A Walk in the Sun

  “Does my nose deceive me or has someone been cooking?” It was a boy’s voice, followed by the sound of footsteps on the wood floors.

  “In here!” Rose called.

  A tall blond guy appeared in the doorway holding two gallons of milk, one in either hand. He was thin, but his arms had the muscle of someone who wasn’t a stranger to a hard day’s work. His eyes went straight to Rose, and Bodhi knew he wasn’t imagining the light in the guy’s eyes when he looked at her.

  He grinned. “Thought I was in the wrong house for a minute.”

  Rose laughed. “Very funny. You can drop the milk and leave if you’re just going to insult me.”

  The guy laughed, but his smile faltered when his gaze came to rest on Bodhi.

  Bodhi stood, and Rose followed suit, looking flustered, like she was surprised he was still there.

  “Will, this is Bodhi Lowell, the hand Marty hired for the summer.” She turned to Bodhi. “This is Will Breiner. His family runs the dairy farm on the other side of the pond. He’s helped out a lot since . . . over the past few months.”

  Bodhi held out his hand. Will looked at it like it might be some kind of trick, then took it and gave it a quick, hard shake.

  “Glad to meet you,” Bodhi said.

  Will gave a clipped nod. “You, too.”

  “Nice of you to help the Darrows out.”

  “It was no trouble at all,” Will said. “Rose and her family are my family.”

  Marty brought the pie to the table. “Will’s just being nice. I’m sure he’ll be happy to know he is officially relieved of duty.”

  Will shifted on his feet before finally taking the milk to the fridge. “Always here to help, Marty. You know that.”

  “Yes, I do,” Marty said, turning her smile on him. “And I appreciate it.”

  “Stay for pie.” Rose spoke suddenly, like she’d been fishing for just the right thing to say and finally landed on the perfect sequence of words.

  “Yes, stay,” Marty said. “We can’t eat it all by ourselves.” She seemed to think about that. “Well, we could, but it wouldn’t be a good idea.”

  “That’s okay,” Will said. “I should go. Graduation tomorrow and everything . . .”

  Marty’s face lit up. “That’s right!” She turned to Bodhi. “You should come! We’re going out to lunch afterward, and the weather’s supposed to be really beautiful.”

  Rose looked horrified. “Aunt Marty, I’m pretty sure Bodhi doesn’t want to spend his Saturday at the high school graduation of someone he doesn’t even know.”

  “I wouldn’t want to intrude,” Bodhi said.

  “You wouldn’t be intruding,” Marty said. “You’re welcome to join us. It’s outside on the football field. No tickets required.”

  “I’ll stay and look after things here. You enjoy the day.” He could almost feel the relief wafting off Will’s body.

  Marty was dishing the pie, setting generous slices of golden pastry oozing dark red cherries onto dessert plates with little flowers around the border. She looked up. “Will?”

  He shook his head. “I really do have to go. But thanks.”

  Marty grinned. “More for us.”

  Will turned his gaze on Rose. “Text me later?”

  Rose nodded, and for a split second Will met Bodhi’s eyes, like he wanted to make sure the message had been delivered.

  See how close Rose and I are? We even text each other at night. We’re family.

  Bodhi got it loud and clear. He just didn’t know why the message stuck in his throat as Will retreated toward the front door.

  Sixteen

  Bodhi lay in the dark for a long time after he returned to the bunkhouse. He’d said his good nights, taken a shower, and climbed into bed with his book, expecting to be asleep in minutes. Instead he thought about the Darrows. About Rose’s dead mother, her missing-in-a-different-way father, Marty with her easy laugh. And Rose. He didn’t want to admit to thinking about Rose. There was no reason at all why she should interest him.

  First of all, she was the boss’s daughter. Or niece. Actually, she was kind of like the boss herself, if you wanted to get right down to it. But also, she wasn’t exactly friendly. It was true that he felt a weird kind of familiarity with her, a kind of comfort, but it definitely wasn’t mutual. Probably because she looked at him and saw a loser. A guy about her own age who hadn’t even officially graduated from high school, who was basically a drifter with no plans for the future, nothing to offer. And why should he feel a connection with her anyway? Because they’d both lost their mothers, albeit in very different ways? Because, like him, it seemed Rose was struggling to make the most of what she had, when deep down she wanted so much more?

