threatening all day broke the moment Trey left the cover of the porch. Their punishment for the beautiful weather of yesterday was an icy January rain, but he popped up his collar to protect his neck and trudged on, desperate to be anywhere else. As soon as he reached one of the fields, he knew this was his destination.
It looked like Max had spent the day repairing fences. At the edge of the fields was an eight-foot metal and chicken-wire fence with metal wires running along the top, tied with pink flags. Like Trey, the pink flags were hanging their heads to avoid the pounding rain. He could see where she had been making repairs. Some of the flags were brighter and less downtrodden than their brethren. Some of the wires were more taut, still eager to impress with their ability to stand sentry, and some of the wood less worn. It was a deer fence. He wondered if she ever electrified the top wire. Probably, he decided. Max and her electric-green gaze had a definite look-but-don’t-touch luminescence.
Like some Irish sprite who knew she was on his mind, Max suddenly appeared in the distance with Ashes fast on her heels. While he was soaked through, she had on a complete set of rain gear and was probably dry and cozy underneath it all. It was impossible to tell the drips pouring off Ashes from the raindrops, but Trey was fairly certain he saw a big, sloppy grin on the dog’s face, his tongue lolling out the side of his mouth.
“How was the visitation?” she asked.
“Is the fence electrified?”
She slowly lowered her pale lashes over her eyes, but didn’t comment on his change of subject. “I had hoped to avoid it, but deer have already tested the fence and I don’t want them to think they can do it again.” When she moved, rain slid off her head in sheets, though she seemed not to notice. His father’s lady farmer was tough. “Would you like a tour while you’re out here?”
He looked out over the field that in just a few months would be awash in green. “No, but maybe you could email me a picture.”
“Sure.” Her slicker rustled with her shrug and more water poured off. “But there are also pictures on my website.” The farmer had a website. Of course. Every business had a website, and Max’s Vegetable Patch was as much a business as any other. She probably even had a Twitter account.
“You could come down and see it in the summer, if you’d like. You could stay with Kelly, or at the farmhouse—it has plenty of bedrooms.” She paused and he let his silence continue through the tattoo of the rain. He didn’t really want a conversation, hadn’t even wanted company until she’d come upon him. He didn’t want her to leave, but he didn’t want to talk, either.
“I’ll send you pictures throughout the growing season,” she finally said, filling the vast, dead emptiness of the fields. “Your father loved how the land changed during the growing season.”
“I probably won’t come down and visit.”
“Well, I won’t take it personally.” Her voice carried a smile he couldn’t see in her face. “The land might, though. After all these years, she’s finally producing and you won’t even come and admire her beauty.”
“She—” he rolled the female pronoun Max used around in his mouth, enjoying the feel “—shouldn’t take it personally, either.”
Even though his father was dead, Trey still didn’t want to be near anything the old man had touched. Henry William Harris Jr.’s touch was poisonous and the toxins lingered on the farm like gases too heavy for the wind to blow away. The miasma would outlast the stinky grime of cigarette smoke on the walls and the farmhouse would never really be clean. Not to him.
Max was talking again and Trey only caught the tail end of what she was saying, but he got the gist; Max would tell the land not to take it personally, either. “I have to clean up before the viewing,” she continued. “And you probably have to change clothes now.”
She didn’t wait for a response, just left him in the fields and the rain, without even granting him the protection of Ashes to bark at his bad memories and keep them at bay.
* * *
THIS WASN’T MAX’S first Southern funeral—she’d been to the funeral of her maternal grandfather over in High Point—so she knew the viewing meant Hank would be cleaned up from his heart attack and subsequent car accident and on display. As much as funerals played a role in the North Carolina gossip chain and anyone with a claim of kin or friendship on the deceased or the survivors’ side was expected to go, this couldn’t be Trey’s first funeral, either. But every time he looked over at the open casket, his eyes closed in a barely concealed grimace. No one should look so attractive while looking for an escape hatch.
Each person who expressed their condolences to Trey and Kelly probably didn’t notice Trey’s discomfort. But they probably weren’t pretending to talk farming with neighbors while really watching the grieving family like Max was.
“Maxine!” The voice of Lois Harris jolted Max out of her thoughts. “Did that mechanic Garner recommended work out for you?”
Max had given up asking Miss Lois to stop calling her Maxine. It wasn’t worth the wasted breath, plus Lois and Garner had been invaluable in providing local farming contacts. So Miss Lois could call Max whatever she wanted and Max would call her by the not-quite-formal-but-still-respectful name of Miss Lois, and they would both be happy.
“Yes, he’s been quite helpful.” The used tractor had seemed like such a deal when she’d bought it, but it turned out to be a piece of junk. Luckily, the Harris’s mechanic got it working at the end of last season and it appeared to be making it through the winter. Still, saving for a new tractor seemed smarter than trusting in the magic of the Harris’s mechanic, even if she now had three pots of savings money and keeping track of them strained her Excel spreadsheet. Asking to borrow a tractor last summer had been professionally embarrassing—and she had no desire to repeat the exercise.
“Now, don’t let him...”
Max stopped listening to Miss Lois warn her about the mechanic’s propensity to predict doom. Not only had she heard it before, but she was curious about the attractive brunette grabbing on to Trey’s hand with both hands and pressing it to her heart.
“That’s my second cousin.” Miss Lois leaned in to whisper to Max. “Never been to a funeral or wedding she didn’t cry at, bless her heart.” Sure enough, the young woman had both moved on to Kelly and been moved to tears. “The Roxboro Mangums always have a pool going on when she’ll burst into tears. She’s no blood relation to Trey, but she’s not your real competition.”
Miss Lois was a wily woman and it was a fool who turned a back to her. She “y’all’ed” and “blessed hearts” and “sugared” like a Southern cliché, but she wasn’t a fragile flower of womanhood. Max hadn’t been in North Carolina long when she realized that Lois’s politeness was a bit like a rattlesnake’s rattle—the more polite Lois was, the greater the warning about the coming bite. The ruse didn’t only work on Yankees like Max; Southern men were equally gullible. Garner might be the farmer on that side of the Harris family, but Miss Lois was the businessman.
“I’m not worried about competition.” There was always the chance this was the one time Miss Lois could have the wool pulled over her eyes.
“Oh, Maxine, you’ve been staring at my nephew the entire time we’ve been in the funeral home.”
Max hauled her gaze from Trey to Miss Lois. “He’s my new landlord. Of course I’m curious about him. And he seems troubled.”
