“No.” They got in the ATV and headed back toward the house. “How would you like a sleepover with the Dibble boys? I can call Mrs. Dibble and see if that would work out.”
Aaron and Zach were awesome and they had told Bass that Mrs. Dibble let them sneak cookies from the cookie jar whenever they wanted. That sounded like a lot of fun.
“Can I bring my iPad?” Maybe they had Wi-Fi he could use.
His dad’s forehead got all wrinkly again.
“No. But maybe we can pick up a cool outside game you can bring.”
Visions of flying balls replaced shattered glass and Bass already looked forward to a night of fart jokes and never-ending cookies, thoughts of the mysterious people disappearing along with his tears.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Sanna put the rest of the dinner dishes away, staring at the barn wistfully. It had been so long since she’d blended a new cider, the colors were piling up inside her imagination, muddling to a flat brown. And she hadn’t followed Bass after he ran away. She had cleaned up the fallen boxes and found the baseball in the wreckage. The damage hadn’t even been as bad as she’d initially thought. She knew she’d overreacted, but still, he shouldn’t have been playing ball inside.
Sanna sighed. Even she knew that was weak, or “sad,” as Bass would say, and her stomach twisted with regret as she remembered the scared look on his face. She never wanted to cause a look like that again. First the ruined apples, now her overreacting at a harmless mistake. All the evidence that she had no right being in charge kept stacking up against her. All her life, her dad made it look so easy, and now she couldn’t even keep from snapping at a little kid over a few broken bottles.
Her dad emerged from the bathroom. He’d been quiet since they’d left for his PT. Sanna assumed he was making his disappointment in her failure clear. The tactic was effective.
After she had scolded Bass, Isaac and her dad had driven up in the ATV, laughing, as she had stepped out of the barn ready to drive him to the appointment. Isaac had looked around.
“Where’s Bass?”
“He ran into the orchard.”
All humor disappeared from his face.
“What do you mean he ran into the orchard? Did something happen?”
Sanna swallowed. She had told herself she didn’t do anything wrong. He had made a mistake and she just told him to leave, she hadn’t even punished him. But the look on Isaac’s face told her there was no right answer she could give him, and those rationalizations wouldn’t help.
“He knocked over a tower of crates and bottles because he was playing with his baseball inside. I told him to get out of the barn. He did.”
Isaac flared his nostrils and turned to the ATV. Einars was already sliding out of the passenger seat and hobbling out of the way with his crutches.
“Try the Looms. Kids are always drawn out there,” Einars said.
Isaac had given her one last look of hurt and anger, like she had broken some unspoken vow. Her dad’s eyes spoke of disappointment.
“I told you I don’t even like kids.” She had walked to the house to clean up, but the words soured her mouth. During the entire drive to the appointment, during the appointment, during the drive back home, and all through dinner, her dad had kept his silence. Normally Sanna would love the reprieve from his endless prattle, but it felt like a punishment for a crime she didn’t fully grasp or, maybe, chose to not fully grasp.
When Einars emerged from his postdinner shower, after insisting he could do it all himself and didn’t need her help, his skin was pale and his face drooped. Every movement required visible effort. Sanna moved toward him.
“Let me help, Pa.” She reached for his good arm to loop around her neck. He pushed away.
“I don’t want your help.”
With the effort of pushing her away, he lost his balance. It was like watching King Kong fall in slow motion—first his legs crumbled, then his body landed, at last his head bumped the side of his bedside table, knocking it hard enough to send the stack of papers on it flying. For the second time today, she watched, too slow to stop the fall.
She flashed back to him tumbling backward off the ladder and she froze, but this time Isaac wasn’t there to shake her out of it.
“Goddamn it,” Einars said. “Help me up, Sanna.”
He was speaking, he was okay. She moved into action, looping her arms under his armpits and maneuvering him near the bed, where she used her legs to get him upright enough that he could slide onto the mattress. She looked him in the face, but only a small red mark indicated where he’d smacked the table.
“I’ll get some ice.”
“I’m fine. My skull is thick, maybe too thick.”
The tone of his voice was serious, too serious. Sanna didn’t like it. Serious meant change, and she didn’t want more change. She looked around for something to distract them from this conversation and knelt on the floor to pick up all the papers that scattered. These were the same papers Anders had tried to give her the night before. This time she didn’t avoid looking at them, instead she studied them in silence. Columns added up all their monthly expenses, including the loan for remodeling the barn and the cider equipment. The number was enormous. The next column, a much shorter one, listed their much smaller monthly income.
“Are these figures correct?”
Sanna knew they were, but Einars nodded and confirmed the fears her denial had allowed her to ignore for almost a year.
“I had a plan. It had seemed possible, but now I realize that was just me being stubborn. I love this orchard, this place with every fiber of my being. If I had a soul mate, this orchard would be it. Idun’s has whispered to me for years, filling me with dreams. And you seemed to share a similar dream, but we can’t do it alone. I thought Isaac and Bass might be the last puzzle piece in the plan, but I can see now that’s not the case. I should have known better. You are who you are.” He rubbed his hands over his face, trying to scrub away the sadness. He maneuvered himself under the covers and turned off his bedside light. “Anders is right. We should sell the land and cut our losses.”
In the sudden darkness, Sanna clutched her stomach as if the words were punches. She gasped for air her lungs couldn’t find and backed out of the room, still holding the papers. She couldn’t unsee the stack of bills. Anders had been right about everything. The thought made her mouth pucker and her eyes pinch.