  He flipped his pillow over and repositioned his head on the cool pillowcase. He was being dumb. He couldn’t know that about her. This was her family’s farm. For all he knew, she loved it and never wanted to leave. He didn’t know her at all. She didn’t know him, either, and if she did, she wouldn’t like what she found out.

  Will Breiner had stuff to offer. He had a neighboring farm and history with Rose’s family and friendship with Rose herself. He’d presumably been around when Rose’s mother had died, had helped her through it.

  Why was he thinking about Will? What did he have to do with anything? It’s not like Bodhi actually believed he had a shot with Rose Darrow. Or like he even wanted one. This was a summer job. The last punch on his ticket to a new life. He didn’t want to form attachments. He was just in a weird mood. In that place where his body was fatigued but his mind was racing. He’d settle in here, and then it would be like any other job.

  The moon was blue-white, shining in through the lone window, leaving a pillar of light on the floor of the bunk room. He thought about the Darrow house, how intimate it had been having dinner with just Rose and her family. Usually dinner on a farm was a crowded affair. Bodhi might be one of five or ten hands, all gathered around a table in the bunkhouse. Even when dinner was shared with the owners of the farm, the table was crowded, with stories ranging from drunken brawls to girlfriends back home to other jobs.

  But tonight had been different . . . special, in a way. He’d been given a glimpse at life inside the family. Not the facade put on for neighbors and friends, but the real deal. He’d seen the tension between Rose and Marty over the cookbook Marty had used to make dinner. Had watched as John Darrow tried to put a good face on what was obviously serious depression. He’d seen Rose’s face fall when her dad passed on dessert, had been party to Marty’s carefree laughter. And under it all he’d felt their bond, the deep current of family and history that bound them together. It was a little disconcerting to be a bystander to so much honesty, to something so foreign and out of reach.

  He thought about Rose, settling into bed in the house, the gentle ticking of the big grandfather clock like a lullaby, probably a small light left on in the kitchen in case anyone got up for water.

  What was wrong with him?

  He sat up in bed. The bunk room suddenly seemed lonely and barren, and he got out of bed and walked out into the barn, peering up into the rafters. When he found what he was looking for, he made his way to the ladder and climbed, stopping at the second-to-last rung.

  The hayloft was fairly big, dusty but otherwise clean. There were a few bales against the far wall, and some of the dried grass had made its way onto the floor. It only took him a few seconds to make up his mind.

  He hurried back down the ladder and headed for the bunk room. He stripped the mattress and pulled it off the frame of the bunk, then dragged it out into the barn. Getting it up the ladder wasn’t easy, but if there was one upside to a twin-size mattress it was that he could just manage to shove it up ahead of him, balancing it on his head or shoulder when it threatened to fall to the floor below. He was sweating by the time he finally tipped it into the loft, but he knew immediately it had been the right thing to do.

  He spent the next hour remaking the bed and bringing up the rest
of his stuff. There wasn’t an electrical outlet, but there was one not too far below in the vaccination room. He would go into town tomorrow and buy an extension cord and some kind of lamp.

  It was after midnight when he finally settled back into bed, his nose filled with the smell of the barn, so different from the cold concrete and drywall of the bunk room. Here he could smell the heat that had been trapped in the old barn beams during the day, like a fire that had long since been put out, and the musky scent of the animals below. Their occasional shuffle and snort was a comfort, and he put his arms behind his head and sighed. He looked up into the rafters, determined to think of something besides Rose Darrow while he fell asleep.

  For a while it worked. He turned over the things he’d tackle on the farm while the Darrows were at Rose’s graduation, the ways he could help lighten her load around the farm, tactics he could try with the little calf, Buttercup, that Rose was so worried about.

  He was drifting off to sleep when he realized that every single one of those things came back to her. Rose. Her face was the last thing he saw before he fell into darkness.

