Chapter Twenty-Nine
There were tears and watery smiles as an entire town gathered to grieve one of their beloved on the land he’d tended.
For Phoebe, the pain and love curled together into something bright and hot that was fighting to escape her chest. She took a minute to herself, walking back down the drive that John had once wondered if they should pave. But she had loved the cheerful clouds of dust that followed them as they came and went.
Every inch of this farm was home to her. And yet it would never be the same. Not without John Pierce striding through the fields with two dogs and at least one kid on his heels. Not without him taking a moment in the middle of a corn field to just stop, breathe, to honor the pulse of nature. Not without him in their bed or in the kitchen peeking at whatever recipe she’d cooked up for dinner that night.
There wasn’t one hole where the man had been. There were a thousand.
She stopped and turned, facing the farm. The pretty little farm house had truly become a home, full to bursting at the seams with love and boys’ sports equipment. The red barn had been added on to as their menagerie of pets grew. Melanie II had finally gotten a friend. And then another and another. They had four retired dairy cows that enjoyed sunning themselves in grassy pastures. Leopold the donkey occupied the front pasture and tolerated the dogs and cats that snuck beneath his fence.
She’d wanted chickens but now? Now she wasn’t sure. Could she stay here? Could she run Pierce Acres herself? Would she even want to? The appeal of this life had been John. Now what was the appeal?
She heard the engine of a station wagon easing off the shoulder of the road behind Bill Fitzsimmons’ Gremlin. The driver was a stranger with fear in his eyes.
“Excuse me, I don’t mean to interrupt your party.” He was a good-looking man, broad of shoulder and clean-shaven. His hair was graying around the temples, and his eyes crinkled when he smiled up at her. “I was hoping you could tell me how to get to Cleary before my three daughters murder me for insisting that a day trip would be more fun without any technology.”
Phoebe found a genuine smile for the man trapped with three annoyed redheads.
One of the girls gave an exasperated sigh. “Dad, I told you we need our phones. They have GPS!”
“He’s doing the best he can, Em. Your bad vibes aren’t helping,” the girl in the front seat said, fiddling with the fringes on her halter top. She looked like she belonged in Blue Moon.
“People have been crossing continents for centuries without that beeping, obnoxious ‘Make a U-turn’ technology,” the man argued, mimicking a snooty techno tone.
Phoebe laughed, and it felt like a few knots inside her loosened up enough that she could breathe.
“Serves me right for wanting some uninterrupted quality family time,” he sighed out the window to Phoebe.
“They grow up fast,” Phoebe said, thinking of her own sons. “Force them into these things as long as it’s legal,” she advised.
His smile was warm, almost familiar.
The youngest daughter crawled over her sister and stuck her head out the rear window. “Maybe we should stick around here for the day?”
Phoebe followed the girl’s gaze to where all six-feet-four-inches of handsome Donovan Cardona wandered past with a deli platter balanced on top of a case of beer. Donovan was as much one of her sons as the three bickering men she’d been tempted to lock out of the house today. However, he generally had more sense.
“Do you have a piece of paper?” Phoebe interrupted the brewing argument in the car. “I can write down the directions for you.”
The man pawed through the glove box of his ancient station wagon with desperate hope and triumphantly produced a tablet and a stubby golf pencil.
“I can’t thank you enough,” he whispered fervently. “You’re saving my life right now. They were minutes away from tying me to the roof rack and giving up on the whole adventure.”
Phoebe smiled as she scrawled the directions and prominent milestones on the paper. “I’m happy to save a life today.”
“If you’re ever in Hastings, Connecticut, looking for Italian food, I have a restaurant, and you’ll eat for free,” he promised. “Amore Italian.”
Phoebe handed the paper and pencil over. “I’ll keep that in mind,” she promised.
“It’s amazing food,” the girl in the front seat announced.
“You won’t regret it.”
“He’s crap with directions but magic in the kitchen.” The girls poured the praise on, love over a glossy coat of annoyance, and Phoebe smiled. At least for some, life was beautifully, blessedly normal right now.
The man grinned up at her. “Disaster averted. You have my eternal gratitude, my directional angel of rural upstate New York.”
She laughed again, surprised that she was still capable. “It was my pleasure, lost stranger. Good luck on your travels.”
A van bumped past them down the lane, and Phoebe spotted three of the kids that made up the Wild Nigels, Blue Moon’s best—and only—garage band.
“We’ll let you get back to your celebration,” he said.
It wasn’t a celebration. It was how Blue Moon mourned. She wanted to tell him that but wanted more for the man to have his peace with his daughters. Phoebe waved as they eased down the lane toward the road. She watched them pull out of the drive before starting back the lane to survey the chaos that was her yard and house.
People poured out onto the porch into the front yard. Tables had magically appeared under the ancient oak and were laden with miles of food and gallons of alcohol. There was one measly case of water in a sea of beer and wine.
Phoebe pressed her fingers to her lips, swamped with feeling.
It really was a celebration. John Pierce, that beautiful man, had lived a beautiful life. And his friends and neighbors had turned out to mark the occasion and to show their support. She wasn’t alone. No one ever really was in Blue Moon.
She was surrounded, smothered in love freely given. She was woven into the fabric of this town as tightly as if she’d been born here. The town that had saved her family and given her the option to stay.
She’d given back in every way she could think of. She’d been a founding member of the Beautification Committee, finding creative ways to improve the quality of life for townspeople, including a little matchmaking here and there. Seven years ago, she and John had started up Blue Moon’s farmer’s market on a trial run, and it had been going strong ever since, occupying every square inch of One Love Park Sundays from spring to fall. And, as Mrs. Nordemann and Elvira had once done for her, she’d spent countless nights stepping in for other exhausted couples with small children.
It was a joy to be able to give that kind of support when it was most needed. And that’s what all these wonderful people were doing in her yard.
Elvira whistled from the front porch, two glasses of wine in her hands. She raised one in Phoebe’s direction, and Phoebe decided she couldn’t think of anything she wanted more in the moment.
She threaded her way through the growing throng, accepting hugs and condolences as she went. John’s middle school biology teacher, who gave him a C in ninth grade, was there as was the librarian who talked Jax into entering the poetry competition last year. Ernest Washington, the man who’d shown every one of her boys how to change the oil in their cars, was perched on a cooler, harmonica in hand.
Everyone was there.
Her boys found her on the porch, and there was something softer than the keen edge of grief in them all, she thought.
An impromptu wake with equal parts tears and laughter was good medicine. Her heart felt impossibly lighter as if she could feel John smiling down on her at the chaos that reigned in the yard.