Page 92 of The Auction
“What?” I asked, looking down at my t-shirt. It was a shirt. Striped yellow and browns, which weren’t the most flattering, I could admit. I couldn’t even remember when I’d gotten it. Five years ago?
“Is this supposed to be a crop top or is it just too small?”
“That depends,” I said sagely. “What is a crop top?”
He tugged me toward him and planted a kiss on my head. “Wear the dress for me. Please.”
“You’ll get bored of it too soon,” I said.
Was it possible my lips had formed into a pout?
“Then I’ll buy you another one,” he said, quietly. “It’s not just that I think you look nice, Jules. I like how you hold yourself when you’re wearing that dress. Like you’re a fucking princess. Go change. I’ll wait.”
The thing I was starting to understand about marriage was that there were a lot of battles to fight. Which meant there were times you had to pick which ones mattered. Wearing my favorite dress was not a hill to die on, so I turned around and walked back into the bedroom. My hair was already done, and I’d put a swipe of April’s cream blush just under each cheek bone, per the Youtube instructions.
So it was just a matter of swapping out my jeans and t-shirt, and stepping into the dress and ballet slippers.
He was right about that. I liked who I was in this dress. I was an adult woman. I was someone who cared about fashion, even if it was in the smallest sense.
Because we’d set up AP in the bathroom, not quite ready to let him have the full run of the house when we weren’t home, I did another quick peek, satisfied to see he was sleeping in his bed, which was my old quilt from upstairs bundled up with some soft, snuggly, stuffed animals I’d found from my very long ago childhood.
I stepped back into the living room and Creed smiled with a satisfied, albeit smug, expression.
“That’s better. But I’m serious, Jules. We’re not poor. You can afford a couple of shirts that fit,” he said, as he guided me out the front door.
“Yours fit.”
“I wear mine.”
“You can’t wear all of them at once,” I said, stepping out onto the porch. “And you can tell me we’re not poor after we bring in the harvest and not before. No jinxing allowed on this farm.”
I stopped for a second and walked to the edge of the porch where the crops stretched out over the land. The sun was just starting to make its descent and the sky was so blue. Too blue.
We hadn’t had rain in going on two weeks. A cloud, even a few stray ones, would have been welcome.
“You worried about drought?” he asked, coming to stand behind me.
“Not yet. We’ve only had one summer where we lost the crop entirely. This valley has been pretty good to us in that regard. But if the ground dries up too much and it does rain…”
“Runoff.”
“Yeah, we could lose a lot of quality top soil,” I told him.
“If the creek we’ve been tapping into for irrigation dries up, could we tap into the well water?”
Runway Creek was a subsidy water source from the river that wound through most of Riverbend. Our name coming from the fact that the land sat on the edge of where the river bent to head south. I’d only ever seen it so low once before.
The answer to Creed’s question was, we had used groundwater before, but only in extreme circumstances. Herb had always been reluctant to use it as a source, given that was our sole drinking water supply.
“Creek’s not going to dry up entirely. It never has and it won’t this summer.”
“Is that optimism or knowledge?”
“A little of both. Runaway Creek has served this valley for generations. No reason for it to stop just because you got here.”
Creed snorted. “I probably should have mentioned, I’m bad luck.”
“Yeah, that might have been helpful to know up front.” I turned to face him. “We’ll be fine. It will rain.”
