First Step Forward Read online

   4

  (Whitney)

  Mountain roads are perfect for thinking. Every long, lazy curve means your thoughts can follow that same path, nearly on autopilot, while your subconscious works away on whatever problem is at hand. Today, while I’m downshifting to coast the descent of a high mountain pass, inspiration strikes.

  While I don’t own much when it comes to orchard equipment, my Polaris UTV has to be worth something. Not enough to deal with my loan, but enough to stay on top of basic living expenses for a while. With this season nearly over, I should be able to go without it—at least until I’ve managed to implement the winning Powerball strategy I also devised during my time on the road. All odd numbers, a combination of my father’s birthdate and my own. Lucky or not, the numbers mean something, so I figure a karmic multiplier could benefit otherwise hopeless odds.

  When I hit the edge of town, I veer into the Hotchkiss Co-op parking lot before I have a chance to change my mind. If you want to sell anything farm or ranch related, this is the place to make that known. Because instead of craigslist, I plan to use a far more reliable sales approach. Garrettslist. As in, Garrett Strickland. Full-time country guy extraordinaire and the Hotchkiss Co-op’s main employee.

  When I pull the front door open, a familiar scent of seed, fertilizers, and dirt immediately surrounds me. Within seconds of stepping inside, I’m greeted the usual way.

  “Johnny Appleseed! Have you come to your senses yet? If you marry me, I’d be able to reach all the high limbs for you. Our kids would be perfect, you know. My redneck charm and good looks are a genetic blessing I’d be happy to pair up with your gorgeous DNA.”

  Garrett proceeds to flop forward onto the countertop just adjacent to the cash register, resting on his forearms and drumming his chafed and well-used hands on the dirty, junk-strewn laminate. Despite my fatigue, his goofball proclamation hits just the right note. Even if Garrett is twentysomething, too young for me, and I feel nothing but sisterly toward him, his easygoing charm always brings a grin to my face.

  If you live here and don’t know Garrett, you’re likely blind, or deaf, or perhaps been confined to your home undergoing some sort of exorcism. He’s a hometown boy who can do no wrong and looks like he just stumbled out of a Cabela’s advertisement. Or got lost on his way to a music video shoot for Florida Georgia Line, where he’ll likely be shirtless and standing atop a hay bale. Because while he’s lanky and tall, the sturdy biceps and taut abs that sometimes appear when he loads bags of fertilizer into my truck bed make it clear that he’s also built like some redneck version of a male model.

  He’s usually sporting a sweat-stained Browning Buckmark ball cap paired with slightly grubby jeans and a shirt that always has camo on it somewhere. And the second he gives you one of his five-thousand-watt grins, women want to kiss him and men want to drink beer with him. Or go hunting. Possibly shoot sporting clays. Maybe just be his wingman while a passel of blonde girls in short-shorts giggle their way over to find a spot next to him on the dropped tailgate of his old Ford truck.

  I shuffle toward him and rest my hips against my side of the counter.

  “You know, someday you’re going to lay that flirt on the right girl. She’ll crawl right over this countertop and the next thing you know, you’ll be tied down in all the right ways.”

  Garrett widens his eyes. “You think? I sure as shit hope so. Every day I come in here, just waiting for some gorgeous girl to walk through that door and launch herself at me.”

  He looks away slightly, mock wistfulness at play. “She’ll be wearing cutoffs with a pair of Justin’s. And one of those shirts with the thing that goes—” He makes a gesture toward his neck, circling it.

  I laugh. “A halter top?”

  His face lights up. “Yes. One of those. Maybe with an over-and-under slung on her shoulder. And, like, some feathery angel wings or something. Just so it will be easy for me to identify that she’s my fantasy girl come true.”

  Another grin from Garrett before he slaps his hands on the counter and pushes himself upright.

  “So what’s up? It seems you didn’t come here to ask for my hand in marriage. You need some more alfalfa seed? Or you gonna keep the yarrow as a cover crop? If so, you’ll have to keep ordering that online. Can’t imagine we’re going to stock it.”

  My shoulders slump and I mimic his previous posture, arms supporting me on the counter.

