[True North 01.0] Bittersweet Page 7

  The Prius took me ten or twenty yards down the gravel drive before the bouncing became more of a pronounced list to the right.

  “Fuck!” I shouted at the top of my lungs. I wasn’t even going to be able to make a dignity-preserving getaway. Sagging onto its wheel frame, the car ground to a sad halt. I threw it in park and then head-butted the steering wheel in anger, which only served to draw a ridiculous beep from the horn. The car was out to get me.

  Was there no task on earth I could complete without fucking it up? No job I could keep without disgrace?

  I heard the telltale crunch of gravel under someone’s footsteps. There was no point in wondering whose. If I had to look like a complete idiot, did it have to be in front of the world’s hottest farmer? Apparently it did, because the car door opened and his gruff voice said, “Hop on out, honey. I’ll get Zach to find you another spare.”

  “Thank you,” I said through gritted teeth.

  “Since you’re here, we can finish our conversation about produce prices.”

  “If you’re just going to yell at me, save it.” I grabbed my purse off the seat and stood up.

  Griffin frowned down at me. God, the man was tall. Like Paul Bunyan. “I wouldn’t yell at a woman.”

  “Technicality,” I said under my breath. “You grumble and growl.”

  He grunted in a way that neither agreed nor disagreed. “Come on. If you want to talk about apples, it has to be while I’m working. I have a pig to kill. You can watch.”

  “Are you sure?” I snapped. “I mean—meow. There must be a whole lot of girls in line ahead of me to watch that.”

  To my enduring surprise, he threw back his head and laughed. “Come on, sassypants. My truck is over here.”

  “I was supposed to inquire here about cheeses.” Turning from side to side, I couldn’t spot the farmer I’d seen before. “Where’d he go?”

  “He’s got a situation today. Found some wilt on his tomatoes, and it has to be taken care of fast. He called me to take a look at it and I offered to send him some help. And now Zach is gonna be working on your tire…” He ran a hand through his thick, brown hair and sighed.

  “I’ll ask about the cheeses later,” I said tightly.

  Griff crossed to a big pickup truck and opened the passenger door. “Come on, now.”

  He offered me his hand to help me into the truck, and I hesitated. I was sick of playing the part of the incompetent little woman. On the other hand, it was a big step up into the truck, and I was wearing a skirt. A stumble and fall—another avoidable fuck-up—wasn’t going to do anything for my ego.

  His big hand waited, outstretched. So I pressed mine into that wide palm, and his roughened fingers closed around mine. Sweet baby Jesus. His touch shouldn’t feel familiar. I shouldn’t have gotten a jolt of longing just from gripping his fingers. But that big hand had once touched me everywhere.

  A long, long time ago, I reminded myself. You were a different person then, and so was he. Thinking about those times wasn’t helping anyone. I blamed the warm weather or the fact that I was so tense. It’s not like I’d thought about Griff Shipley at all during the past couple of years.

  As soon as my butt hit the truck’s seat, I yanked my hand out of his. Wordlessly, he shut the door and walked around to the other side, climbing in beside me. He made a three-point turn, and, as we rolled down the drive past my stupid rental, I spotted the farmer on the other side of his barn, bent over a row of pretty green tomato plants. “Is it serious?” I asked. “The tomato problem?” A couple of years ago most of New England’s crop had been wiped out by a blight. There had been no gazpacho on Boston’s restaurant menus that summer.

  “Maybe,” Griff said after a beat. “But he’ll burn a few plants and hope for the best. Organic farming always feels like a game of high-stakes poker. That’s why we’re all diversified. He’s got sheep, cheeses and vegetables. I’ve got apples, ciders and dairy. Not everything can go wrong at once, unless we’re reenacting the Book of Job.”

  “I see,” I said quietly. “His cheeses sound amazing. I looked at his website.”

  “They are,” he agreed. “The dude built his own cheese cave to age them. It’s really cool. They’re pricey, though. A lot of love goes into that cheese.”

  I let out a sigh. “I know that, okay? I’ve made cheese. I’m not stupid. Artisanal cheese is something my company knows how to pay up for, right? The stuff they’re importing from France doesn’t come cheap.”

