Keepsake: True North #2 Page 3

  “But nobody’s blowing on anything,” I’d protested while he tried to remember how to breathe.

  At least they teased each other as much as me. Maybe more. This season Griffin had begun referring to Kyle as Crash-n-Burn, because Kyle seemed to spend a ridiculous amount of time trying to figure out what to say to women.

  Not like I’d worked that out, either.

  Griffin halted in the middle of the lawn. I wasn’t expecting that, and I actually walked right into him.

  “Yo,” he said, spinning to catch my shoulders in his hands. “My football days are over.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Why are we standing in the middle of the yard?” Kyle asked.

  “Just wait for Jude and Dylan.”

  The other men jogged toward us. And when the five of us were assembled, he explained. “Two things. The first is about Lark.”

  My eyes dropped to my boots, but I hung on every word.

  “She was May’s roommate at BU. But this past year she’s been on some job in Guatemala.”

  “Nice!” Kyle said.

  “No, not nice,” Griffin contradicted his cousin. “Listen to what I’m telling you. She wasn’t kicking back on vacation, okay? Some bad shit went down there, and it shook her up. May isn’t sure exactly what she endured.” Griffin cleared his throat. “Coulda been any kind of ugliness at all.”

  My whole body went ice cold and I actually shivered even though it was still seventy flipping degrees outside. I took a deep, slow breath and exhaled.

  “Is she okay?” Dylan asked. “She looks tired.”

  “Well…” Griff rubbed the back of her neck. “She’s here to work, but she’s also here to get away from the city and try to relax. So take it easy on her. We’ll just have to see how she does. I’ve known her a long time, and she’s a strong person. And—guys, I shouldn’t need to say this—the girl is off limits.” Griffin swung his head pointedly left and right, making sure to include both his cousins in this decree. “Got it?”

  “Yes, Master,” Kyle said. “I won’t turn on the lady charm.”

  “Like she’d notice.” His brother Kieran snickered.

  I noticed that Griffin didn’t bother to nail me with the speech or the glare. That’s just the way it was. My celibacy was widely acknowledged and occasionally teased.

  “The second thing is that I have a plan for while Audrey is gone to France.”

  “Is it a cure for sexual frustration? Because I’m all ears,” Kyle said.

  Griff ignored him. “I’m going to redo the kitchen in the bungalow, as well as the half bathroom.”

  “By yourself?” Jude asked.

  Griffin chuckled. “With your help, I hope. Got any extra hours for me? The pay is the usual rate, plus all the apple pie you can eat.”

  “Sure, man,” Jude said. “I’ll give you my Mondays off. But Saturday is for Sophie. If she goes to visit her mother, I’ll have even more time for you.”

  Griffin lifted his chin. “I really appreciate that. Thank you.”

  “Hang on,” I said slowly. “You’re going to rip out the old appliances and fixtures, re-plumb, sand and paint the cabinets…”

  “And remove a wall,” Griff put in. “And change out the countertops.”

  “And harvest twenty thousand apple trees?” I asked.

  “And make a record number of cases of cider.” Griff grinned at me in the dark. “In the next twelve weeks.”

  “Um… How is that all going to happen?” I wanted to know.

  Griff couldn’t resist a Star Wars quote. “Do… or do not. There is no try.” He spread his arms wide, then dropped them. “I don’t fucking know how it all gets done. But after Audrey leaves I’m going to move into the bunkhouse with you guys. That way it doesn’t matter if there’s no water or electricity in the bungalow.”

  I was already thinking through a plan of attack. “The appliances have to go first. That will give us some room to work.”

  Griff clapped me on the shoulder. “Yeah. And you can help me install the new ones. But mostly I have another job for you. Ready?”

  “Sure?”

  “I want you and Lark to handle every one of the farmers’ markets this season. That’s going to help me balance the farm labor and cidermaking with the renovation. I’ll be ten times more efficient if I’m not driving all over Vermont four days a week. Can you do that for me?”