  “I need to sell my Polaris.”

  “Yeah? You ready now, or is this something you’re just thinking about? Gonna be a tough winter for you without it.”

  I groan. “Don’t remind me. But, yes, I’m ready now. I have to be.”

  Garrett doesn’t press for more, he simply grabs a pen from amidst the stacks of mail, catalogs, and assorted papers littering the space and asks for the specifics on my UTV. Perhaps it’s out of courtesy—or maybe it’s because he’s a kid who knows exactly how losing everything feels.

  Valedictorian of his class and an all-state wrestler, Garrett’s the kind of golden boy who is truly golden, without artifice or bullshit. After graduation, he made his way up to Fort Collins on a full-ride scholarship to study ag sciences. But three and a half years into finishing his degree, his dad collapsed in the field during harvest season. Garrett came home to what he thought would be his farm, only to discover there was too much debt and not enough cash to be able to keep the land that had been in his family for generations, all of it sold at a fire sale before the headstone was placed on his dad’s grave. Now he works here, and even when he should be nothing but bitter, he rarely seems less than perfectly content with life as it is.

  So, Garrett Strickland already understands—without me uttering a word.

  Thirty-six hours later, Garrett and the rural grapevine are enough to land a sale. I mistakenly assumed that holding a wad of cash in my hand would make it easier to see Kenny Euland pulling out of my driveway with my Polaris loaded in the back of his Ford F-350, destined for work on his cattle ranch a few miles down the road. I want to feel relieved. Instead, I feel defeated. Too many setbacks in too many days have left me hollowed out and exhausted.

  Kenny was nice enough about the whole thing. No dickering about the price, no questions about why I was selling it. Instead, he simply inspected the tires and took a quick gander at the undercarriage, then dug out his wallet to produce three thousand dollars. I signed the back of the title and we shook hands as his teenage son, Tanner, fired up the UTV and eased onto the ramp extending from the dropped tailgate.

  The entire transaction took less time than my meeting with Campbell at the bank—but this time, I came away with actual cash. All I can do now is pray that the tepid temperatures hold as long as possible, because if winter comes calling too soon, the cost of propane to heat the house will be too much.

  Until then, I need to make something. Create instead of collapse. I press my whiskey quartz necklace to my chest and decide it’s time for chutney.

  Chopping up pears in my kitchen, I’m hoping the pathetic harvest of Harrow Sweets I yielded this year will be enough to finish the chutney recipe I want to try. The pears are just a touch beyond ripe for eating out of hand, but still firm enough to hold up in a recipe that demands a bit of texture. I taste a few pieces and despite getting only a single crate of fruit this year, I find the pears’ flavor is perfectly balanced.

  Months ago, I would have taken this moment and thought: Next year. Next year will be even better. Next year will make all the work worth it. Instead, I know that I should savor these, because I may never have the privilege of this again, the unique experience of holding fruit I tended to and grew. Someone else’s fruit may be in my hands and it might taste just fine—great, even. But it won’t be mine.

  I toss the last of the chopped pears into a heavy cast-iron pot along with the others. In go a few cups of raisins, then a heap of sugar. After that, it’s a squeeze of lemon and a shake of allspice, with a splash of cider vinegar to brighten the mix. Just a touch of savo
ry to make it a true chutney: crushed garlic cloves, some diced onion, and mustard seed.

  The pot is nearly overflowing, but simmer it all down, down, down and soon enough, I’ll have the bittersweet results of my final harvest.

  Three years ago, when I drove into Hotchkiss on my way to anywhere, I was so exhausted from traveling for days on end, I drove off the side of the road and straight into what is now my orchard.

  Just two months out from losing my father, with a check in my pocket for over a hundred thousand dollars, I had nowhere to call home. Then I literally knocked down the faded “FOR SALE” sign that sat next to the driveway. There were overgrown bushes, grasses, and thickets everywhere, but I could still see the house from the road. A small farmhouse nearly obscured by wild hedges, white clapboard so faded it looked gray, and a wide porch with spindly posts that listed in too many directions to be structurally sound. I looked about for evidence of Boo Radley, but had no luck.

