“You must miss it.”
He shrugged. “Sometimes. I miss living in the country, not having people around me all the time. It’s weird to live in town now.”
“I was going to ask you, why do you live with your brother and his girlfriend? It seems like a pretty small space.”
“Joe just started his tattoo shop about a year ago. I would help him financially, but he would never accept it, so I pay half the rent and everything else to ease the burden. Plus, Sofia’s pregnant. Pretty soon, they’re going to have a baby to take care of.”
“That’s really sweet.”
He shrugged. “It’s just what family does for each other. Besides, it won’t be long before his business is taking off. He’s actually a great tattoo artist.”
“Yeah?” I grinned. “I love tattoos, but I’ve always been afraid to get one.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. What if I have to run someday? It would be an identifying marker,” I laughed.
He stopped and turned to me with a frown. “Why would you have to run someday? Are you in trouble?”
I looked at him funny. “It was a joke, Andrew. I don’t have a tattoo because I don’t think it’ll look good on me in old age.”
He looked over my face and his eyes trailed down my body that was fully covered. “I don’t see how that’s possible.”
I felt like we were about to have a moment, like maybe he would move in and kiss me, but instead, he turned and opened the door to the barn. Waving away the dust, he walked inside and headed right for the tractor. He climbed up and tried to start it, but it wouldn’t turn over. I opened the hood and started fiddling around inside. I didn’t know a lot about tractors, but it couldn’t be that much different from cars.
“Try it now.”
He turned over the engine again, and this time it started with a few chugs. He shook his head and scoffed. “How the hell do you know how to do that?”
“My—“
“Father. Yeah, he seems to have taught you a lot.”
I looked down, sad that I didn’t have that relationship with him anymore. “He used to. Things are a lot different now.”
“Is that why you never go home?”
My gaze snapped up to meet his and I looked at him warily. “How would you know that?”
He looked panicked for a second, and I could have sworn he was hiding something, but then he looked away. “Just…with your husband. After he died, you didn’t go home, so I assumed that you didn’t want to be around family.”
He wasn’t wrong about that. I would never go home again. I hated it there. Everything I used to love about that place was tainted, and not just because of my father, but because of what I had done. I would never look at that place the same way again.
“My father is a very difficult man. When my mother died, he changed a lot. He became someone that I hated. He was drunk all the time, he couldn’t hold down a job, and it was left up to me to take care of things around the house. Every good memory I have of him has been wiped away.”
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.
“I have no one now.”
“You have your step-children,” he said, almost accusingly.
“They hate me. They never wanted me to marry their father.”
“Why did you? He was so much older than you.”
I swallowed hard, and said what I had practiced so many times before. “I fell in love. Arlen was the man that literally saved my life. He was this gentle soul that came in and realized what I needed, and took care of everything.”
It was total bullshit. Arlen was an asshole, and there was nothing he could do for me in any way. If anything, I was more self-reliant than him. He couldn’t tie his own shoes without my help. Okay, that might be an exaggeration, but it was mostly true. He was a great businessman, in that he always took what he wanted, but in reality, he just didn’t have it in him to do what really needed to be done. And that’s where I stepped in.
Andrew frowned at me. “I’m confused, you don’t seem very upset that he died.”
I put on my emotionless face, trying to make him think that I was hiding my true feelings. “I’ve learned in my life that people die all the time. So, as much as I loved him, I can’t spend my days mourning him. He’s gone and being sad about that won’t bring him back.”
I walked away, hitching the wagon to the back of the tractor so he could drive to the wood pile. Together, we loaded the wood on the wagon, and then I picked up the axe to continue.
“Don’t you have enough for now?”
I laughed. “For now, but I’ll definitely need more. This won’t last me a week, let alone the winter. I need to get as much done before the cold weather really hits.”
To my surprise, Andrew walked back to the barn and minutes later returned with another axe. We worked together in silence, both of us chopping wood and loading it on the tractor. Hours went by and my arms were killing me, but I still had to unload everything. We had taken breaks when necessary, and I could tell that Andrew’s foot was starting to bother him, but he didn’t complain once. I couldn’t figure him out. I didn’t understand why he was helping me or why he was so interested in me.
That was what I wanted, but aside from me trying to catch his attention, I didn’t understand why he was still here. It made me very wary. People didn’t usually stick around unless they wanted something, and I had a feeling that Andrew wanted something from me. I just had to figure out what that was.
As we
