“I ain’t got all day, Magnolia!” Clyde barks, and I turn and leave Matt without so much as a goodbye wave. I keep my head tipped down, eyes on the pavement as I make my way past Tate. I do not want to see his reaction to any of this.
I wait a second, until Tate has pulled out of the parking lot, before pulling out myself. Clyde turns to me and opens his mouth but I slap a hand up between us. “I don’t want to hear it. You can explain at the farm—to everyone—how you got arrested and cost us a spot at the farmer’s market. Until then, not a word, Clyde.”
“Mag—”
“Not. One. Word!”
2
Tate
My dad scrubs his face with his hand as he leans against the kitchen counter. “Can you say that again? My brain just isn’t making sense of it.”
“Because it makes no sense,” I reply and glance at the clock above the sink. My hockey practice is starting soon. Too soon. I have to leave this instant if I’m going to make it close to on time. “Look, I have practice. Just ask grandpa why he got into a fist fight with Clyde Todd. He can probably explain it better than me.”
I start toward the front hall but there are footsteps thumping on the stairs and then my younger brother, Jace, swings his body over the whitewashed pine stair railing and lands with a thud directly in front of me. “Grandpa got arrested?”
“I told you how I feel about eavesdropping,” Grandma says sternly from where she’s sitting at the kitchen table a few feet away.
Jace shrugs his hoodie clad shoulders innocently. “It’s not my fault the heating ducts from the kitchen carry every word people say right into my room. You guys really need to stop having private discussions in here. Try the barn.”
“What’s left of the barn is currently occupied by Grandpa who is blowing off steam by working,” I explain. “And yeah he was arrested. Not charged. Thanks to me.”
“Please say that loser Clyde Todd is still rotting in a cell,” Jace says.
“Nope. Unfortunately he was sprung by Maggie. I gotta go,” I say and push past Jace. He almost looks hurt. I feel bad because I don’t hang out with him much at all lately. Now that I’m back at school, and hockey practices have started even though the season doesn’t start for another month I barely see him and I know he misses me. I miss him too. He is used to me not being around since I went to boarding school for high school, but I think he assumed I’d live at home when I got into Moo U. But my full ride included money for housing, so I spent my freshman year in the dorms and moved into the hockey house a few blocks off campus this year. “I’ll be seeing you on Sundays now though, since we got a booth at the farmer’s market.”
“We got the booth? Over the Todds?” Dad says and I can hear the relief in his voice. “You should have led with that, son.”
I glance back at him and he smiles at me. I smile back, but I’m not as convinced as they are that getting a booth is a good thing. I mean, our apple crop is pretty pitiful this year and part of the plan was to sell pies and strudels and muffins from our less-than-presentable apples, but that relies on my grandma, and the arthritis in her hands is worse than ever. Aunt Louise and my cousin Raquel are supposed to help her out with the baking, but they tend to do a half-ass job if they show up at all. They both work other jobs—part-time—so I almost can’t blame them except that they always expect me to give up everything to help with the farm, and I have other obligations. But I do it, so they should too. Jace has tried to help with baking but he usually messes up an ingredient amount and whatever he’s making ends up inedible. “We will have enough baked goods to supplement the apples, right?”
“We will have enough. I think,” Grandma says not even trying to sound confident. She tucks a strand of salt and pepper hair back behind her ear. “I mean I sent Louise to the store this morning for more flour, but she isn’t back yet.”
I grind my teeth. If you looked up self-absorbed in the dictionary, you’d find a picture of my aunt Louise. I can’t say that out loud because my grandparents adore her. Louise can do no wrong in their eyes. “Jace, can you head to town and track down Louise please?” I say calmly and then whisper so only he can hear. “Check the coffee shop and the shoe store. If she spent the money grandma gave her on herself…”
I don’t finish the sentence because there’s no point. If Louise did spend the cash she was given for pie ingredients on shoes or a lunch for herself, I can’t do a damn thing about it except make more money to replace it. Louise knows it and I know it. Jace nods and walks to the front hall to grab the keys to the family SUV. Well, it’s technically Grandpa’s but since Dad’s car died in July and we haven’t had the money to get him a new one, it’s a communal car now, as with Gram’s relic of a hatchback. He swings open the screen door and steps onto the porch. I follow.
“I’ll be back early Sunday morning to help bring everything down to the farmer’s market,” I call as I walk out of the house.
Grandpa is walking out of the barn. He’s red-faced and sweaty. I wonder what he’s been doing in there. I don’t know if I should ask. He wouldn’t speak to me the whole ride home. He told me he was sorry I had to come fetch him and that it wasn’t his fault but that was it. George Adler isn’t the strong silent type. He talks. In fact, it’s usually hard to get him to shut up whether he’s armchair quarterbacking the Patriots game on TV or giving instructions to the farmhands—when we could afford to have farmhands —or telling his lame jokes at the dinner table, he’s always yapping. “Need to replace the brushes on the apple washer.”
“What? Why?” I ask, my feet skidding to a halt on the dirt drive, dust rising around me. “I thought we just did that.”
“We did. Brushes are too hard. Bruised the crap out of the fruit,” he tosses an apple at me. I catch it and examine it. He’s right. It’s all banged up. We can’t sell that.
“Why did we buy brushes that are too hard?” I say, my voice tight with frustration. I run a hand through my hair. “There’s no way you can break down the washer and get it back together by tomorrow is there?”
“I’ll stay up all night if I have to. Your dad will help,” Grandpa replies.
He doesn’t sound confident, he sounds resigned. He’ll get it done, but it won’t be easy. I’m not anywhere near confident either. Last time he broke down the washer it took three days to put back together. “Why did we buy the wrong brushes?”
“They aren’t wrong. They just aren’t right,” Grandpa mutters and that lame excuse of a defense means he’s covering for someone.
“Louise bought the wrong brushes? Or was it Raquel?”
“It’s my fault. I asked Raquel to order them online and I didn’t make it clear which ones. I was trying to save a couple bucks because it’s cheaper than the local stores,” Grandpa says and waves a hand between us like he’s trying to air out the tension I’m emanating.
“Grandpa, did you really get arrested? For clocking Clyde Todd?” Jace asks and I want to bark at him because he should be halfway to town by now tracking down Louise. Instead he’s hanging his head out the SUV window while it idles, burning away the gas we can barely afford.