  When I crept onto the property and stepped on the porch, it felt right. I looked out upon the tree rows and for the first time in months, my feet seemed rooted to something real and my heart didn’t feel two beats away from deflating. It seemed I needed to live here if Boo didn’t.

  Similar to all the other impulsive and foolish decisions I’d already made in my life, this one followed suit. I righted the sign so I could jot down the real estate agent’s name and number. The next day, I wandered into her office and she vocally questioned my sanity, taking a long look at the remaining dreads in my hair and the loose maxi dress I had on.

  The old Richardson orchard? Are you nuts? That place isn’t suited for a girl like you.

  She was probably right.

  But logic wasn’t my jam right then. I had spent two summers in high school working at a local orchard and loved it, so in my mind, that place was suited for a girl like me. I figured that my heart would do most of the work and I’d fill in the gaps by checking out some books on orchard management from the library. Ignorance was my ally and my enabler—which is a hell of a combination. Looking back, I was living off the propulsion of grief and the way it pushes one moment into the next without allowing you time to breathe, let alone think, through a sound decision.

  When my dad died in a freak welding accident at his manufacturing job, I was on the road traveling with a gourmet root beer concessionaire, which was the latest of my wanderlust work endeavors. Within days of arriving home, a lawyer representing my dad’s employer already wanted to talk to me about a settlement. Money was the last thing I cared about as we sat on the porch of my father’s trailer house, the same place he’d rented for the last twenty years, the same tiny metal box I grew up in. And without him there, I knew I could never think of it as home again.

  All his greasy Harley parts were still strewn about the space we called a yard, and hundreds of hot rod magazines were stacked in the living room, on shag carpet we should have replaced decades ago. Despite the trailer park, Harley, and hot rods—all of which shouted tough guy—my dad loved in a way most people never can. He loved my mother until the moment she left, then gave her up to another man with nothing but sadness. Never anger, never spite.

  He loved me in the same wholehearted way, and never wavered, even when I disappeared right after graduation, only to show up on his doorstep months later, in the rain, crying because the boy I loved left me behind at a truck stop without even saying goodbye. Jack Reed just opened the door wider and stepped aside to let me in.

  Even when I threatened to change my name to Rainforest (in support of saving them, obviously) he just laughed so hard he choked a little, then patted my head and asked if I honestly expected to find a real man to take care of me properly with a name like that.

  Good men, the ones you can count on to hold you up when it matters, won’t go there. I’m sorry, they won’t. If you want another idiot like that communist you dated, the one who insisted we call him ‘Elm,’ go ahead and change your name. But if you want more than that someday, then Whitney will do just fine.

  I kept my name. Still looking for that real man.

  The curse of an old house is in its inefficiency, as evidenced by the state of my kitchen right now. One batch of chutney on the stove and a water-bath canner heating up next to it and the small room has turned unbearably, blazingly hot.

  The jars are sterilizing and the chutney has cooked down just right. And the smell is wonderfully spicy and bright in the air, but still sweet. I give the concoction a peek and start to stir. Just as I get the sides scraped down, the rumble of a truck approaching crunches on the gravel driveway outside.

  A sharp knock sounds at the door—two raps—and my poor heart does a leap. A quick prayer that it isn’t Kenny Euland back with my UTV, demanding a refund. I have that cash spent twice over in my head by now.

  I continue stirring, but call out over my shoulder, “It’s open! I’m in the kitchen!”

  The screen door creaks. Followed by the whoomp of the front door coming open with a slight shove, releasing the poorly fit thing where it always sticks against the door jamb. Then nothing but near silence. Kenny would have hollered something back. The shift and swish of fabric is all I can hear for a moment.

  “Do you make a habit of just hollering ‘it’s open’ to anybody that knocks on your door? Because I could have been an escaped convict from the super-max looking to take a hostage.”

  I allow myself a second to process a hazy recollection of that voice, the gravelly tone, before the memory of its owner comes into sharp focus. When a bubble of chutney jumps the pot edge and lands like fire on the tender skin of my forearm, I know this isn’t a dream, because I can feel the burning sting there. I turn slowly, curious to see if I’m about to have my day unexpectedly turned inside out.

