Page 74 of While the Sun Shines

“Anything. I don’t know, it’s just—I’m still—”

“Hoping Caroline will change her mind?”

“I guess so,” Drew mumbles.

“That the problem will just go away on its own?”

“That’d be—” He scrubs his hand over his face. Yes, he thinks. Exactly that. “That’d be nice.”

“Tough shit.” Bert’s hand settles on the back of Drew’s neck, squeezes once, firm and strong. Then, he reaches past Drew, pushes the drawer in and gives it a shake, and when he pulls it out again, it comes smoothly. “Now, what’re you going to do about it?”

Hide under a rock, Drew wants to say. “Thanks,” he mumbles.

“Gonna make an offer?”

“On her land? God, Uncle Bert, I can’t—I—I have, like, no money—”

Stop, he snaps at himself. Bert doesn’t need to know that. Bert can’t know that. Hasn’t Drew tried for so long to keep up appearances? Scramble each and every day to make it seem like he hasn’t been such a goddamn mess over the last few years?

“Well,” Bert says, “you can’t have absolutely no money, if you’re really selling all that cheese.”

“I have to pay Cooper along with Whit,” Drew says. “And I’ve increased the herd so much the feed bill is higher, but the cows won’t be bred until fall so I’m not selling their milk yet, and I had to get new equipment to make more cheese and—and the sheep and—”

“You sound like your dad, you know that?”

Drew sucks in a breath. “I do?”

“Oh hell, you should’ve heard him. ‘I’ve got diapers to change, and puke all over the baby’s clothes, and he won’t sleep without sixteen rounds of Twinkle Twinkle’—it was a sight, kid.”

“You never told me that.”

He’d heard other stories, sure. Tree forts in the maples behind the farmhouse, a one-eyed duck Uncle Bert and his dad had adopted that had lived in the backyard for years. The broken rope swing and the resulting scar on Uncle Bert’s elbow, the potato Bert and Dad hid in Aunt Lucy’s closet that had grown spindly, ghostly sprouts as it reached toward the light.

That’s Whit’s room now, the one Aunt Lucy had grown up in. Dad and Bert shared the bathroom that Penny’s made her own, and Aunt Lucy had space to herself at the other end of the hall. It was her wallpaper Drew stripped off the walls, texting her a picture of it when he did and asking if she was sure she didn’t want to add that same dingy, old-fashioned style to her house now.

And Grandma and Grandpa had the master bedroom Drew sleeps in now, waking up to the view of the farm that turns Drew’s stomach every time he looks at it. Like a to-do list is staring him back each and every morning: unmowed fields and worn fencing and the weeds growing up alongside the barn, where there used to be a tidy row of sunflowers.

“He tried so hard with you, Drew,” Bert says. “I thought he’d run himself ragged and you were such a tiny little thing. You didn’t care at all, would just laugh and laugh as long as he was holding you.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“I wish he could see you,” Bert says. “He and your mom. If they were here, you’d be chasing them away from the farm with a broom to get some peace and quiet. They’d be turning up constantly just to ooh and ahh over what you’re doing there. You’re more like him than you realize. Funny how that works out, since you two never got to know each other, but you are. Always trying to sort out the best way to go about things.”

Drew fits the cup into the dishwasher. “Well maybe he’d have a clue about what to do with Caroline’s land.”

“Nah, he’d be no help. He’d be running a—what’s it called? Instagram? One of those for you, but it’d just be him following you around, filming every single thing you do.” Bert laughs. “The only way to get away from him would be to sell the place.” Drew feels his face flush bright red. Bert raises an eyebrow. “What, you thinking about it?”

“Last summer, I—no. It’s fine. It’s—” Drew’s mouth works over sounds that don’t come. “You said I was ready to take over the family’s farm, Uncle Bert—I’m not. I’m so, so not.”

“It’s not the family’s farm. It’s your farm.”

“It’s—what?” Drew lets out a loud laugh. “Uncle Bert.”

“Is it not working out for you? ’Cause you’re not saddled with it, kid. Sell it, if you want to. Or hell, don’t sell the land, just get out of farming and keep the house, if you like living there. A handful of chickens, a little vegetable garden—I always thought that’d be a nice life, rather than up at dawn every day slogging through milking.”

“I don’t—I can’t—I’m not going to sell it. It’s—it’s the family’s. I’m supposed to be running it, but I—”

“But do you want to?”