“What do you think about her?”
He wiped his mouth and held out the towel for Bass to do the same, buying some time before answering. His first thought was what he wouldn’t call her to his son: sexy, luminous, or even pretty. Those weren’t exactly the words he wanted, but she was undeniably attractive, the way an incoming storm could take your breath away with its ferocity and purpose. He couldn’t give that answer to Bass.
“I think she’s smart and knows how she likes to do things around here, so you’ll need to listen carefully and follow her instructions. Now into bed.”
After waiting as Bass slid under the covers and tucked Snarf into the crook of his arm, he covered them both with the comforter and turned to go out to the living room. He needed to check some messages on his phone—needed to send his mom something to placate her—and maybe start one of the well-worn paperbacks he had seen tucked into a cupboard.
“You aren’t coming to bed?” Bass asked, his voice tiny in the dim light. Isaac could hear the uncertainty in his voice. It was a new bed in a new place, and for the first time in three weeks, he had the space to stay up past Bass’s bedtime in a different room rather than turn out the motel room’s lights so he could fall asleep. Leaves rustled in the night breeze, and the occasional bug thwapped against the screen trying to get to the lights—the only sounds that broke through the blanket of quiet in this corner of the orchard.
He understood.
Bass had never gone this long without seeing his mom. Even with her roller-coaster emotions and frustrating highs and lows, she was the only mom he had, and he knew Bass missed her. That combined with the new and unfamiliar bed rattled his little boy’s courage. Of course Bass would want to keep his dad as close as possible.
“I am.” He took a quick glance at his phone to confirm there wasn’t anything that couldn’t wait until morning. “Just turning off the lights and locking up.”
When Isaac lay down next to Bass, he was barely settled before Bass’s little body and lanky limbs were draped all over Isaac—one arm still clutching Snarf, the other wrapped around Isaac’s arm so he couldn’t sneak away without Bass noticing. Isaac used his free arm to rub Bass’s shoulder. So much had changed over the last few weeks, and so much could never go back to the way it was. He still couldn’t process it all. As Bass snuggled in closer, his breath already easing into the first layers of sleep, Isaac let the closeness burrow into him, too. He kissed the top of Bass’s head—somehow it always smelled like the air right after it rained, earthy and damp but never unpleasant—grateful that at least this had not changed.
? ? ? ? ?
Dew soaked Isaac’s and Bass’s feet in moments, and they weren’t even past the first line of trees from the trailer’s doorstep. The sun hadn’t risen high enough to dry it yet, though the day promised to be warm and breezy. Isaac would need to get them some sturdier footwear or their feet would be perpetually wet. Bass had already discovered how slick the dew made the long grass, running and sliding across it. Seeing the natural escalation too slowly, Isaac could only groan. There wasn’t time to stop it. Bass had already started his next dash, this time diving face-first like he would on a Slip’N Slide, gliding a few feet before stopping. When he popped up, his shirt and pants were drenched and a sloppy grin beamed off his face.
“Hey, Wahoo, how about we try and make a decent good impression?” He helped Bass brush off the dead leaves that clung to his now soggy shirt. With the way the sun was coming up, he’d dry off in no time. It wasn’t worth heading back for a change of clothes—especially when he’d just find another way to get messy.
“What do you think I’m going to be doing?” Bass asked.
“Not sure. Whatever Miss Lund asks you to do.”
“But what do you think? Maybe I’ll get to drive a tractor.”
Isaac laughed.
“We aren’t on that kind of farm—and you’re too young to be driving anything other than a broom around the floor.”
They walked for a few moments in silence as the white farmhouse became visible between the trees.
“That house is huge. Are they rich?” Bass asked.
“Don’t ask Miss Lund that.” Isaac bit his cheek to keep from smiling at Bass’s innocent yet impertinent question. “If I were to guess, I bet they used to have a lot more people living there than just them. If you look at the bottom, that’s the foundation and it’s made from fieldstone, not concrete blocks, so you can tell it’s been around for a while. People don’t really use fieldstone in construction anymore.”
He had noticed it yesterday, too. The house was hard to miss, rising out of the trees like a mountain—or a nice-sized hill. He had been surprised to learn that only Sanna and Einars lived there, running the entire orchard themselves. Envisioning them working long days, then bumping around an empty house painted the entire orchard with a melancholy patina.
It seemed a lonely life.
He touched the dangling branches, the spring bright leaves hiding baby green apples, a first glimpse at the harvest to come. Everything around him was new and fresh with so much growing left to do. Yet with all the new growth, the trees had aged bark, wrinkled and scarred where branches had been trimmed off. He could almost feel the roots winding deeper into the earth, stretching themselves ever farther while their crowns reached to the sun.
Sometimes Bass grew the same way. He’d put him to bed with pants that fit perfectly, then wake in the morning to see two inches more of ankle. Some nights they’d put bags of ice on his shins to freeze out the growing pains.
Isaac took a deep breath, filling his lungs with the clean air, not the stagnant, stinky feet fug of their car. With each breath, the tension of the last few weeks eased out, like the shaking out of a rug. Each breath released more of the dirt. He’d never get all of it out, but he felt cleaner than he had since he decided to take Bass on this journey. He shoved the sadness that lingered down deep. No amount of shaking could remove it, so he’d need to keep it hidden.
His priorities now were to make sure Bass enjoyed this adventure as much as possible. The fresh air, the blue skies, the warm water at the beach in the nearby state park. He wanted his son to learn how to climb a tree and catch fireflies, maybe how to grill a hamburger on the Weber he had seen behind the trailer. This time needed to be so wonderful that Bass would forgive Isaac for not telling him the truth about Paige right away.
Bass started tilting his head in a rhythm, and Isaac knew what was coming.
“Farts and butts and farts and butts and farts and butts,” Bass chanted in time to the head tilts.