  Another awkward silence hung over the cab of Griff’s truck, and I tried not to ogle the muscles in his arms as he drove. I looked out the window instead, at row upon row of apple trees. Little green fruits the size of tennis balls hung from branches everywhere. “Looks like a good year for apples.”

  “It does,” he agreed with me. “We didn’t have a late freeze this spring, which helps. And we didn’t have any hail at just the wrong moment. Hail leaves dark spots on the skin, and people don’t like blemishes.” He shook his head. “The public doesn’t understand that a bushel of apples with no blemishes anywhere is scary as fuck. That means the farmer sprayed poison all over the tree. You couldn’t pay me to eat those apples.”

  “So you’re saying Snow White’s poison apple was from a factory farm?”

  He chuckled. “Sure. People say they want to eat clean food and buy organic. But they also want it to look perfect. Before every big weekend during U-pick season we get out there and pluck all the uglies off the trees. Apples sell better when people think they’re all perfect.”

  “You can always make cider from the uglies.”

  “And we do.”

  I pointed at Zach, Jude and the twins—they stood between two orchard rows, a red wagon between them. “What are they doing?”

  “Painting sticky traps to catch bugs. During the summer we fight off borers and moths. We can never let down our guard, because we can’t use toxic sprays to fight off whatever we didn’t catch before it was too late.”

  When he swung into the driveway, the others began to walk over to meet him. “Wait here a moment,” he said, killing the engine. “I’ll give Zachariah the truck to take back to Abraham’s place.”

  I hopped down from the truck without help from Mr. Big Hands, then waited sheepishly while he went to instruct his minions.

  “Hey,” Daphne greeted me, wiping her hands on her jeans. “My brother ate the rest of your sauce in the dark of night, before the rest of us could have any. Again.”

  “I’m a growing boy,” Dylan said. “You want to burn tomato plants or kill a pig?” he asked his sister.

  She rolled her eyes. “Why are you even pretending that I have a choice? You’re going to end up killing tomato plants because you can’t handle skinning Tauntaun.”

  Dylan’s face colored. “I’ve handled the abattoir before.”

  “You fainted.”

  “It was hot,” he argued, his face contorting in anger.

  “Go to Abraham’s.” She gave him a shove. “I like gore.”

  He gave her an angry glare and then climbed in the truck, slamming the door. Note to self—the Shipley men did not take kindly to having their masculinity questioned. Daphne picked at a cuticle, bored. I couldn’t imagine what it was like to have a twin—someone you knew so well you could effortlessly push each other’s buttons. As an only child, it fascinated me.

  “Okay,” Griff said, appearing around the nose of the truck. He beckoned to Daphne and me, and Jude behind him. “Let’s go make some bacon while Zach tries to find Audrey a tire. Did May scald the water?”

  “She did,” Daphne said, trotting to keep up with her brother’s long-legged stride. “Is the tomato thing bad?”

  “We’ll see.” Griff put one of his big paws on his sister’s shoulder. They were a tall family.

  Jude, the new guy, fell into step with me. “How was your first day?” I asked him.

  “Great,” he said quickly, shoving his hands in his pockets. “I’ve never farmed, but I like working w
ith my hands.”

  “Me too. It wasn’t until I went to cooking school that I really figured that out.”

  He looked up with a wry grin. “Would you believe that my prison job was in the kitchen? I’ll bet you’ve never used knives that are tethered to the work surface.”

  I laughed. “Wow, is that how they do it? How can you move around?” It was hard to picture. But how else could they have all those knives in a prison?

  “There’s a retractable cord pierced through the butt of each knife so that nobody will steal ’em. Once in a while I’d forget about the damn thing and, like, choke myself if I turned around to hear what someone was saying. Good times. I’m pretty fast at prep work, though. Three years of practice.”

  “Can you get the skin off a clove of garlic in three seconds or less?” I teased.

  “Hell, yeah. Garlic is my bitch.”

  “Then you’re hired! Some day when I’m a famous chef, you can be my prep guy,” I promised. “But you’ll have to move to Boston.”

