“Gah!” I yell, wrestling him to the ground. We continue to laugh as we roll over and over trying to pin each other.
“What in the Sam Hell is going on out here?”
Sam Hell is the closest thing to a curse word Gran ever uses. In the blink of an eye, we’re on our feet and backing away from each other, hands up. “Nothing.”
A giggle has my gaze flicking to Diane. She and Lia stand next to Gran, mouths hanging open.
“Nothing, ma’am,” Gran admonishes.
“Nothing, ma’am,” Ethan and I intone dutifully before breaking out in laughter again.
“You two have less sense than the good lord gave a goose,” Gran says, shaking her head and turning back toward the house. “I expect you both washed up and in the kitchen to help make dinner in twenty minutes.”
Grinning, I pick up the ball and stow it back in the barn office before catching up to Diane, who is scratching behind Gomer’s ears. Not sure if it was the basketball or the talk or the wrestling or the laughter, but I feel a billion times lighter than I did an hour ago.
Than I have for a long, long time. Maybe knowing that my brain is different isn’t such a bad thing. Maybe it’s how I do fit in, rather than why I don’t fit in.
I hold out a crooked elbow to Diane. “May I escort you to the house, madam?”
She raises a brow but hooks her arm in mine. “Only if you promise to meet me in the bedroom later.” Leaning closer, she fans herself. “Watching you two wrestle? That was hot.”
CHAPTER 18DIANE
Whenever I need to think, I climb a tree. This crabapple tree on Bedd Fellows Farm isn’t quite as inspiring as a Lady Apple or a Northern Spy, but it’ll do in a pinch.
Right now, I have a lot of thinking to do, mostly because I can’t say no to Ethel Bedd or her grandson. Or is it that I don’t want to say no to myself?
The point of creating my channel was to raise awareness around seed saving all over New York state. All over the country, eventually. But right now, Ethel’s got me focusing on one town. One hamlet.
Fork Lick has a surprisingly robust community doing a bang-up job fostering local varieties of plants. Every time I think I’ve exhausted video subject matter, Ethel’s got a new idea I can’t say no to. Like the video I shot this morning, which I should just give to Ethel to post. Her sheep may be an heirloom breed that provides incomparable wool, but she’s no seed.
I need to pack up and move on, but for the first time in my adult life, I want to put down roots. Like the tree I’m perched in. Where I’m wasting time playing a game instead of planning my next move.
“Is this a new camera technique you’re practicing? Shooting between the leaves?”
Peering down through the branches, I find Sam grinning up at me. I’ve cataloged most of this man’s expressions over the past week, but that beacon of light and warmth is one I’ll never get tired of.
One I’ll miss when I’m gone.
His eyes scan the trunk and lower branches, and before I know it, he’s clambered up to perch on the branch below mine. “Either this tree shrunk or I’m a lot bigger than I was the last time I climbed it.”
“I’m guessing it’s the latter.”
He plucks a crab apple and sniffs it. “Have you tried one?”
I shake my head.
“Do you dare me?”
What I’d like to dare him to do could be chanted on a playground, but if we get going, we might fall out of the tree. Before I can answer, he takes a bite.
“Yikes! Crab apples are way more sour than I remember too.” He shudders, dropping what’s left of the fruit like a hot potato, then looks around. “So if not picking apples, what’re you doing up here?”
“You caught me with my latest obsession.”
“I thought I was your latest obsession.” His tone is teasing, but there’s more truth to his words than I’ll admit.
“Since I’ve conquered trivia in this town,” I say with an imperious sigh, “I’ve moved on to other subjects.”
He points a finger at me. “We’ll see about that. There’s always next Tuesday.”
If I’m still here. Which I shouldn’t be. “I thought you were moving to your new place over the weekend.”
“I am. But it’s only up in Climax. I can still get to trivia.”
We haven’t talked about what the move will mean to our arrangement. But it’s a moot point anyway. As soon as I get my ass in gear and schedule a visit with the next person on my contact list, I’ll be gone. Unless I buy the orchard…
“So if not me, what is your new obsession?”
Dragging my thoughts away from the movie that’s been playing in my mind since last night of a bulldozer knocking over my beloved apple trees, I hold up my phone. “The World of Wings app. It’s a fun way to learn to identify bird species.”
After I show him how it works, he pulls up an app on his own phone. “Do you have Merlin? It’s run by the ornithological lab up at Cornell.”
As he scrolls through his life list, I blow out a whistle. “You’ve spotted all of these birds?”
“That’s the cool thing. Sometimes I can’t actually get close enough to see details, but I can record the call, and I identify it that way.”