Page 4 of Harvest Moon

I shrugged, looking down at the trowel in my hands. “Wasn’t a good time to catch up.”

But she was looking straight through me, like she could see every single thought in my thick skull. “Uh huh. So y’all made plans for later then?”

I scratched the back of my neck and shrugged. “I’m sure we’ll see each other soon.”

All over, my skin was itchy like it didn’t fit anymore. The man I’d been when I left the farm wasn’t the man I was now, and the two pieces weren’t coming together the way I’d envisioned.

But Ma was too sweet to say anything. She just twirled the fingers of her free hand through my short brown hair and took another sip from her glass, though the lemonade was all gone and all that was left was the water that’d melted from her ice cubes.

“Hon, why don’t you come inside for dinner? Pity Alex didn’t stay. I made pork chops.” She frowned, looking off toward the trees and unerringly picking out his scent fading off in the distance.

“Sounds great.” I got up, dusting my hands off on my jeans. They were light blue and soft, broken in after years of farm work. Hell, I was pretty sure I’d bought this pair brand new from the hardware store downtown before I’d gone off to school.

Ma put her hand on my shoulder and smiled at me all soft, but there was worry in her brown eyes I didn’t like one bit. There was something she wanted to talk about.

Before I could figure out how to ask her about it, all that worry disappeared when she led me inside and started ladling beans and cooked spinach on my plate beside fried pork chops. My mouth watered. Shit, I’d missed Ma’s cooking. Ramen and boiled eggs was never going to be a match for her.

Pa came from the living room, and we all dug in, the only sound in the kitchen the clink of forks and knives on plates as we ate our fill.

“This is real good, Ma,” I said, earning a smile and a pat on the cheek.

Pa grunted his approval, but his attention was already shifting.

“So,” he said, wiping his mouth with a cloth napkin before putting it down in his lap. He looked right at me. “Now that you’re home, have had a minute to settle back in, we’ve got to talk.”

I looked him straight in the eyes and nodded. One thing I’d figured out in all those years away was not to flinch down from him like I used to. He’d never been violent or anything, but a frustrated alpha was a snarly bastard, and he’d scared me anyway.

Now, Pa didn’t scare me a bit. I was a grown man, had decisions of my own to make, and if I wanted to be a part of this family, I needed to make him see things my way. Or, well, at least let him know I had some kind of perspective of my own.

“Okay,” I prompted, setting my fork down. Seemed like he had something serious in mind, so I was going to put on a serious face for it.

I just couldn’t have guessed what it was.

“We’re selling the farm.”

Four words, said plainly, and they didn’t make a damn bit of sense to my cotton-stuffed ears.

“Sweetheart—” Ma leaned across the table, putting her little hand on mine and wrapping her fingers around my palm. She squeezed tight.

I felt my heartbeat in my chest, two hard thumps of a bass drum, and when my brain caught up, I jerked my hand out of her grip. “What?” I demanded, staring between them.

“The Sterling Company put in an offer on the land,” Pa said. “We accepted. We’re signing the papers Monday, then it’ll be theirs. You gotta find somewhere else to stay.”

His words were all sliding together, ringing over one another in my head. “But this is our home.”

“Not after Monday.” He said it like that was it, matter settled.

All the sudden, my blood started rushing, catching up for those frozen moments when none of this had made any sense. “The hell did I go to school for if you were just gonna sell the farm out from under me?” I demanded.

“There’s plenty you can do with your degree,” Ma said gently.

“We didn’t ask you to go to school to be a farmer,” Pa said, cocking a brow at me in a way that got the hairs on the back of my neck to stand on end. I wanted to growl.

Thing was, they hadn’t asked me. But it was the right thing to do—the only way we’d make it long term. And I’d given up a hell of a lot to do it. Years of my life, more money than I’d ever made. It wasn’t all for naught. I wouldn’t let it be.

“Your Ma and me are too old for this life, Ridge. And no one man can run all this by himself. Not even you.” The way he said it almost made it sound like he saw some value in me now, in what I’d done and learned. The horrible thing was, it didn’t make a damn bit of difference.

“Bullshit! Plenty of people own land and hire people to help them work it. I could—”

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