  He chuckled. “Okay. Sure.”

  Our walk took us past the cider house. Beyond that was an old stone fire pit where a cauldron of water steamed. It looked like something out of medieval times. Beside it was a little pen where a giant pig sunbathed, his eyes closed, his ears flopped forward. As we arrived, he opened his eyes and got to his feet, then approached the fence hopefully. His expression reminded me of a dog looking for a treat.

  Griffin walked up to the fence and reached down, scratching the pig between his ears. “Hey, Tauntaun,” he dropped his voice to a near whisper. “Hey, guy. You’ve been a good boy. Thank you.”

  My throat got inexplicably tight. I worked with meat all the time, but I’d never seen it killed before. This really shouldn’t be any weirder than hacking up a chicken in the kitchen. I was a meat-eater by choice, right?

  Right?

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw Mrs. Shipley approach with May. The matriarch was the one carrying the shotgun. She handed it to Griff.

  He turned around to survey the small group of people gathered there. “Anyone want to do the honors? I think Zach did the last one.”

  Griff’s gaze came to rest on Jude, who shook his head. “Your neighborhood felon has never touched a gun before.”

  “Good to know,” Griff muttered.

  “I’ll do it,” Daphne said, stepping forward.

  Griff chuckled and handed the gun over, barrel pointed toward the sky. “That’s my girl.”

  His teenage sister took the gun in hand as if she’d been born to it. Taking care to position herself away from any bystanders, she raised it calmly, feet braced apart like she’d done this a million times before. I heard the click of the safety being released.

  “Right between the eyes,” Griff whispered.

  “I know,” she scoffed.

  Tauntaun blinked up at her through the fence rails, unconcerned. The next second there was an ear-splitting blast that made me jump. But not as hard as the pig jumped. He fell over like a brick chimney in an earthquake and began to twitch violently.

  My stomach gave an involuntary lurch. Steady, I cautioned myself. Like it or not, there would be no bacon in the world without this. And any pig who’d lived out his days on the grassy hills of Griff Shipley’s farm probably had a more comfortable life than half the residents of the Boston metro area.

  I studied my shoes and waited for the sad part to end.

  Chapter Seven

  Griffin

  Yeah, it was official. I was going to be single for the rest of my fucking life. The guy who’d kill a pig in front of a pretty girl is the guy who will die lonely.

  It’s not like I had a choice. I’d put off this task for two days already, and since May had done the work of bringing a full cauldron of water to a scalding temperature, I had to follow through.

  But something about having Audrey nearby made me take a look at my life from a woman’s point of view. And I didn’t like what I saw. The girl paled when the pig went down, and I felt like a heel for making her watch.

  Zach trotted up then. “Hey,” he said. “Bad news.”

  Oh joy. “What’s that?”

  “Can’t get a tire this evening. They don’t have the right model, and we can’t sub a different one onto the same axle. So she either needs two tires, or they can pull the right one from the shop in White River tomorrow.”

  “Damn it,” Audrey said. “How much are tires? If I do this wrong, the rental company will stick me with the bill.”

  “A hundred and twenty,” Zach said. “Each.”

  Audrey’s eyes shut and she shook her pretty head. “Figures.”

  “Tomorrow,” I said, gesturing to Zach to call the shop. To Audrey I said, “You can stay here tonight. It’s almost six already, anyway. They’ll get you set up tomorrow. White River is only twenty miles away. The shop there would be closed by the time we got there, or else I’d send someone to get it for you.”

  “Thank you,” Audrey said, her chin dropping.

  “Don’t mention it.” It was really the least I could do after warning everyone off from the assholes she worked for.

  “Come with me,” my mother said, taking Audrey by the elbow. “Let’s put together a quick supper.”

  Audrey’s eyes lit up. “I love your kitchen. Put me to work.” She turned to me. “We still need to talk about apple prices.”

  It would be a quick chat, but I wasn’t ready to burst her bubble. Not yet, anyway. I pointed at the dead pig. “This takes some time,” I explained, which was a huge understatement. “Jude and I will do the submersion and the scraping. Then we’ll take a quick break for dinner. We’ll talk then.”

