Page 40 of While the Sun Shines

“Oh, they were in a sorry state. Next time I saw your dad, he was talking about heading off to college with your Aunt Lucy, getting himself a degree instead of sticking around here.”

“That’s what I should’ve done, apparently.”

“But Bert was just laughing, feeding those awful bales to the cows all winter. You know what he always says: farming’s a good life, up until you realize each and every mistake you make is in full view of anyone who would care to look.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard that a time or ten.” Drew presses the glass to his forehead, condensation mixing with the sweat rolling down his face, but soothing the sting of the heat. He heard that over and over again from Bert, and now, like then, it unnerved him. Bert finding buckets he hadn’t stacked correctly so they got stuck together, or that Drew had fed out the wrong grain to the pigs and given them chicken feed by accident, or nearly filled the tractor’s fuel tank with gasoline when it only takes diesel.

He’s always liked the cheese room for that reason: hidden, cool and silent, and empty but for himself, where he can murmur out loud the amounts of rennet and the temperature on the milk vat’s thermometer.

Because, no, he doesn’t have Cooper’s unending confidence, or even Whit’s cool, measured control. Needs it, apparently, to make up for the goddamn mistakes he keeps stumbling into.

Which is probably fitting because he’s farming by accident, only. The twist of family history that Bert and Mary never had kids of their own, that Drew had the shitty fortune to lose two parents to the randomness of a drunk driver. The fact that his mom didn’t have any siblings, so Aunt Lucy and Uncle Bert had decided he should be raised at the farm. Another way of things, Drew would’ve been like his cousin, Julie, and his own father, off to college and on to a career that doesn’t involve shear bolts. Or hay blanching in the sun, leaking nutrients the longer it sits baking in the day’s heat.

He squeezes his eyes shut. He wants his uncle here. Not to see the disaster he’s created, but here, farming. Running this place, like he used to. Erase those words he’d said to Drew a handful of years ago, that Drew was ready to take over the farm, that this was Drew’s time to strike out on his own, that Bert’s years at Two Pines had come to a happy, natural end, and he wanted a swimming pool, palm trees, and time with his wife.

“C’mon, now,” Caroline says. “Why don’t you take this back to your friends before the ice melts and just drop the pitcher by whenever you’re done with it.”

Drew stands, clumsy and exhausted in the heat. But the glass pitcher’s cool between his hands and Caroline’s pat on his cheek is soft.

“It’s just hay,” she says.

“Yeah, it’s just hay. I should’ve gotten it right.”

“And you did before and you will again next time,” she says before she lets him go.

Halfway across the barnyard, he can hear Cooper’s laughter flowing through the open windows. There’s Abelardo talking and Whit answering him. Drew holds the pitcher too tight, the glass slippery in his hands, his boots puffing up little billows of dust with each step.

When he looks up again, Penny’s in the front garden. Drew freezes. She has her back to him, sprigs of fresh herbs in one hand and the kitchen scissors in the other. She bends down, sorts through the parsley and chives and cilantro to where the mint grows, and snips a handful of stems. Reaches for another handful, twisting toward him—

She spots him. Freezes. And then slowly, she straightens.

Drew can see her swallow.

He can hear the creak of the porch steps, too, as she jogs up them, the slap of the screen door slamming shut behind her as she pushes inside, over the sound of everyone talking.

They quiet when Drew opens the door. Cooper with a cocktail shaker in his hand, Whit with the refrigerator open, and Abelardo slicing a lime in half. Penny—Penny’s at the kitchen counter, but Drew can’t even look at her full on, as if she’s a too-bright light.

“From Caroline,” he says in a soft mumble as he sets the pitcher on the table.

Cooper punches both fists into the air. “Tom Collins! One drink, coming up.”

“I don’t think that’s how you make a Tom Collins,” Whit says, pressing the refrigerator shut. “The baler okay?”

Drew tucks his hands into his pockets. “We need a new shear bolt and maybe some time with the welder.”

“I’ll run out to the co-op,” Whit says.

Drew doesn’t even need to look at the clock on the stove. He knows the time already from the angle of the sun, the length of time he sat in the field, his slow trudge back to the farm. “It’s closed.”

“First thing tomorrow,” Whit says. “It’s no problem.”

Or Drew could just find the fucking bolts he bought. Could have put them somewhere obvious in the first place. Not ruined this entire afternoon. His life, he thinks and still can’t look at Penny, her back to him as she brings a knife down on the mint over and over again.

“What’s this?” he asks dully, picking up one of the glasses on the table.

“The world’s best and quickest-made Long Island iced tea,” Cooper says. “There’s been a vote that we need a far better arrangement of barware.”

“Right.” Drew sets it down. Rubs his hand over his face, wet with the moisture from the glass, and pushes his fingers into the bridge of his nose.