  Seventeen

  “Are you serious right now?” Lexie asked, hands on her hips.

  Rose let the graduation gown drop to the ground, already sorry she’d tried to adjust her dress in front of Lexie. “What?”

  “You’re wearing your boots to graduation?”

  “They’re comfortable!” Rose laughed. “Besides, I’m not sure you’re allowed to comment.”

  Confusion shaded Lexie’s eyes. “Why not?”

  “Did you look in the mirror before you left the house?”

  Lexie looked down at her outfit, partially hidden under her unzipped gown. “Florals and stripes are in this year.”

  “Together?” Rose asked.

  “Yes, together!” Lexie said. “Geez! Pick up a Teen Vogue sometime, why don’t you?”

  “I’ll pass,” Rose said with a smile. “I like my boots. And I like your stripes and florals, too. I wouldn’t want you any other way.”

  “Aw, Rose!” Lexie’s face broke into a smile, and she leaned in for a hug. “I feel the same! Even with those stupid, dirty boots!”

  Rose laughed. “Thanks. I think.”

  They were standing in the gym, waiting for the signal to line up for the walk outside. Rose’s dad and Aunt Marty were already out there, probably baking in the early morning heat and shifting on the crappy metal chairs put out for the audience.

  The room was buzzing with excited conversation, squeals, and laughter. Friends leaned together to take selfies or lined up in front of the bleachers to get group shots. It was all a little surreal, and Rose wished the day was already over, that she was back home helping Bodhi mend the fence in the north pasture.

  Not that she wanted to hang out with Bodhi. More that she just wanted to be home where she wasn’t expected to smile and be excited, where she didn’t have to see all the other moms sitting in the audience, smiling and crying.

  “This is it!” Lexie said, breaking into Rose’s thoughts. “By lunchtime, we’ll be high school graduates, real adults.”

  “Yeah . . .” Rose tried to smile.

  “Yeah? That’s all you have to say?” Lexie asked, her voice soft. “Can’t you feel it, Rose?”

  Rose shrugged. The tag on her gown was scratching the back of her neck, and the lipstick she’d worn in deference to the occasion made her lips feel simultaneously goopy and chapped. She pressed them together, trying to get rid of the sensation. “Feel what?”

  Lexie sighed, then seemed to fish for words before she spoke. “It’s like . . . expectation, I guess. Like when we were standing on the edge of that cliff at Minnewaska.”

  Rose could picture it. They’d gone hiking at the nature preserve with Will last summer, had stood on the precipice of a rocky cliff that descended to the glacial lake below. It had been scary and exhilarating, the long drop, all that space in front of them.

  “Only this time we can jump, and we won’t fall,” Lexie continued. “We’ll fly.”

  Would they, Rose wondered? Would they fly? There had been a time when she had felt the invisible safety net of the whole world beneath her. When it had seemed impossible that anything truly horrible could happen. You were young, you had your family and friends, everything always worked out in the end.

  But then her mom had died, and if that didn’t prove that everything didn’t always work out in the end, what did?

  “I guess,” Rose said.

  Lexie opened her mouth to say something, then seemed to change her mind. A few seconds later, she smiled conspiratorially. “Let’s talk about something else. Like that guy you’re shacking up with.”

  Rose sighed. She’d texted Lexie the night Bodhi arrived and had been giving her updates ever since, but that didn’t mean she wanted to talk about him here, in front of the entire senior class.

  “I am not ‘shacking up’ with a guy,” Rose said. “He’s working on the farm, and that means he has to live there. But I told you: I think he’s older than us, and his room is in the barn.”

  “Yeah, for now.” Lexie’s smile was full of meaning that Rose didn’t want to decipher.

  “You’re being ridiculous.”

  “Just tell me if he’s hot,” she said. “You said he was young!”

  “That doesn’t mean he’s hot.” Rose laughed.

  “Yeah, but he is, right?”

  Rose was trying to find the words to describe Bodhi in a way that would satisfy Lexie without making it seem like she’d spent too much time looking at him when someone spoke behind her.

  “Who is what?”

