward a hammock that stretched between two old oaks. I’d slowed down at stacking those pruned branches so that I could hear more of their laughter floating in the dusky air.

  At dinnertime that night, I’d purposefully sat on the same side of the table as Lark, because I knew if I sat across from her I’d stare. She’d stayed in the farmhouse overnight and left after lunch the next day. During those twenty-four hours, I’d spent each meal feeling hyperaware of her. The sound of her voice made my chest tighten each time she spoke. Whenever her gaze touched me, even for a fraction of a second, my neck got hot.

  Honest to God, I didn’t know what to do with that reaction. There was nobody who’d ever made me feel that way before. My strange upbringing meant th
at I hadn’t met many women in my life. This new, powerful tug of raw attraction was completely foreign to me.

  Last spring, when May hugged Lark goodbye, she’d said, “You have to email me every day, okay? I can’t believe I have to go a whole year without seeing you.”

  A whole year. Disappointment had settled into my gut, and I didn’t know what to do with that, either.

  Then Lark had driven away in her little Volkswagen, and I’d done my best to put her out of my mind. But seven or eight weeks ago, May had come crying into the dairy barn one morning. I overheard the brief story she’d told her brother: May’s emails to Lark had gone unanswered for several days. So May had written to Lark’s mother asking if everything was okay.

  “I thought she’d tell me that Lark had lost her phone or something!” May had sobbed onto Griffin’s shoulder. “But she’s missing in Guatemala. They can’t find her. They’re searching…”

  When I heard this, I’d walked right out of the dairy barn, my shovel still in my hands. I found myself standing on the spot where I’d been that spring day, the first time I saw Lark’s smile. It was as if I didn’t quite believe what May had just said.

  Missing. What a bizarre, unsatisfying word.

  I didn’t even know the girl, but her disappearance bothered me a lot. I told myself that it was because May was so upset. Every time I came into the farmhouse for a meal, I’d check May’s face, looking for good news.

  There wasn’t any for weeks. In fact, May had looked more distraught than I’d ever seen her, times three. It was a rough summer. But then May had come running into the orchard one afternoon last month, a big smile on her face, her eyes sparkling with unshed tears of relief. “Lark is safe!” she’d announced. “They found her, and she’s okay!”

  That was about four weeks ago. And I’d been so busy with picking season that I hadn’t heard any more about her. Since Lark was safe, I’d put her out of my mind again.

  Until today. Griffin had mentioned casually over lunch that Lark was coming to stay for the rest of the picking season, and I’d almost dropped my sandwich. I sat there at the picnic table remembering how distracted I’d been for those twenty-four hours when she’d visited in the spring. And I wondered if it was possible that one person could have such a powerful effect on me again.

  The answer was yes.

  Tonight I felt the very same pull. There was no part of her that didn’t make my eyes want to linger—on the sheen of her hair, the warm tone of her skin. She was just as beautiful as I’d remembered. No—more. Only two things seemed to have changed about her. She looked thinner now. And there were dark circles under both eyes. Earlier, when Griffin boomed into nearly deafening laughter, she actually flinched.

  I’d ached to see that.

  Mrs. Shipley wasn’t finished apologizing to Lark for the bunkhouse accommodations. “Your room has a door on it, so you’ll have privacy. But you’ll be sharing a bathroom with three men, sometimes four. They do the early milking from six to seven thirty, so that’s the best time of day for a lengthy shower, I’d think.”

  “The bunkhouse will be absolutely fine,” Lark assured her. “I always loved that funny little building. But I’m not booting anyone out of his room, am I?”

  Mrs. Shipley shook her head. “Griffin used to stay there in the front bedroom, but now he’s in the bungalow with Audrey. So we’ve kept that room for guests.”

  “I’ll show Lark the room,” May said, getting up. “Lark, you carry our drinks, and I’ll get your bag.”

  “Deal.” Lark stood, too.

  I kept my eyes to myself as she left the room.

  Griffin and I helped to clear the last glasses off the table. And then it was time to say goodbye to Isaac and Leah.

  “Goodnight, sweet boy,” Leah Abraham said, folding me into a hug.

  “Goodnight.”

  Leah was only twenty-nine to my twenty-three. But nobody had ever been more of a parent to me than Leah and her husband. It was the Abrahams who took me in when I’d been turned out of my so-called home four years ago. And, more than that, they were the only two people who understood what I’d been through.

  They knew how strange and difficult it was to make a new life after leaving the odd place where we’d been raised. Because they’d lived through the same thing, too.