  “Sure. Done.” It took me a minute to wrap my head around this little promotion. Until now, there’d always been a Shipley at every market. Getting the right stuff on the truck and selling through the inventory was a bit of an art form. So I was happy that he trusted me with that whole revenue stream. And? Time alone with Lark.

  Pinch me.

  “And, Dyl?” he addressed his younger brother. “You’re the dairyman whenever you’re not at school. I’m paying you starting right now, since you’re a part-time college man.”

  “Sweet.” Dylan liked the sound of that. In less than two weeks he’d be driving to the University of Vermont three days a week. His twin sister was going away to Harkness College in Connecticut, full time, and would miss the harvest season.

  “And nobody spill my secret to Audrey, all right? The kitchen is a surprise for her. I’m going to start the demolition the minute her plane takes off.”

  “Sure, man.”

  “That’s all I had to say. G’night, guys. Sleep well because I’m gonna work your asses off.”

  Griff and Jude walked back toward the farmhouse, with Dylan trailing them.

  Kyle and Kieran and I headed the other direction, toward the bunkhouse. “Dibs on the shower,” I said.

  “Damn you,” Kieran muttered.

  “I’ll hurry,” I promised as we reached the stone structure.

  The Shipleys’ bunkhouse was an old building that had stood for a century. It had wide pine plank floors and a big oak door. I loved this place.

  The guest room was on the right as you entered, and the bathroom on the left. Straight ahead was the bunk room, where five twin beds were built into the walls. I had the one under the windows, while the others were double decker on the side walls. There was a big old closet on the final wall of the room, and we each had a trunk under the bottom bunks.

  When this place was full, there was barely enough space for five guys. But it was roomy enough with just the three of us. And Griff’s temporary presence wouldn’t overcrowd us. I liked his company.

  Dropping my books on my bed, I grabbed my towel and headed for the shower. On my way to the big bathroom I passed the door to the guest bedroom, which was half open. Lark must have brought some music with her, because a twang of guitars and a female vocalist drifted out into the hallway. I heard May giggle. Lark answered in a husky voice that seemed to resonate in my chest.

  Hell.

  I closed the bathroom door and turned on the shower, giving the ancient plumbing a chance to heat the water. It was time to strip, but for once I hesitated. It was a little weird getting naked if a woman could just walk right in here. I was used to the all-male environment, where I didn’t have to think before taking off my clothes.

  After hurriedly tossing my clothes onto the wall hook, I stepped under the warm spray. After a hard day’s work, it was blissful. My muscles were tired in a satisfying way, and I enjoyed the rhythm of the water hitting my bare skin.

  Like food, hot water was scarce where I grew up. I hadn’t known you could indulge in a hot shower at the end of the day without feeling guilt over it.

  There had been plenty that Isaac and Leah had needed to teach me after my nineteen years living at Paradise Ranch. When I got to Vermont, I’d never touched a computer or a telephone. I’d never eaten fast food. I didn’t know what Red Bull was, or a Quarter Pounder. I didn’t know Star Wars or the Black Keys or Game of Thrones.

  Some of my ignorance was even more embarrassing.

  I’d never forget the time when Isaac had first told me the story of his early days in Vermont. He and Leah had
run off from Paradise Ranch together, basically camping their way across the country, from dusty Wyoming to Vermont. “We liked it here, and it was August. So we picked apples all season and then stayed on.” Living as frugally as two humans can, it had taken the two of them only five years to scrape together a tiny down payment on a failing farm. Even now, Isaac and Leah worked like dogs to make the place pay them a living wage.

  I had listened admiringly to this story, impressed by both the pluck and luck it had taken to go from teenage cult members to landowners in the span of ten years. “It’s lucky that Maeve wasn’t born until after you could buy the farm,” I’d said. My entire young life, I’d watched the responsibility of too many children weigh down the young mothers at Paradise Ranch.

  To Isaac’s credit, he never laughed at my frequent displays of ignorance. Not once. “That wasn’t luck, my man. That’s birth control.”

  “What’s that?” I’d asked. I’d been almost twenty years old, and I hadn’t even known there was a way to avoid getting your wife pregnant.

