Page 10 of Over the Verdant Hills
“Coming back? To your gram’s?” He would have thought that would have been an easy move. Lots of good memories here. For him, anyway. There had to be a few for her at least.
“Yeah.”
She didn’t elaborate, and he chewed thoughtfully on the cake in his mouth. He swallowed before he said, “I guess I don’t understand. To me, there are a few bad memories in our past. A big tragedy, some embarrassing things, like that kiss we shared in the barn.” He figured if that was what was bothering her, he might as well get it out in the open.
“Oh my goodness. Are you really going to rub that in?”
“It was my first kiss. I have fond memories of it.”
“It was my first kiss too, and I don’t have fond memories.”
“I think I’ve gotten better at kissing over the years, but I suppose I shouldn’t take offense if I wasn’t any good at that point, considering it was my first. I guess you must’ve just had natural talent.”
He’d wondered if it had been her first too. He hadn’tthought they were going to talk about that tonight. But there was something that smiled deep inside of him at the thought that they had shared their first kiss. He supposed it should have been something special that he shared with someone who really meant something to him, but at that age, he hadn’t exactly been wise or smart or a combination of either one of those things. In fact, he felt like the best word that could describe him would have been stupidly dumb. Hopefully he’d gotten a little better as he’d aged.
She hadn’t said anything, and he didn’t press her any more on that. “I have so many good memories of this farm. We played hide-and-seek in the barn, we butchered chickens out back, and then your grandma cooked chicken for supper.”
“Oh my goodness. That was not a good memory!” Claire said with the first hint of humor in her voice he’d heard the entire time he’d been there. “Talk about wanting to throw up. I don’t think anybody ate a bite that night.”
“Me either. If you’re going to spend your Sunday butchering chickens, eat beef for supper.”
She laughed outright at that. It was a little bit of wisdom he’d gleaned from the farm. After spending the day around the stench of chicken, one absolutely could not abide the smell of anything that had to do with cooking chicken.
“All right. You might be right. So that’s not a good memory. But everything else is good.”
“Maybe for you,” she said, and then she didn’t elaborate.
“You can’t tell me that the bad outweighs the good.”
“It just seems bigger somehow. There’s more weight to it. More emotional baggage.”
“Isn’t that in your head?” He was a big believer that a person could control their thoughts. Sure, he could focus on how his mom seemed to get worse and worse every day, how she wasn’t cooking hardly at all anymore and hadn’t baked in years, how his dad’s eyes looked worried when he looked at her, and he didn’t know how much longer she’d be with them. Or he could cherish every day that she was there, share laughter whenever they could, and talk about and cherish all thememories of the good times. He supposed it was just a matter of focusing on one or the other, at least for him anyway.
“My thoughts and feelings are part of me. Am I supposed to ignore them?”
“You don’t have to ignore them, but you can control them.”
“Spoken like a man,” she said dismissively.
Glancing over, she saw that he was done with his cake.
“I guess we can go inside. Surely the bread is in the oven by now.”
“I can leave. You can tell Miss Mattie that I needed to go. I don’t even have to go back inside. My bag’s sitting by the door, and I’ll just pick it up and I’ll be out of here.” He really didn’t want to make her more uncomfortable than what she obviously already was.
“No. I don’t want you to leave because of me. And I’m sure you’re looking forward to Grandma’s homemade bread just as much as I am. I’m sorry. I need to shake this and not let these things upset me. I guess it’s just been a rough year.”
He wanted to ask what had made her year rough, but she walked toward the door and moved so he could open it for her to walk in.
Holding both plates in one hand, with his thumb over the forks so they didn’t fall off the plates, he carried them in, closing the door behind him and making sure the screen door didn’t slam.
Claire didn’t look back for him or walk with him into the kitchen. It was like she wanted to make sure there was distance between the two of them. He couldn’t blame her for that. Whatever had happened in the last year, whatever she was fighting, whatever had made her feel like the memories from this town were almost unbearable, he felt bad for her. A person needed to get a hold of their thoughts so they didn’t allow them to get them down. He supposed she could argue with him if she wanted to, but that was how he had lived, and it had served him well. He wished he could help her do the same.
Chapter Four
“And I’m going to have Josiah fix the rose trellis. The rosebush got so heavy it tore it down. That was years ago, and the bush has all but died. I don’t know if I can bring it back if I get the trellis fixed or not.” Grandma had her cane as she and Claire walked around the old farmhouse.
Claire had taken her children to Blueberry Beach that morning, registered them for school, and they’d gone straight to their classes. She’d come back home and started talking to her grandma about fixing up the old farmhouse. Turns out her grandma already had a plan, and Claire had to admit it was a pretty good one.
