Page 78 of Salty Pickle

“You got a golf cart?” I ask.

“It comes with the top tier passes.”

I inspect mine. There are numbers on the back. One line says Cart 53. “How did you get these in time?”

“I had a courier pick them up and deliver them.”

“We could have gotten them when we arrived!”

He grins as he turns the wheel down the first row, right next to a big open gate with a huge “Farm Expo” sign. “But then I couldn’t have surprised you.”

A gesture. He’s doing a gesture.

But why?

I shake off the question. Just accept it, Lucy.

Another man with a flag waves us to our spot. When we get out, he calls, “You know your cart number?”

“Fifty-three!” I yell back.

He gives us a thumb’s up.

We unload Matilda from the back.

“If she hates the cart, we can walk,” Court says.

“Oh, she’ll love it. Before I got too pregnant, we would do some odd jobs for the woman who owns the property my yurt is on. We got around on her four-wheeler.”

“What kind of jobs?”

I tie Matilda’s leash through a loop on the floor of the cart. She pokes her head between us on the front seat. “Moving brush. Mending pens. She had chickens. We tended them when she was gone.”

“Was that in exchange for rent?”

“Some. I also gave her goat cheese.”

“Did you use her bathroom, too?”

“No, I would shower and things at the yoga studio.”

He leans on the steering wheel. “So, when you couldn’t teach anymore, you were out of running water.”

I pet Matilda’s head. “And I came here. Like I said, I got to the end of my rope.”

“So, you peed in the woods?”

I laugh. “You’re obviously not much of a camping person.”

His face is contorted as he punches the code from the back of his badge to turn on the cart. “We did that, sure. My parents were outdoorsy. My brother is a serious hiker.”

“Okay, then, you know how it works.”

“But a weekend is different from all the time.”

“It wasn’t all that long. Summer only left for Vegas two months ago. I had access to her place until then.”

He shakes his head. “You’re made of pretty stern stuff.”

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