Page 14 of Keepsake
He pulled out his phone and showed me the screensaver—a picture of some peculiar apples with mottled skin. “These here are my babies.”
Only Griffin would keep a picture of fruit where other people kept a photo of the girlfriend. “Your babies are ugly, Griffin.”
“I know, right? But that’s the cool thing about hard cider. If you want to make the good stuff, you can’t use apples that are sweet and tasty. You need bitter and complicated.”
“Bitter and complicated,” I repeated. “Just like me.”
Griffin grinned. “If you say so. Do you have a guess why bitter apples work better for cider?”
“Tannins, maybe?”
“You are a smart girl.”
“I pay attention when alcoholic beverages are discussed.”
“Of course you do. Now come in here.” He put his hand on the doorknob and pushed. “Witness the power of this fully operational battle station!”
Griff always made me smile. “Are you ever going to outgrow theStar Warsquotes?”
“Nope!” He gave me a cheerful wink, then swung the door wide.
“Wow,” I said, looking up at a row of giant, gleaming metal canisters. “Impressive.”
“Those are my new fermentation tanks. They’re only half full right now, because it’s so early in the season. That’s the juicer.” He pointed at a machine in the middle of the room. “We press every day. Some of it goes into the fermentation tanks, and some of it gets pasteurized to be sold at the farmers’ market. That’s my filtration system, and that’s my blending tank. On that far wall is where I do the bottling.”
“Damn, Griffin. You’ve been investing. This looks like a serious operation now.” There had to be tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment in front of me. Last time I visited, Griffin had said he had plans to expand his hard cider brand. But I hadn’t understood what that meant.
“Yeah. And it’s going to be a pretty good harvest, so I probably won’t go bankrupt. Not this year, anyway.”
He smiled, but I could see the strain on his young face. Griff was only twenty-eight, but he was in charge of a big farm and the de facto head of a big family.
We all have our burdens, I reminded myself. I should probably have that reminder tattooed on my hand where it would issue me frequent reminders. “Well, put me to work.” I’d come to Vermont to get over myself, basically. And that could start now.
“I will. Give me ten minutes to check my tanks, and then we’ll talk about your first farmers’ market tomorrow.”
“Great. I’ll be outside.” I wanted to stand in the sunshine again and breathe some more of the clean Vermont air. I walked a little way into the center of the grassy oval that stretched between the house and all the outbuildings.
Against the wall of the tractor shed stood a rusting flatbed trailer and an ancient plastic bucket. A working farm was never pristine. There was always moldering equipment and work-in-progress lying about. And farms operated on such slim budgets that nothing was ever replaced until it broke down entirely.
But the Shipley farm sat on a hilltop, and the view in the distance was truly beautiful. The Green Mountains bumped along in a glorious ridge. You could see forever.
That was the trick to appreciating all the true beauty of a working farm, then—lift your eyes to the horizon. You had to see past the broken bits and pieces and take a long view.
My gaze wandered back to the tractor shed, where a blond head gleamed from the shadowy interior.
Zach.
I trotted across the grass toward him. He was alone and bent over the engine of an old truck. I paused in the wide doorway for a moment, wondering how best to apologize for waking him up last night. In front of me, he went on with his tinkering, unaware. A classic rock station played from a radio on the workbench, and Zach was moving his hips to the music even as he screwed a cap onto some part of the engine.
He was alsoshirtless, and I took a moment to appreciate the muscles in his back.Damn, he was a fine specimen. I was the kind of girl who appreciated a tattoo or ten on a guy, but there was something pure and beautiful about the golden, unadorned expanse of Zach’s rippling back.
I’d thought him a little stiff at dinner last night, but alone in the garage he moved with a loose ease that made me wonder if he was a good dancer…
Crap. Now I was staring.
I cleared my throat. “Zach?”
He whirled around, almost tripping over an oil can at his feet. “Uh,” he said, sidestepping it. “Hi.” Not quite meeting my eyes, Zach fumbled for a rag, wiped his hands, and then lunged for the T-shirt that was slung over the truck’s open window. He struggled it on over his head.