  “Can I watch you do the butchering part?” she asked.

  “Um…” But I was trying not to be an asshole. “Yeah. After we handle the submersion and the skinning.”

  The words sounded gorier than I’d intended when they came out of my mouth, but she didn’t flinch. “Okay. Cool,” she said.

  Every time I thought I had this girl figured out, she surprised me.

  The day kept on delivering surprises. My newest employee proved to be an unflinching assistant in the outdoor abattoir, which I’d set up under an awning on the back of the cider house. For hours, Jude helped me scrape and skin the pig. When we finally stopped for dinner, I apologized to him. “I know you were supposed to finish working hours ago. Here you are on your second day, and I’m already taking advantage.”

  He shook his head. “What I need in my life right now is more work and less thinking. It’s all good.”

  Even so, I walked him back to the farmhouse, where Mom and my sisters had saved us our meals. “What’s for dinner?” I asked in the way of men everywhere.

  “Chicken salad salad,” Daphne said. “It was Audrey’s idea. Chicken salad—on a salad. Because it’s tastier that way. There are walnuts and dried cherries in it. And couscous.”

  “And because I really like saying ‘chicken salad salad,’” Audrey admitted from her perch on a barstool.

  “Sounds good,” I said, trying not to stare at Audrey and the way her slim fingers held her iced tea glass.

  After I gobbled down my dinner, she followed me back outside to where Zachariah had taken a shift with the butchery.

  “The temperature is dropping,” she said as we walked together through the grass.

  “It’s never too hot in the evenings here,” I agreed. “Even if the day is a scorcher, it just cools right off at night.” I loved Vermont. Maybe I hadn’t planned on moving back here right after college. But I did love the place.

  “Where did you go after graduation?” she asked, reading my mind. “You got drafted, right? The Packers, was it?”

  “Good memory,” I said, surprised that she even knew. “Late round, though. I made it onto the practice squad, and I was hoping to make the roster the following year.”

  “Didn’t work out?” she asked.

  “Well, probably wouldn’t have. That’s what I tell
myself, anyway. My dad had a heart attack and died that October.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Thank you. Anyway—I left the team and came home to run things here.”

  “Oh wow,” she said softly. “Shame you had to give up football.”

  “No big,” I lied. Making the call to stay in Vermont and run our family farm was the biggest decision I’d ever made. But nobody had expected my healthy forty-nine-year-old dad to die suddenly. I thought I had ten or fifteen years to decide whether I wanted to farm. Instead, I was farming full time by age twenty-four and feeding three siblings, my mom and my grandparents.

  We approached the worktable where Zach had finished the prep work. “I gutted it,” he said as we approached. “Then I removed the head. Thought you’d want to get right to the, uh, more ordinary cuts first.”

  Zach had zero experience with women, but he was obviously more of a gentleman than I’d ever be. We always dealt with the head first, but it was kind of gory. “Thank you, Chewie,” I said. I guided Audrey over to the sink where we both scrubbed our hands. “So, we’ll take the shoulder roasts first,” I said when we were through, and Zach handed me the knife.

  I risked a glance at Audrey, who was frowning down at about two hundred pounds of gutted, skinless pig butterflied out on our giant steel-topped table. Then she ducked her head and saw, unfortunately, Tauntaun’s head sitting right there in a bucket, the eyes practically staring at us.

  “Wait!” she cried, looking agitated.

  Oh boy. “If you feel nauseated, you can step outside.”

  Audrey whirled on me. “Griff Shipley, don’t you dare throw away that head without removing the cheek meat.”

  “Come again?”

  “You heard me. No—I’ll do it.” She bent over and dragged the bucket out where it would be accessible. Then she held out her hand, asking for the knife.

  Dumbfounded, I handed it to her. Bending over, she grabbed the pig’s ear. Then she slipped the tip of the knife under the skin. “The cheek meat is the only part of the animal that is both lean and tender. It makes a great braise, with Szechuan spices. I guess in a pinch you could go Italian—tomatoes and wine. Some garlic. Fresh oregano…” She kept cutting, the big knife making a dainty circle around the pig’s face.