nothing more than a painful reminder of how little connection he’d had to this place after his mother died. In the hereafter, his father was likely cackling that Trey’s discomfort at being surprised was just punishment for only calling his dad on occasional birthdays and Christmas.
A dog barked when he knocked on the door, and from somewhere inside Max called out, “Sit.” When she opened the door a mottled black, white and tan dog was at her feet, looking at Trey with a mix of curiosity and annoyance. It was much the same way Trey had felt looking at Max, when he had wrongfully thought she didn’t belong on his father’s property shooting cans, before he knew she was Max.
“This is Ashes. Don’t mind him. Cattle dogs are a protective breed.” As if to prove her point, the dog growled. Trey thought about growling back—this is my land—but pissing contests only rewarded the fool who drank too much. Better to be smart than a bloated idiot. Plus, for all he cared, the dog could claim the land by peeing on every blade of grass; Trey sure didn’t want ownership of the useless hunk of clay.
With this inauspicious start, Trey stepped through the doorway into Max’s barn. “I figured the barn would have fallen down by now.”
The last time he’d been here, for his mother’s funeral, the barn door had been missing and some of the beams had been rotted through. Now it was downright cozy with stairs leading up to a loft, a large woven rug on the floor and a woodstove along one wall. Trey blinked and took a second look.
The walls and floor were bare wood and the kitchen at the back had a small fridge and an even smaller stove, giving the place the look of someone’s hunting cabin instead of a renovated barn where people lived. So maybe not cozy, but livable, which was still a damn sight better than it had been five years ago.
“The first winter I lived in the farmhouse with your father while we renovated the barn to make it livable.” She blinked and opened her pink, cracking lips like she was going to say something else. Her lips opened and shut one more time before she’d made up her mind about continuing. “I’d planned to move into the farmhouse and use the barn for housing when I finally bought the place but...”
He realized that whatever leasing agreements she had with his father carried over with the property, but that didn’t mean Trey couldn’t toss them all out the window and eat the breach of contract cost just to wash his hands clean of the place once and for all. That was if he even owned the farm. They could both hope that his father had left the property to Max in his will. Because truthfully, Trey didn’t care if his father had left it to the Earnhardt Foundation, so long as he didn’t have to come down here again.
“Anyway, no matter what you decide to do, it seemed crass to move into the house right now.”
“Better to wait until after the funeral?”
“That wasn’t...” she said, but he waved off her apology.
“I know that wasn’t what you meant. I don’t want the farm, though I probably now own it. I’m sure whatever agreement you had with my father will be fine with me. We’ll sort this out. You can move into the farmhouse and I can go back to D.C. Hell, you could move in now, for all I care.”
Trey supposed sadness was the proper emotion to feel after his father’s death, but the only emotions coursing through him were relief that the man had only killed himself and nobody else in the car accident, and irritation that he hadn’t sold the land before dying. The man had been a drunk and a bastard—why did he also have to be irresponsible?
The kettle on the stove whistled and the dog cocked his head to the sound, but didn’t bark. Max pointed at a dog bed in front of the woodstove before heading to the kitchen, and the dog obediently went to lie down.
“Sorry about the mess on the table,” she called over her shoulder. “If you could dump the papers and laptop in the box by the table, we’ll have space for our food.”
As Trey shoveled everything into the box, the receipts and invoices for seeds, straw and ladybugs didn’t surprise him, but the resumes did. What did he know about farming anyway? He’d worked on his uncle’s tobacco farm only because he had to, but when college brochure time had come around, he’d tossed into the trash any pamphlet with Ag or Tech or State on the front. He’d wanted to toss all the applications for North Carolina colleges in the trash, too, but money had been short. In the end, a degree from Carolina and the connections of a fraternity brother had gotten him to D.C. and a congressman’s office and that was enough. He realized he was staring at an invoice for strawberry plants—probably had been doing so for a while. He shook his head, tossed the invoice into the box and then placed the laptop in last, weighing down the pile of papers.
The table cleared, he went to the kitchen to help Max with the plates.
“I hope egg salad is okay,” she said, as she handed him a plate and a mug of tea.
“Egg salad is great.” The plate was brimming with food. The egg salad and some lettuce was on wheat bread, cut diagonally, he noticed with a smile. Also on the plate were apple slices, a pickle and a pile of potato chips. Despite the oddness of drinking hot tea with his lunch, Trey was grateful for it. Max’s cabin wasn’t cold, but it was cool. And it was one of those odd North Carolina days when the inside was colder than the outside.
Their plates each made different clinks when they touched her small table and Trey noticed they were mismatched. So were the mugs. Max got back up to get them some water and returned with mason jars, rather than regular water glasses. He took another look around the barn. There was not a doodad or tchotchke in sight. Judging by her residence, Max had no patience for pretense and no interest in owning things that didn’t have a use. Everything was well cared for, but nothing was fussy. Even the dog, who had been fixin’ to get up from his bed before a look from Max settled him back down, probably had a job.
“Thank you for the reassurance about the house,” Max said before taking a bite of her sandwich. “Clearly, I had expected to live in the barn this summer, but having it to offer for housing will make finding seasonal help easier.”
“I have no interest in ever living back on the farm and I’m sure Kelly doesn’t, either. And the house does us no good standing empty. Kelly and I will take a week to pack up and store anything personal, then you can move in.”
He took a bite of his sandwich. The egg salad was rich with mayonnaise and the yolks were the bright orange of the eggs he remembered eating as a child, when his mother had raised hens. “Do you have chickens?” he asked, a little embarrassed that he didn’t know what Max grew, other than vegetables.
“They were Hank’s. After we finished renovating the barn, he had some leftover wood. There’s a little chicken coop on the other side of the house, built to look like a tobacco barn.” Her smile must be at the thought of the chickens; it couldn’t be at the memory of his father. “It’s cute.”
Trey tried to imagine his father designing a cute chicken coop and got a headache. He also couldn’t imagine his father wanting chickens. Trey, Kelly and his mother had built the original chicken coop after his father’s response to his mother wanting hens had been, “You want ’em, you gotta work for ’em.” Kelly and Trey had gone with their mother to pick up the chicks from a nearby farm, and though Trey had pretended to be too old and too manly at thirteen for anything cute, he still remembered having to repress a giggle at the sight of the cheeping biddies. His father, however, had never once referred to the chickens without the adjectives “smelly” or “dirty.” He’d also never once turned down fried eggs or a slice from one of his mother’s delicious sour-cream pound cakes.
“I’m