  Rose turned. It was Will. She opened her mouth to answer, remembering the weird look on Will’s face when he’d seen Bodhi in her kitchen. Lexie’s words floated through her mind.

  He’ll step in to help you run the place, and pretty soon, he’ll come clean about the fact that he’s in love with you.

  But it wasn’t true. She knew it wasn’t. Will was just protective, that’s all. Like a brother. Still, she didn’t want to talk about how hot Bodhi was around Will, and she could only hope Lexie felt the same way.

  “I was just asking Rose if the new farmhand was helping out,” Lexie said.

  Whew.

  “Is he?” Will asked, looking into Rose’s eyes.

  “Is he what?”

  Will raised his eyebrows. “Helpful?”

  “Right,” Rose said. “Yeah. I mean, he only got here a couple of days ago, but he seems to know his way around a farm.”

  “That’s good,” Will said. “I was surprised he’s so young. What is he? Around our age?”

  “Maybe a little older,” Rose said. “We haven’t talked much.”

  “You sure he has the experience you need on the farm?” Will asked.

  Rose shrugged. “Marty hired him. I’m sure she checked him out.”

  Will nodded. “Well, I’m right across the field if you need anything.”

  “Thanks,” Rose said, smiling.

  “Let’s take a picture!” Lexie suggested. “This is the last hour we’ll all be in high school together.”

  Rose stood between Lexie and Will, and Lexie took the picture with her phone. A couple of seconds later their principal, Mr. Finnemore, shouted for them to line up. After that, there was the long procession out to the football field, the sun hot and bright after the fluorescent lighting in the gym. She spotted her dad and Aunt Marty in the audience as she made her way to her seat. Marty waved, and Rose thought she saw the glimmer of tears in her dad’s eyes. It made her own eyes water. Was he missing her mom, too? Wondering what she would be wearing and saying, how proud she’d be on this day, the end of a journey they’d started together?

  Rose had to swallow the lump in her throat as she continued to her seat. Then it was a series of speeches and announcements and awards. It only started sinking in when Mr. Finnemore started to call their names. Lexie was right. This was the end of something, and the beginning of so
mething, too. Rose just wished she knew what it was, that she could fast-forward to a time in her life when she knew how it all turned out.

  They called her name, and she walked to the podium to get her diploma. She passed Marty, crouched up by the makeshift stage so she could get better pictures, then froze when Mr. Finnemore handed her the diploma so Marty could get the shot. She returned to her seat, where she waited out the rest of the ceremony.

  Finally, it was over. Will was out of sight, but Lexie flashed her a smile from across the lawn and they both threw their caps into the air on cue. Then everyone was hugging and laughing and trying to find their parents. Rose stood in the press of bodies, the diploma heavier than it should have been in her hand, a reminder that she was supposed to know what to do next, that she was supposed to have a plan. She thought of the farm. The quiet of it, the solitude. And suddenly all she wanted was to be riding Raven across the north pasture, Bodhi Lowell a strong and silent presence beside her. Which didn’t make sense at all.

  Eighteen

  She changed into shorts right when she got home, happy to be out of her sundress, even though it was a lightweight floral that was pretty comfortable once she’d ditched the cap and gown.

  They’d gone to lunch after the ceremony, ending up at Sweet Clementine’s like everybody else in town. Clementine’s was a little café owned by Marie LeMarche, a pretty, dark-haired woman whose family had helped found Milford in the 1700s, and named after Marie’s five-year-old daughter. If you wanted something nice, Clementine’s was the only game in town, and the place had been brimming with a post-graduation crowd in high spirits. Rose’s family had ended up pushing tables together with the Breiners, and a couple of times she’d looked up to find Will staring at her. She had the sense of a subtle shift in the terms of their friendship, although she had no idea what it meant.

  It was a relief to be back on the farm, and she walked out to the barn, expecting to find Bodhi working on last month’s balance sheet, getting familiar with their software. He wasn’t in the office, though, and the balance sheet was open on the computer, the columns filled in and complete. She walked between the empty galleries—the cows would be out to pasture now—wondering if Bodhi was taking a nap. She wouldn’t blame him. Farm hours sucked most of the time.