Page 128 of Keepsake
“I’m not going to jump to any conclusions,” Audrey said, a thoughtful look on her face.
“Me neither.”
But then our eyes met, and we both cracked up. “Okay, I’m going to jump to all kinds of conclusions,” Audrey admitted. “But privately.”
I mimed turning a key in front of my mouth and tossing it away. “I’m a vault.”
“I know.” She jumped out of her seat and came close, grabbing me into a hug. “Happy birthday! I love you!”
“Love you, too,” I said easily, giving her a big squeeze right back. Lark had changed me into someone who could do that. I was a world-class hugger these days.
“Now go home,” she said, slapping me on the back. “Kiss Lark for me. And I’ll see you both tomorrow night, right? For the concert on the Hanover green?”
“Absolutely.”
“You’re bringing wine and dessert,” she said, pushing in her chair. “I’m bringing a picnic feast.”
“I can’t wait,” I said, and it was the truth. Then I thanked her again for the killer cookies and made my way outside.
Humming, I got into my old truck and started the engine, letting it warm up, and listening for problems. Over the six months I’d owned it, this vehicle had kept me busy with repairs. I’d had a string of bad luck, first with the exhaust and then the transmission.
Today everything sounded fine. Fineish. So I pulled out my phone and tapped Lark’s number.
“Hi!” she said cheerily. “I’m walking home from work. Are you on your way?”
“Leaving now. Give me forty minutes.” My commute wasn’t the greatest, but I loved the people on either end of it, so I wasn’t complaining.
“You hungry yet?” she asked.
“Not for food,” I said slowly.
Lark cackled. “Come home, birthday boy. Let the celebration begin.”
We hung up and I hit the road, getting on highway 89 southbound. After Lark secured a job with the professor at Dartmouth, we’d started looking around for somewhere for her to live. Chasing down leads, I’d met an elderly couple—Lionel and Millicent Bern—in Norwich who wanted to rent out the cottage behind their farmhouse to someone who could help take care of the property.
And on their property? An old apple orchard. It was only five hundred trees, but the Berns couldn’t care for it themselves anymore.
So I got that job with no trouble. Griff was my reference, of course. But they were all too happy to meet a young guy who would look after their apple trees. “They’re like our children,” Mr. Bern explained. “These last couple years we couldn’t harvest much. We let a group of school children come to pick apples, but so many just fell to the ground and rotted. It killed me.”
That was how Lark and I came to live together barely six months after we met. And every day we had together was a blessing.
We paid very low rent plus utilities for a little cottage behind the farmhouse. It had a creaky little kitchen and an office nook, as well as our bedroom and a living room with a woodstove against a pretty brick chimney.
“It’ll probably be drafty as hell in the winter,” I’d pointed out, wary of the single-paned leaded windows everywhere.
“I don’t care,” Lark had said, putting her foot down. “It’s adorable. And it’s on the Vermont side of the river, but just a few miles from Hanover. And it’s cheap as hell, Zach! If it’s cold in here, we’ll just snuggle.”
That plan worked for me. Lots of snuggling happened in our little house, even in warm weather.
So now I had a few different jobs. I worked for Griff, but not quite so many hours. I did maintenance on the Bern’s property—landscaping and orchard work. Griff actually drove down once every two or three weeks or so to help me with that. He always knew what to do for the problem trees.
It was going to be a decent harvest, and the Berns had already told me that I could sell off the crop this fall. “I want two bushels of the best ones,” Millicent had said. “The rest you two can use to build up your rainy day fund.”
My third occupation was a new one for me—student. This fall I’d be taking classes at one of the many branches of the Community College of Vermont. I hadn’t decided what degree to pursue—a B.A. or something more technical. Everyone told me not to worry, that I could figure it out later.
“You don’t know what kind of student you are until you get back into the classroom,” Lark pointed out. “We have enough money to live like this for a while. Your job, my job, my trust fund. I’ll get fellowship money for the PhD program. You don’t have to figure everything out at once.”
As the book of Ecclesiastes puts it:In the morning sow your seed, and at evening withhold not your hand, for you do not know which will prosper, this or that, or whether both alike will be good.