  I patted Leah’s back awkwardly until my Thursday-night hug was finished. I knew that Leah hugged me on purpose—she was trying to prove to me that hugging was ordinary. That it wasn’t a sin. When I first came to Vermont, Leah’s hugs always froze me in my tracks, because holding another man’s wife was just weird. Even now, whenever I received the occasional hug, I just sort of tolerated it.

  Where we grew up, touching resulted in lashes from the whip. Hugging was a punishable offense, just like talking out of turn or sneaking food from the pantry. As a result, I kept to myself. I was disinclined to touch anyone or talk too much except with people I knew very well.

  There were half a dozen of those.

  “I’ll see you at the market on Saturday,” I told Isaac. “And tomorrow morning I’ll do that oil change on your truck. You can pick it up any time after noon.”

  “Thanks, man,” he said. “See you soon.” He passed through the doorway in front of me with his three-year-old daughter, Maeve, passed out on his shoulder. Her sleeping face came into view. She was a lucky little girl.

  Maeve would grow up to be a world-class hugger. She was the center of her parents’ universe, and she had no idea that life could be otherwise. Maeve would never be lost in the shuffle of too many children competing for not quite enough food. She would never be slapped for asking a question. And that was just the beginning.

  Maeve’s name wasn’t straight out of the old testament.

  She wasn’t required to call her father “sir.”

  She had a valid birth certificate, and she’d get better than an eighth-grade education.

  She wouldn’t be married off to an old man the day she turned seventeen.

  Isaac opened the back door of his wife’s car and gently placed his child’s sleeping body into her car seat.

  I’d lived with Isaac and Leah on their farm my first two years in Vermont. But eighteen months ago I made the big two-mile move down the road, because the Shipleys had a larger operation and they could afford to pay me wages.

  Isaac would have kept me on if I’d needed it. He was the closest thing I had to a family. But living and working on my own felt right and good, and Isaac understood that. “You can always come back if it doesn’t work out,” Leah had assured me.

  Standing on the front porch, I watched the Abrahams drive away, hoping I’d never have to impose upon them again.

  Even after their headlights disappeared, I stood a while longer in the sweet Vermont air. The Shipley farm smelled of growing things and of ripening fruit. This time of year, the scent had a slightly vinegar undertone of apples in decay. We’d worked the cider press for six hours today, which meant that I was also thoroughly apple-scented. If I hurried, I could catch a shower before lights-out in the bunkroom.

  But Griff had other plans. “Hey, Chewie. Here’s your library books.”

  “Thanks.”

  His cousins came clomping onto the porch, too. “Got a second, guys?” Griff called. “I need to talk to everybody.”

  “Sure, Han.” I had several nicknames these days. And here was an irony—Griff nicknamed me after a hairy alien from Star Wars, but it was meant to be flattering. And his cousin Kyle called me “choir boy,” but meant it as a dig.

  Strange family, this. But I loved them anyway.

  Wordlessly I followed him and his cousins off the porch and across the darkening lawn. Whatever Griff had to say, he didn’t want to say it on the porch.

  As we crossed the grass, halfway to the orchard, the sound of crickets rose up around us. Their nighttime humming was a familiar chorus. An owl hooted nearby and was answered by another.

  Walking around the Shipley property at nigh
t always made me think of Psalm 96. Let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them; let all the trees of the forest sing for joy. In August, the fields of Vermont were at their most jubilant.

  Funny how I never really appreciated the bible until I got free of the people who’d taught it to me.

  While Isaac and Leah were kind to me because they knew where I’d come from, the Shipleys were kind to me simply because they were kind people. I’d known them almost four years now, since I’d first arrived shoeless and hungry at the Abrahams’ down the road. But I still felt like the new guy.

  I wasn’t ostracized like a freak here, but there was still some good-natured teasing. It hadn’t taken Griffin Shipley long to figure out just how odd a life I’d lived as a child. “Oh my God!” he’d hollered during the first month I met him. “Zach hasn’t seen Star Wars!”

  The next week he’d corralled me into a movie marathon of the original three films. “The canon,” as he referred to them. We’d both been stumbling-tired at the farmers’ market the next day. But according to Griffin it was worth it, because I finally knew that Darth Vader was Luke’s father.

  And that was just the beginning. “I must educate you about Monty Python,” came next. And a million other movies. And the rules of football. I was still a little shaky on those. There were too many positions.

  The things I didn’t know were an endless source of amusement to the Shipley clan. The time they fed me Pop Rocks was pretty funny. I didn’t know about Halloween or Valentine’s Day (both “heathen holidays” according to my former overlords). Or mistletoe. Or eggnog.

  I didn’t know any sexual innuendo. Those still got me into trouble because it seemed there were a million terms for sex, and they didn’t all make sense. I’ll never forget the sight of Griffin doubled over after explaining what a blowjob was.