Page 6

I stare at the wall behind her head.

"You run this place alone?" she asks.

"Yes."

"All of it? The pumpkins, the squash, the apple trees, the cattle?"

"Small herd. Twenty head. They're up in the north pasture right now."

"And you do agritourism?"

"Saturdays in October." My jaw tightens. "Which you would've known if you'd come on the right day."

"The gate wasn't locked."

"The gate's never locked."

"Then you can't blame me for coming in."

I can absolutely blame her. But she's sitting at my table in my flannel with her legs crossed and her curls falling over one shoulder, dark against the red plaid, and the argument forming in my head keeps getting derailed by the fact that she looks like she belongs in this kitchen more than I do.

Five years. Five years running this farm alone since my folks moved to Arizona. Before that, twenty-odd years helping my dad, learning the land, marrying Beth, unmarrying Beth, figuring out how to be a man who lives on a mountain and doesn't mind the quiet.

The quiet's been good to me. I like the quiet. Nobody in the quiet destroys my prize Atlantic Giant and then asks to stay for chili.

"What do you do?" I ask. Not because I care. Because the silence is getting loud with her sitting there, and when silence gets loud I fill it with questions I don't want answers to.

"Food and travel content. I write, photograph, develop recipes. Mostly freelance. I'm doing a series on small-town harvest culture for a magazine."

"Content."

"Yes."

"Like a blog."

"Like a blog, a magazine column, social media, sponsored partnerships, recipe development." She counts on her fingers. "I've been traveling full-time for about two years. Before that I was in Portland."

"Doing what?"

"Restaurant marketing. Before that, culinary school. Before that, growing up in Oakland watching my mom cook Trinidadian food in a kitchen the size of a closet and thinking that was the most important thing anyone could do with their hands."

Something loosens in my chest. I don't let it.

"And now you climb strangers' pumpkin crates."

"That was a first." She grins. "Probably a last."

"Better be."

The slow cooker hisses. Steam curls from the edge of the lid. I get up, check the temperature, give it a stir. Six hours of low heat. The beef is falling apart. Peppers melted into the liquid. Smells right. Tastes right when I try a spoonful. Another forty-five minutes, maybe less.

"That smells really, really good," she says behind me.

"It's chili."

"No, it's not just chili. There's beer in there. A dark one. Stout, maybe? And you're using dried peppers, not powder. Ancho for the base, something hotter underneath. Chipotle?"

I turn around. She's leaning forward in the chair, elbows on the table, watching me with her head tilted.