Page 73 of While the Sun Shines

Drew laughs again, an edge to it. Quickly he pushes the top rack in and starts loading the bottom. It’s fine, everything’s fine, the farm’s fine, he’s said ever since that first time Bert had called after heading south, when Drew had been staring numbly around the barn, sure the cows were going to one by one refuse to be milked in protest that he was the person now in charge of them.

No, in fact, they were just going to spend the next few years escaping. Taking advantage of shitty fencing and repairs Drew couldn’t keep up with, until Caroline had been so used to cows turning up in her front yard that she’d started saving little snacks for them, feeding slices of apples to the friendliest ones, those who would amble over to her porch and get their ears scratched while they ate.

Which never once happened when Bert was running things. Nope, just Drew.

There’s a cup on the counter. One last one he hadn’t noticed. He grabs the top rack to pull it back out, but it catches, refusing to budge more than halfway. Drew tugs again, but the inch he gained slips away again as the drawer rolls back when he lets go.

“Drew,” Bert says.

“Fucking disaster.”

“I think it’s just the Tupperware lid that’s caught.”

“The—Uncle Bert, the farm.”

Oh shit, he didn’t mean for that to come out of his mouth, but it did. And…he feels better, almost. Or not good, but relieved. A release of the pretending he’s hidden behind for so long now.

Breathe, he hears Penny say again and he does, fills up his chest with air and lets it out again slowly.

“The hay,” Drew says. Dully, he pulls at the rack again, trying to shift it loose. “It rained—I broke the baler, and so we didn’t get the hay into the barn in time, and then yesterday, it got soaked when that storm came through.”

There’s no more basic mistake than that, is there? No, and Drew would know because Bert told him over and over again, summer after summer, as he watched the clouds and checked the weather forecast, and never, not once, left hay in the fields to mold.

Though Bert just sips at his coffee.

“How’re those sheep you got?” he asks.

Just say it, Drew thinks. Quit with the politeness and lay into Drew, like Bert surely wants to. Stop it with the even-keeled coffee-drinking and go ahead and list out what Drew should’ve done and didn’t do. Start with the container wedged in the opening of the dishwasher, and finish with the fact that Drew’s ruining the entirety of the family’s farm, one mistake after the next.

But Bert just takes another drink of coffee, and Drew kneels so he doesn’t have to look at him, working his hand up through the rack to try to free the Tupperware.

The sheep are fine, Drew should say. Put a smile on, let this conversation blow over like he normally does. But now that he’s fessed up to the hay, now that he’s talking, he can’t rein himself back in.

“The sheep? I can’t get them out on pasture. They want to live in the barn.”

“Well, there’s worse things than that.”

“There are?”

“Sure. They could’ve chosen the house.”

The house, Drew thinks. Breathe, breathe, breathe, breathe.

“No space,” Drew says, aiming for a joke, but his voice is too heavy. “I’m still working on Whit’s room. I guess the sheep didn’t get the memo that I need their milk, not them running all over.”

“Drew. Maybe I didn’t pass this tidbit on, but…” Bert sets his hand on Drew’s shoulder. “Sheep can’t read.”

Drew tries for a smile. “Now you tell me.”

“Guess I forgot that one,” Bert says. “Here’s another one—call your damn uncle when you find out the neighbor’s selling her land.”

Drew jerks his head up. “You know about that?”

“What I don’t know is why I didn’t get a phone call that same day.”

“I was—I’m trying to—I haven’t figured it out yet.”

“Figured what out?”