Page 22 of Keepsake
“Do they have coffee, too?” she asked, and I noticed how long her eyelashes were. I don’t think I’d ever sat this close to Lark before.
“Nope,” I said, reversing into the gravel drive. “So I’ll let you stop at the house and grab some.”
“You are the best boss ever, Zachariah,” she said, kicking one of her high-top sneakers onto the dash.
She was just teasing, but I liked hearing it anyway.
After she got her chance to run inside for coffee, I wound the truck down the country road toward the highway, and Lark asked if she could plug her phone into Griff’s stereo. “Unless you want me to plug in yours?”
“Go ahead. I don’t have a phone,” I told her. “Last man in North America without one.”
“Not a fan?”
“Not a fan of paying fifty dollars a month. And the cell service in Vermont is crappy, so…” I shrugged.
“Ah.” She plugged hers into the jack. Audrey had upgraded Griff’s stereo as a birthday present this winter. A moment later the cab hummed with strains of…I had no idea what. It was a lively guitar riff, and it sounded familiar. But a guy can only learn so much popular music in three years’ time. “I like it,” I said. “Who is it?”
“The Chili Peppers!” she gasped. “I know you’re young, but…”
“I’m notthatyoung,” I said quickly. “How old are you, anyway?”
“Twenty-four. You?”
“Twenty-three. But I have the musical knowledge of a kindergartener. Music wasn’t allowed where I grew up. Unless you count hymns.”
“Wow.” She was quiet for a second. “How did they keep it out, though? Didn’t you hear music at the drugstore? Or—no TV, huh?”
I shook my head. “No TV. And I never left the property. We were out in the boonies on a big ranch in Wyoming. The nearest town was fifteen miles away. And I wasn’t permitted to leave, anyway. Only married men had access to vehicles.”
“So you were sort of…a prisoner,” she said slowly. “Until you were nineteen?”
“That’s right. Took me a long time to figure out that the way we lived wasn’t normal. And even when I worked out that people off the compound didn’t dress like us and didn’t live like us, I still couldn’t really picture it.”
“Wow. That’s a pretty crazy childhood you had there, Zach.”
“I know. So tell me about the Chili Peppers.”
“The full name is the Red Hot Chili Peppers. And nothing ever goes wrong when the Chili Peppers are playing.”
She told me a little about the band—grunge with a side of funk. She rolled down the truck’s window, and we left a contrail of grunge rock along the narrow Vermont highway. I’d never felt more sure that I’d left the dusty confines of my childhood behind. There’s nothing more liberating than driving down a road in the summertime with the windows open, singing along to with a pretty girl by your side.
Ninety minuteslater we were almost finished stocking our tables in Norwich, Vermont, where the farmers’ market was already a beehive of farmers hustling to set up their stands.
“Damn,” Lark said, scanning all the activity. “This market is huge.”
“Yep,” I agreed, hefting another crate of apples off the truck. “Griffin calls Norwich the mothership.”
Lark scrambled up onto the tailgate and dragged another crate of apples toward the edge. But when she hopped down to carry it, I swept it away before she got a chance to heft it. “I can do that,” she argued. “Really. I know how to lift with my legs and not with my lower back.”
“I’m sure you do,” I said in a low voice. “But if I’m here, you don’t have to.”
When I turned around, she was chewing her lip, obviously trying to decide whether or not to argue. But she didn’t, and I was glad. It would cause me almost physical pain to watch a woman stagger under a bushel crate when someone nearly twice her size was available to do it instead.
Maybe she knew that, because she jumped up on the pickup again and slid the last two crates toward the edge where I could reach them.
“Thank you kindly,” I said with a smile. “Can you get the peaches?” This time I wouldn’t grab them out of her hands. She hadn’t appreciated that. But I might have to look away and count to ten to avoid helping.
“Now what?” she asked after retrieving the peaches.
