Page 105 of Keepsake
“Thanks for all your help, son,” he said.
I barely heard him. “She has clothes in the bunkhouse,” I pointed out.
“Ah. I’ll grab those.”
“First bedroom on the right,” I said, my throat closing up. “Pretty sure she was all packed to go home.”
“Thanks.”
It would have been polite to walk him in there and help, but I couldn’t do it.
He walked away, and I just stood there in the driveway, trying to get my bearings. It was Friday, so not a market day. It was eleven o’clock or so. My empty belly could wait two hours until lunch.
I was still in yesterday’s clothes, but I wandered over to the cider house, where I found Griff and his cousins sorting apples and washing them for the press. May was sitting on a cider barrel, chewing her thumbnail.
“Hey,” I said. “Where do you want me?”
Every head turned in my direction, and everyone stared.
“Sorry I’m late,” I added. “You can give me shit patrol, or whatever.”
Griff was the first to speak. “Hey.”
“Hey,” I echoed.
“Her parents took her home?”
I just nodded, trying not to think of our very last hug, or the warm scent of her hair as I tucked her into the passenger’s seat and kissed her on the top of the head.
“You okay?” Kieran asked.
Stupid question. “Yeah. What needs doing?”
But nobody answered me. Instead, May hopped off the barrel. She walked up beside me and put her arms around my waist. She put her head on my shoulder and held me tightly.
Then Griff did the same damn thing on the other side.
“Don’t,” I said as the first tear slid down my face.
They didn’t listen, though. Four arms braced me as I fell apart, right there on the grass beside the cider house. The first sob sort of broke a dam inside me I hadn’t known I had. I’d never cried before. Not that I could remember, anyway.
Even when I had my pants around my ankles, taking the pastor’s whip on my bare ass, I hadn’t cried. Didn’t feel the urge. I would have rather smashed someone in the mouth. Where I come from, crying was just a good way to bring on another beating.
But saying goodbye to Lark hurt me in an entirely new way. Like I was bleeding and didn’t know if I could stop. Didn’t know if I even wanted to.
So I just bled my tears out onto the Shipleys’ soil, while they tried to say all the right things. It took me a few minutes to get the worst of it out. Kyle and Kieran wandered off to give me time. Then Griff gave my shoulder a squeeze and told me I should just have a nap before lunch. We could make cider later. “There’s always later,” he said.
May went into the farmhouse for some tissues and a bottle of water. I used my time alone to calm all the way down, sitting on the grass, my back against the side of the building, studying the mostly blue sky overhead. There’s a line in Job that reads:Look at the heavens and see; And behold the clouds—they are higher than you.
Many things were just plain bigger than my desires. I’d always been good at accepting it. Today it was just a little harder than usual.
I reached into the bin of apples beside me and plucked one out to have as a snack. It was smallish and lopsided, but firm and juicy when I bit into it.
30
Lark
Until you’ve hadtwo hours of gut-wrenching therapy a day, you haven’t lived.
