Page 52 of Bend Toward the Sun
“Yes,” she said.
“I froze.”
“It’s okay.”
“Tell me.”
Arden was quiet for a few moments before she answered. “I think he barely missed an artery in his wrist.”
“Shit,” Harry breathed.
A long pause. “Harry.”
“There’s more?”
She nodded. Her lips were pressed together, tight. “The knife slipped—as he was trying to cut his fucking burger in half.”
After a beat, he said, “No shit?”
“I wouldn’t joke about this.”
Harry began to laugh. At first, it was a low chuckle, but soon, he was laughing so hard he was light-headed, desperately trying to suck in enough air, trying not to hyperventilate.
He couldn’t stop. He laughed and laughed.
He didn’t realize he’d begun to sob until Arden touched his shoulder in the darkness. He folded forward, cradling his head in his hands.
PART TWO
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Rowan
December in the vineyard was a stippled canvas of more browns and grays than any human artist could conceive of. Homes across the countryside burned hearty fires in their hearths, and the air smelled like warmth, though the sting of the wind told otherwise. A bank of cold mist hung over the land, pearlescent and still in the morning sun.
Earlier in the month, Rowan had moved in to the refurbished gardener’s cottage on the hill next to the greenhouse. It had smooth knotty pine floors and walls painted the same gentle gray of Harrison’s eyes. The tiny bedroom had a picture window overlooking one of the vineyard blocks, which let in the lemony sunshine of midmorning. When she moved in, the first thing she did was arrange her little collection of succulents on the deep sill. She fantasized about growing herbs in the summer, and drying bundles for soapmaking on hooks from the exposed wooden beam in the living area. The place wasn’t perfect—the plumbing thumped in the walls like a kicking mule, and the whole space was heated exclusively with a woodstove she hadn’t quite mastered yet—but for a little while, it was hers.
She felt like an oversized child in a playhouse, pretending her life was something it wasn’t. This place wasn’t anything more than a temporary stopover. She couldn’t lose sight of that.
Rowan had been in the vineyard since daybreak. She pulled a knit cap down over her cold-reddened ears, and her exhale made a visible puff in the chilly air. Earlier, she’d delegated responsibilities to her small crew—six of them were to begin hand pruning the Chardonnay and Chambourcin blocks, while she and four others worked in the diseased section of Cabernet Franc. Nearly eight hundred overgrown grapevines needed to be pruned away from the trellis catch wires so they could be ripped from the earth. It would take days.
Today’s work was the kind she usually loved—work that would leave her physically spent and mentally charged. But her mood was as shriveled as the landscape around her. She hadn’t been eating well, and most nights she was too cold to fall into a comfortable sleep. On the table in her little kitchenette, her laptop sat untouched and unopened for weeks. She told herself it was because she’d been spending long days in the vineyard, and she was too tired to deal with the stats. But that was a lie.
Truth was, she had plenty of mental bandwidth to write in the evenings, but she was burning it all on Harrison Brady.
Her manuscript was the physical embodiment of her life’s goals. And now that she’d begun falling for the charm of this place and the family who owned it, publication and a postdoc also represented a very necessary escape hatch. A built-inout.
Maybe she was stalling. Maybe shewantedto stay.
Weeks ago at the Everetts’ festival, Harrison had planted a disruptive little seed deep inside her, leaving her incapable of thinking of much else for any functional length of time.“You’re talking about sensation,”he’d said.“I’m talking about emotion.”
He’d kept his distance since then. Orbiting her like a satellite. No longer stopping in the vineyard to chat or give her a wildflower during his morning jogs.
It sucked.
The monotony of the first hour’s work put her into a trancelike state, and the morning mist made her sentimental for Grandma Edie. Rowan knew the science of this terrestrial fog’s formation was different than the ocean mists Edie had calledcloud tide,but she still found comfort in its presence. Some ephemeral familiarity.
This land was so different from where she’d grown up—a place eternally salt-sprayed and wind-whipped by the Atlantic, as harsh as an environment could be for any plant that wasn’t sea oats or bayberry. Her earliest memories were of Edie in the little garden behind the ugly yellow house they’d shared with Rowan’s mother. With patience, wisdom, and sheer perseverance, Edie had crafted a beautiful oasis.