  The next week, Isaac had given me a book about sex ed—the kind that preteens are handed by modern parents. And just to make sure I got the message, he explained birth control to me one night after Leah and Maeve had gone to bed.

  And even though we lived in the middle of nowhere and I lacked any kind of social life, Isaac had put a new box of condoms in my dresser drawer. “Just in case, right? It’s different here, Zach,” he’d said, which was the understatement of the century. “Nobody is going to give you a beating for having sex. But that doesn’t mean you don’t have to be careful.”

  I still had the box. It was unopened.

  * * *

  The reason I always tried to get the first shower was that it left time for reading. I had a clip-on book light that the Shipley twins had given me for Christmas. And even though I only had twenty pages left of Lord of the Flies, I opened the sixth Harry Potter book while everyone else took turns in the bathroom.

  Once in a while some well-meaning person in my life would point out that after living the first nineteen years of my life on a dusty property in Wyoming, I still rarely left the farm. But they were wrong. I’d been to Middle Earth and Hogwarts and Dickensian London all in the past month or so. The difference between living on a ranch where books were banned and a farm where books were freely discussed and traded could not be underestimated.

  It was almost lights-out by the time I heard May wish Lark a good night. “Sleep tight. Breakfast is at eight thirty. We do everything pretty early around here. It’s not like those long brunches we used to take in Boston. Those were the days.”

  “I’ll get up and help with breakfast. Goodnight, beautiful girl. Thank you so much for bringing me up here!”

  “We’re lucky to have you. Now go to bed. You look like you haven’t slept in a year.”

  There was no soundproofing at all in the bunkhouse, so I heard the whole conversation. Then I heard Kieran come out of the bathroom and wish Lark goodnight, too. “Is it okay if I shut off the hallway light?” he asked her.

  “Sure. Hey, Kieran?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Can I lock the front door?”

  We never locked the bunkhouse. Nobody would ever trek out onto the Shipleys’ property to bother three or four big guys with nothing more valuable than a couple of iPods. “Go ahead, sweetie,” Kieran said after a pause. “Goodnight.”

  “Goodnight.”

  I curled the pillow under my right ear and closed my eyes. When I closed my eyes in this room, I did so without worry. The sounds of people settling in to sleep were always reassuring to me.

  I didn’t mind staying in the bunkhouse—not at all. The grunts and snores of my roommates were nothing new. In fact, the two years I’d spent at Isaac and Leah’s place was the only time in my life I’d ever slept in a room of my own.

  Living in the bunkhouse and eating free meals meant that I had virtually no living expenses. Everybody under this roof was well-fed and rooming here as a way to save money—not as a necessity.

  Kieran was the first to start snoring. The Shipley cousins were just here on loan for the busy season. Their parents had a spread up in Hardwick and a business breeding highland beef cattle. They’d be gone by Thanksgiving.

  That would leave only me.

  I was pretty sure that most people who passed through the bunkhouse saw it as a short-term thing. For a hundred years this building had housed temporary farm labor. The place was a waystation to a bigger and better life.

  The trouble was that I couldn’t picture my own next chapter. And as I lay reflecting on the day’s events, something began to trouble me. My promotion from apple picker to market manager was a good one, except for one big flaw. The markets were seasonal, ending right before Thanksgiving.

  It was just dawning on me that my time on the Shipley farm might be coming to a close faster than I’d thought. I’d need a Plan B, and pretty quick.

  I wasn’t one to panic, but the idea was sobering. I hadn’t been to high school, because the religious freaks at Paradise didn’t allow it. Finding other work was a crapshoot. I could only hope that there’d be another job for someone who worked uncomplainingly and was a capable mechanic, too.

  But Ruth Shipley and Leah Abraham kept mentioning school. I wondered if I could make that happen, or if it was just too late for a guy like me. When I listened to Griff’s tales from his college days, I couldn’t see myself on a campus somewhere, doing keg stands and writing papers about the Civil War. That was something other people did—people who’d grown up in a home where schooling was important.

