I held up the bottles, a silently question for the location of the trash can, and she pointed me toward the cabinet under her sink. Spinning around, I leaned my body against the countertop. The entire thing shifted, and I worried I’d break the Formica.
“I guess I’ll be heading out.”
Rolling her eyes, Aspen moved toward a small chest and pulled out some blankets and a pillow. “You can stay here. I’ll take the couch, and you can have the bed.”
“Absolutely not.” Eyeing the two-person loveseat, I knew even tiny Aspen was too tall to sleep comfortably on it. We’d both be uncomfortable. “You take the bed. I’ll make a pallet on the floor. So long as you don’t kill me in my sleep.”
I could see she wanted to argue, but she relented and placed the blankets and pillow on the couch. “Okay, though I want it to go on record that I at least attempted to be civil and offered you the bed, whenever your trainer tells you that you’ve screwed up your back.”
Little did she know sleeping on the floor wasn’t nearly as bad as sleeping on the wet ground outside your family home in the hopes of avoiding your father. At least here, in her home, I’d be warm.
People tended to think my life was amazing, but they had no idea what I saw behind my eyelids every night when I fell asleep.
Aspen slipped into the small bathroom while I took the stack of blankets and laid them on the rug in the middle of the room. Shoving the coffee table against the wall, I sorted the pallet until I had a makeshift bed set up.
“Here,” Aspen said, reappearing with a freshly cleaned face and an oversized shirt covering her body. In her hands, she held a mass of material. “It’s a pair of basketball shorts and a T-shirt of Andrew’s. You’re around the same size.”
“Thanks.” Reaching behind my neck, I fisted my shirt and tugged it over my head. I was proud of the dips and planes of my defined muscles. The hard work I put in over the years paid off as I watched Aspen’s eyes widen in shock. It made it all the more satisfying.
“I’ll take these,” I said as I grabbed the change of clothes and sauntered past Aspen toward the bathroom. Her mouth hung open as I closed the door behind me.
On the counter, she thoughtfully left a spare toothbrush. I prayed our truce remained intact as I brushed my teeth. I didn’t need a reenactment of sixth grade, when she added Methylene Blue to my drink and left me with Smurf-colored teeth for a week.
I quickly changed out of my shorts and replaced them with the loungewear Aspen provided. By the time I made it back out to the small living space, she was nowhere to be found. There was a lamp on the end table, illuminating the room just enough for me to keep from bumping into things in the unfamiliar space.
Situating myself on the pallet, I reached up and switched off the lamp, casting the room in utter darkness except for a dim light coming from the upstairs loft area where Aspen slept.
“Goodnight, Aspen,” I called out as I turned onto my side, my eyes adjusting to the darkness and focusing on the pictures across the way.
“Goodnight, Owen,” she hollered in return. “Goodnight, Fred.”
That gave me pause, and I found myself asking, “Who is Fred?”
“The little mouse that scurries around the house. Don’t worry; he’s harmless.”
Was I scared of a tiny mouse? No. But did the thought of sharing my bed with a rodent keep me up half the night? Absolutely.
Chapter Seven – Aspen
Sleeping in the same space as Owen proved to be as impossible as I expected. I was a little ashamed of the mouse joke I threw out the night before, but he couldn’t expect our truce to cancel out all the pranks. There was no mouse to be found, now that I’d moved into the old property manager's house. It had been vacant for years, ever since my parents built their new farmhouse. There had been a small animal infestation when I first took it over, but after having someone come in and set a few traps, I’d been pest-free for the last two years.
Regardless, I wished I’d set up a camera to witness the look on Owen’s face at my end-of-the-night joke.
I was surprised to have slept at all by the time my alarm buzzed. I turned it down as low as possible to keep from waking Owen, though I heard him turning and grunting most of the night. Guilt flooded through me a few times, but he had the luxury of hanging around town today, whereas I had to work. Just like I did every day.
Thankfully, by the time I got dressed and made my way down from the loft, any residual consequences from drinking the two beers last night were long gone. Working and testing the soils with a headache was never a fun task. Especially when it was self-induced.
I tried to move around as quietly as possible, and I’d be sure to let him know later about my courtesy.
After brushing my teeth and grabbing a bottle of water, I crept from the house and made my way toward the main barn. This was where we kept some of the equipment, but my favorite tool, a robot created by my brother-in-law, was stashed in a locked room in the corner.
My dad and the ranch hands loved working with the oversized tractors and combines, but I enjoyed getting my hands dirty with the tools and smaller machines. It was probably why I loved working in my great-great-grandmother’s garden the most.
My fascination and care with that particular space had been my downfall. The vested interested made my family assume I’d want to take over Sunny Brook. And while I did love working the fields and managing the little livestock we kept, I preferred tending the garden.
Unlocking the room, I flipped on the fluorescent light and grabbed the oversized remote. It reminded me of one of the RC car remotes my brother had when he was younger. But while it had a nostalgic feel, its large computer screen was a treasure trove of analytic data. Nate had set it up to feed all the information to a computer and backup server kept in my dad’s office.
My dad didn’t quite understand all the statistics it shot out, but I’d been working on a program to consolidate it all into more manageable information.
“Come on, pretty girl. Let’s go take a walk.” The agriculture robot resembled one of the robotic vacuums people had in their houses. Only this one was massive in comparison, with little compartments that compared the soil in eight different areas at one time.
When I tapped a button on the remote, the device came to life and began to follow behind me. It used an internal mapping tool to follow along by tracing the path of the remote.
Today, I needed to test some of the soil on Owen’s family land. Now that the sale was finalized, I could finally start working on ideas for its use. From memory, I knew Owen’s father tried to do various things with the acreage, none of which took. My father believed it was because the land was too far away from the creek that ran through our property, leaving it with more clay than soil. But I believed it was because it was nutrient-deficient. If I was correct, then it was a quick fix to grow whatever we wanted. Clay, though, would limit its use.
On my way out of the barn, I grabbed the keys to one of the UTVs parked just outside the door and lifted the robot inside to save her battery. A few of the ranch hands were milling about, prepping for the harvest. Dad hired a couple of new men who appeared closer to my age, and I wondered what their stories were. What brought them here? Were they stuck in the farming business like I was?
I waved at the crew as I drove past, heading down the dirt path that separated the fields. Sunny Brook Farm was massive, and with the purchase of the Ramsey property, we were the largest functioning farm in the county and surrounding area.
Thirty minutes passed before I made it to the parcels of land I wanted to test. I came out to the property last week and mapped the fields out into eight large sections, using one of the tractors to cut the paths. Setting up the robot, I let her get to work selecting the eight samples. She’d cover roughly three miles to gather all the data, which left me perched inside the UTV in the peace and quiet for the next hour.
I scrolled aimlessly through social media on my phone. There were old classmates with pictures from recent weddings and baby announcements, while some were jet setting around the world, living their best single life. By the time the robot was finished, I was depressed and hungry.
With no stove or microwave in my house, I usually ventured to the main farmhouse to make a meal like I did when I lived there, but I hadn’t been motivated to do so this morning. My aching stomach was payback for that poor decision.
Back at the barn, I parked the UTV in its spot, then I tucked the robot in her closet and plugged the data cable into her remote. This transferred the findings from a server in the barn over to the main computer at the house.
I followed the pebbled path from the barn to the mudroom of the house, noticing my father’s boots were still sitting by the door, which meant he was making it a late morning or taking one of the days off my mother had been begging him to over the years. She was the biggest reason he planned on retiring, though his love for the land would never allow it fully. My dad would most likely work until he took his last breath.