  Cooper Marcus Lowry is standing in my kitchen, wearing a puffy vest coat over a thermal shirt, faded jeans, and the silliest-looking socks on his shoeless feet. The socks are bright red and covered in some garish kind of Texas lone star design. He takes a survey of the room and in the seconds that pass while he does, I consider a few things about the scene.

  First, he looks annoyed. Exasperated. While I already suspect this to be his default expression, it’s unclear what currently has him so sourpussed.

  Second, he looks just as good as he did two days ago—no, he actually looks better, because despite the annoyed facial expression, he looks less pained than before.

  Last, in acknowledgment of his even better good-lookingness, I remember that I can’t claim the same.

  Because I’m currently wearing a pair of decade-old denim overalls.

  Overalls.

  Not exactly what I would have chosen to put on if I had known a grumpy, delicious, better-looking-than-before football player was planning to stop by. Overalls aren’t exactly boy bait; even I know that. Especially when these are not sexy-slouchy overalls. Rather, these are baggy-frumpy, perfect-for-grizzled-rancher-type overalls.

  Earlier, I had my zip-up sweatshirt on over these wildly attractive overalls, but in the time since I started to work on my chutney, the heat of the kitchen forced me to toss it off and onto the vintage Formica table in my kitchen. Therefore, I now get the privilege of standing here in overalls and a tank top.

  For fun, let’s add in the fact that I’m also not wearing a bra. And I’m not exactly the kind of girl who is built to go braless in polite company. Also, my hair is piled up in a knot on my head, secured by a lone chopstick, leaving the back of my sweaty neck and the terrible yin-yang tattoo there fully exposed. Even better.

  When Cooper finally looks directly at me, I vaguely want to throw a pear at his head to teach him a lesson about surprising women in their homes when he should know that he’s so damn good-looking they might rather die than be seen like this.

  His expression remains flat. “Seriously. You shouldn’t do that. Just invite anyone in. You don’t know who’s out there.”

  I take a quick glance at my chutney and realize I have to turn the heat off or ris
k scorching the entire batch. Reaching down, I switch off the knob and gawk into the safety of the bubbling pot.

  “I try to assume the best of humanity. Also, I’m a little tied to the stove right now.” A grunt from Cooper, followed by the sound of buttons snapping open on his vest.

  He removes it and drapes it over the back of a mismatched chair next to my kitchen table, then sidles over and stands just behind me so he can peer over my shoulder. And since he’s a few heads taller than I am, the stance means he can likely see right down the gaping front of my dowdy overalls.

  “Jam?”

  “No, it’s chutney.”

  I move forward a half step, while consciously demanding that my nipples do nothing overt in response to his nearness, because, hell, he smells good. Not like sweat and lemons as he did before, but good nonetheless. Some kind of handsome athlete–scented pheromones, I suppose.

  He pushes up the sleeves on his thermal shirt and moves over to peek into the water bath, where the sterilized jars are simmering.

  “These ready? You want me to pull them out?”

  Jesus. Talk about leaping right over the obvious bizarro-ness of this scene. Kudos to him for ignoring any normal instinct to explain why he is even here in the first place.

  I take a moment to assess the wacky turn of events of my day.

  Sell UTV. Fondle cash in my pocket and consider utter failure of my life. Make chutney from the world’s worst-ever pear harvest. Have a man who smells good show up unexpectedly. Offer him a view of certain body parts I wasn’t planning on any man seeing in the near future. Because overalls.

  Once the inventory is complete, in every bit of its cringe-worthy glory, I decide there isn’t much to do but go with it for a bit. I’m pretty sure he isn’t a serial killer and there isn’t anything particularly bad about a hot guy standing in your kitchen and offering his help.

  “Do you know a lot about canning, Cooper? Pardon my surprise, but I find that just a teensy bit unbelievable.”

  He’s already off and washing his hands at the sink, before coming back to start pulling out one jar at a time, careful to tip all the water out. He sets the first one on a clean dish towel I had previously placed on the counter.