Nuts

“The Learning Annex. Interesting,” he said thoughtfully, rubbing his beard. “Can I come to the pickle class?”

“It’s not really a class,” I said, playing with the dill fronds. “But, sure. If you want.”

“I want.”

I ran my fingers over the frothy green herbs, feeling the silk slide across my skin. I want. I enjoyed the way that sounded, more than I cared to admit. But what I didn’t enjoy was the telltale buzz that suddenly zoomed by my ear.

“No! No no no!” I shrieked, dropping my dill and my basket and running halfway across the field before Leo knew what had happened.

“Rox! Hey, Rox!” he yelled after me, but I was running full out. “Roxie!”

I looked over my shoulder to shout back, “I told you, bees are assholes!” And because I looked over my shoulder, I tripped over a left-behind bucket, and down I went into the softly tilled dirt.

Catching up to me a few seconds later, Leo crouched down next to me. “Are you okay?” he asked, scanning me hurriedly.

“Of course.” I sighed, holding my hands over my face. “I really have this thing with bees.”

He pried my fingers loose, but didn’t release them. He inhaled deeply. “Must be that honey.”

I held my breath, aware of every point of contact between us. On the ground, surrounded by walls of green ruffling in the breeze, we seemed cut off from the world, and asshole bees—just me and this farmer and a skirt rucked up around my thighs.

He leaned down, releasing my hands to brush my hair back from my forehead. “If you get stung, guess what happens?”

“The world ends,” I answered promptly, and he gave me a pointed look.

“You get stung. That’s it. It hurts, sometimes worse than others, but then it’s over.”

I raised up on my elbows, deliberately pushing into his space. “I’d rather not get stung at all.” And then I kissed him. My lips brushed his once, twice, and I was gearing up for a third when I heard a rumble nearby.

He groaned, but held me to him for one more kiss. “Unless we want the afternoon tour to catch us taking a tumble in the catnip, we should probably get up.”

“Probably.” Reluctantly, as I could hear voices getting closer, I let him pull me up and we went back to where my fifty-yard dash had scattered vegetables every which way.

After Leo helped me gather them back up, he sneaked one more kiss just before the tour crested the top of the hill. We waved from where we stood, and headed in the opposite direction. We wandered from this field to that, chatting about anything and everything. He told me all sorts of trivia about the property, asked me endless questions about different ways I might use certain products from the farm, and we laughed more than I can remember doing in a very long time.

“It’s great that you have access to all this history, knowing the hows and whys of how this estate came into being,” I remarked as we started back toward the barn.

The day was winding down. From up high on the ridge, the only thing we could hear was the wind and the birds chirping. My hands were dirty from digging in the beds, fingertips stained green from tugging on a stubborn parsnip.

“We didn’t come here that often; mostly in the summer,” he said, stopping and looking down at the big house, silhouetted against the setting sun. The Hudson was just on the other side, wide and unhurried, and he pointed in the opposite direction. “I’d spend hours out here, running through the woods, playing with the dogs. There’s a creek on the far side of the property, and I can’t tell you how many arrowheads I used to find along the banks. I’d come home covered in chigger bites and absolutely filthy, usually to the horror of my mother and her friends.”

“My mother used to run the hose in the backyard to make a mud pit, and we’d sit there and make mud pies.” The mud felt so cool on those hot summer days. “She always said mud was good for the skin. And I quote: ‘All kids should get dirty, especially little girls.’ ”

“I can hear her saying that.” He laughed, catching my hand. He examined my dirt-embedded fingernails. “So she would love this.”

“She’d be thrilled,” I confirmed as he turned my palm up and ran his thumb across my love line. I shivered. “I bet your mom thinks all that playing in the dirt paid off in the end. Look how awesome this place is.”

He traced another line down the center of my hand, then looked off into the distance. “Let’s go make sure there’s some eggs left for you, before they’re all gone.”

He didn’t say anything else about his mom, and I didn’t ask. We headed down the hill toward the barn, Leo carrying my basket for me, our arms brushing occasionally.

It felt nice.

There were a few cartons of eggs left, and I was delighted to see that they not only were a beautiful speckled brown, but there were a few pale blue eggs tucked inside. My share that week also yielded a big wheel of local farm cheese, a pound of fresh butter, some locally raised trout, and two roasting chickens. And some of that thick-cut Maxwell bacon. I did enjoy a thick-cut Maxwell.

By the time we finished up, the parking lot was nearly empty. It was almost dusk, and as he said good-bye to the last stragglers, I wandered into the back corner of the original dairy barn, with its enormous stone silo. It now housed a reading bench, a bookshelf, and a collection of framed photographs spanning the history of the farm. I stood in the doorway, marveling at the workmanship that had gone into the silo. How perfectly constructed it was, with a nod here and there to design, even though it was made to simply store grain.