  I didn’t have family members to guide me on this journey because I’d left them behind out West. I had a borrowed family. They were great, but they had done too much for me already. I didn’t have a girlfriend, because who would want a guy with an eighth-grade education who’d been kicked to the curb by his family?

  These were my thoughts as I listened to the bunkhouse settle in for the night. Whenever I stopped to think about it, I realized that the bunkhouse was a lot like me—it was annexed to the farm. It was part of it, but only in a casual way. Off to the side. Not quite independent.

  I lived in the bunkhouse of life.

  On that thought, and in spite of the sound of two other guys snoring, I slipped off to sleep.

  Sometime later—it might have been an hour, or even two—I awoke to the sound of something going terribly wrong. My eyes flew open in the darkness, my heart pounding in response to the sound of a high-pitched, keening cry. The noise died as quickly as it had come, and for a moment I lay there wondering if I’d dreamed it.

  But then it came again as a muffled scream. I felt goosebumps on my chest.

  “What…is that coyotes?” someone slurred.

  I listened hard. Across the room, another snore was still going strong. But the sound came a third time, and it was even louder now.

  And it was coming from the guest room.

  I slid out of bed, my feet clumsy on the cold floorboards. I moved into the darkened hallway without stumbling too badly. Outside Lark’s door, I paused. Now I could hear her speaking, but the tumble of words was impossible to make out.

  Either she was dreaming, or Lark had been visited by an unlikely intruder.

  Still, I hesitated. If I was disoriented, I might not want some sleepy stranger bursting into my room. But then Lark screamed again, and the sound of it was chilling enough to inspire me to move. I pushed her door open.

  The room was lit by a nightlight that someone had thoughtfully installed. Lark was curled tightly in the center of the double bed. Her face was wet and contorted in dismay.

  “Lark,” I said.

  “No!” she moaned, twisting her face into the pillow.

  “Lark,” I said firmly. “Lark, you’re dreaming.”

  But she didn’t hear me. She was shaking now. “Stop!” she cried out.

  I was wide awake now, but I had no idea what to do. The choices were to touch h
er and wake her from what looked like a violent dream. But that had the possibility of startling her half to death. Or I could walk away and do nothing.

  As I hesitated, she began to cry in earnest.

  Aw, hell.

  I leaned over and put a hand on her shoulder. “Lark, wake up.” I applied only a gentle pressure, one designed not to become part of whatever horrors she thought were actually happening. I said exactly what Leah would have said to someone suffering from a nightmare. “Wake up, sweetie.” I rubbed her arm.

  That did it. But now she whirled on me, sitting bolt upright.

  Startled, I jumped back. “Sorry,” I said quickly.

  Lark stared up at me, wide-eyed. Gulping for air, she hastily wiped tears from her face. “Shit,” she swore, her breathing still ragged. “Shit. I’m sorry.” She drew up her knees and dropped her head between them. “Shit, shit,” she continued to whisper.

  Now I really didn’t know what to do. She probably didn’t want a strange guy standing in her room. But on the other hand, she was still shaking. “Lark, are you going to be okay?”

  With her head in her hands, she gave a strangled laugh. “That’s the big question, isn’t it?” As I watched, she took a deep, slow breath and blew it out. “Go back to bed. I’ll try not to yell anymore.”

  “Okay…” But my feet didn’t move yet. I was uneasy for her. “Goodnight.” I would have added sweet dreams, as Leah did. But I didn’t want Lark to think I was making fun of her. So I simply closed her door carefully and went back to my bunk.

  I got into bed, but didn’t sleep yet. I listened for more sounds of distress. But all was quiet.

  3

  Lark

  After Zachariah left my room, I lay down again in the darkness, eyes closed, focusing on my breathing. The shrink my parents had made me see in Boston gave me lots of exercises for relaxation, and I tried all his suggestions. Meditation. Deep-breathing exercises. Shallow-breathing exercises.

  Each one worked perfectly, up until the minute I fell asleep. During the day I could hold it all together. But when darkness closed in and I let my guard down, my dragons shook their chains and began to roar.