Page 17 of While the Sun Shines

Dates, sometimes, too.

Abelardo tugs Penny against his side, jostling her shoulders. “Can I see your room?”

Drew stumbles back a step. “Mowing.”

“Now?” Penny asks.

“I got to—” Drew jerks his thumb toward the door. “I’ve got the hay, um, I have to—‍”

“Can I come?” Abelardo asks.

No, Drew nearly blurts. But otherwise—what? Watch them walk upstairs together?

“I won’t be a bother,” Abelardo says. “I want to see everything I can while I’m here. I’ve been so excited to visit.”

“Come to the barn. I’ll show you the cows,” Whit says.

“Nuh-uh, I get him.” Penny hugs Abelardo’s arm to her chest.

“The hay,” Drew mumbles again and pushes out the door.

The farm stares back at him in the morning light—the untidy grass along the edges of the barnyard, the chipped paint and patches of rust on the farm truck, and a loose board on the barn, knocked askew by a winter storm. It’s on Drew’s list to fix, though isn’t everything? Get out the lawn mower, weed the garden, usher the hens who’ve escaped through their loose fence back into their coop. Finish sweeping out the barn, a project he’d gotten half done in March before calving had started in earnest, and which he hasn’t returned to since.

A list, he thinks weakly. And a clearer schedule for what he wants Cooper and Whit to do so the three of them can manage to get all of this done.

“What a place,” Abelardo says from behind him. “The barn and your house. It must be all original, right?”

“Drew’s family built it all themselves and cleared the land too,” Penny says.

And I’m busy ruining it, Drew thinks. He climbs into the cab of the tractor before he has to hear Abelardo’s reply. With the engine running, he can only see Penny, not hear her, as she points out the pastures, the maple trees that tower behind the house, and Socks, the barn cat, as he lounges in the sun, unimpressed by their visitor.

Well great; at least someone around here isn’t having their morning disturbed. Socks rolls onto his back and yawns as Penny and Abelardo both laugh at something she’s said.

Drew edges the throttle up, driving faster than he probably should on the pitted and rough lane to the hayfield. It’s wet too, puddles splashing mud up onto the tractor. More rain must’ve fallen yesterday than he’d guessed the few times he stuck his head out of the cheese room to check.

Without the hay to mow, he’d be happy to go to his cheese room right now. Sorry, it has to be sterile, he could say as an excuse to keep everyone else out.

Though, then what? A morning of wondering what Penny and Abelardo are doing? He twists in the seat to look back at them as they walk behind the tractor. That must make you Drew, Abelardo had said. Apparently he knows who Drew is, knows his name, knows the address of the farm.

Knows Penny.

And Whit, Drew tries to remind himself. A childhood friend, here for a visit, is all. And Penny’s excited to see him. Cool. Great.

The tractor dips into another mud puddle and Drew tightens his grip on the wheel. Really, he should turn around if this road is so wet. But no, then he’d just be giving a show of himself driving halfway out to the field, and then being forced to maneuver through a very slow three-point turn right in front of his audience.

It’s fine; it’s not much farther to the field. And sure enough, he can already see the hill and the mower parked at the top of it, where he and Penny left it last night.

He tries for a smile. That was fun. Her laughing, hesitantly shifting gears. The warm delight in his chest that she was out there with him. The promise of pie before he’d spent all night fencing the—shit.

He scrambles to pull his phone out of his pocket. How’re the sheep? he texts Whit.

Because, of course, Drew forgot. Bought a brand new herd of sheep and didn’t even think, not once, to go out and check on them this morning.

Stubborn little shits, he gets in response. Then, This is Cooper.

The two of them, texting from each other’s phones. Gross, he’d complain to Penny, to get her to smile, but he glances back and she’s laughing at something Abelardo said.

A picture appears on his screen of the sheep huddled in the barn, forming the same tight knot as last night. At least they’re out of the trailer. Progress, Drew thinks, but there’s no sense of victory in it.