Page 43 of Make it Real
“Oh, you want a peck?” He tipped his head down, his sly grin hinting at naughtiness. “I’ll give you all the pecks you can handle.”
Chuckling snapped us out of our weirdo flirting over forms of fruit measurement. Right. Because his dad still stood here, watching us like he’d just found his new favorite TV show.
Jed and I relaxed some. We didn’t move apart, but we no longer leaned into each other’s spaces so obviously. As if that would erase the last few minutes of sauciness from Clint’s mind.
“Well, I don’t want to keep you, I know you’re busy out there.” I gestured vaguely and turned toward the door.
“You’re leaving already?”
His surprise stopped me in my tracks. I’d meant to minimize the time I took him away from his work, not prolong it. “I don’t want to waste your time.”
“I don’t see that ever happening.”
“Why don’t you show Callie the property?” Clint said.
“Show me the farm?”
I probably sounded pathetically eager. I wasn’t sure I’d ever had a tour of a farm before but suddenly I had a desperate urge to see this one. Especially if one particular farmer were my tour guide.
“He can show you that on the way, too. I think you’ll like the property.” He turned to Jed, nodding like it’d all been decided. “Take a blanket out there and enjoy some time in the shade for a bit. I’ll cover things here.”
Jed’s mouth twisted. He so rarely wore anything other than a bright smile, this disappointed look didn’t quite fit him right.
“Don’t work too hard.”
Clint made a small sound of disgust. “I’ve been working this farm since before you were born. I think I’ll do all right.”
Jed shot him a stern look but seemed to accept his defeat. Gesturing for me to follow, he crossed the room and opened the door. As soon as I walked through, he called back to his dad.
“I hope I can trust you with my cobbler.”
Clint held his hands up, sidestepping away from the table and the precious dessert.
Outside, Jed looked me over, his eyes warming but not lingering in any one place. “My truck’s over at the store, we’ll have to take an ATV out to the property. Might get a little dirty. Are you sure you want to?”
“I’m not fancy. My T-shirt and shorts can handle it.”
“Okay. ATV’s in the shed out there.” He gestured to the storage barn I’d seen, and started walking. “Hope Pop didn’t give you a hard time while you waited for me.”
“Not at all. I like him. Being around your pop…it’s nice. I never really had that. Not that I remember much of, anyway.”
He turned to me, his pace slowing. “What happened with your dad? If that’s okay to ask.”
I kicked a rock and tracked its progress as it skipped in the grass that grew wild between the farmhouse and the storage barn. “He left my mom when I was nine. Things weren’t great before that, but one day, he just…took off.”
I skimmed my hand in the air, gesturing into the distance.
“You haven’t heard from him again in all that time?”
We reached the barn he’d indicated. Just inside the door sat a red all-terrain vehicle with a soft, sherpa-like material covering the large seat. I gripped the handle just to give me something to do, the rubber warmed by the sun.
“Nope. I mean, Mom did, enough for them to get divorced. Child support came through, so he didn’t go total deadbeat. But he never got in touch with me. I used to check the mailbox like it’d become my religion, hoping for a letter, a postcard. Anything.”
Seeing that mailbox empty day after day for years on end had kept those wounds open, fresh slices on a cut that didn’t want to heal. I didn’t like thinking about those early years too much, when I’d still believed he might come home to us.
“Eventually, I learned better than to hope to hear from him.”
I’d considered looking him up online—try to find out where he was, if he’d married again, if I had half-siblings out there somewhere. I’d never checked, though. His total indifference to me had solidified mine for him. Wherever he’d gone over the years, my address had always stayed the same.
