I saw the dots that said Krystal was typing, and I immediately hoped it wasn’t lame to suggest it. She used to love looking for calves in the fields as we drove around the countryside in my truck. But she wasn’t seventeen anymore.
KD: That sounds fun! I haven’t been there since high school. They had the best bonfires.
We made plans for me to pick her up at home, and suddenly my outlook for the day looked a little brighter. I grinned, remembering some of those bonfires myself. A cold night or two had been my excuses to lend Krystal my jacket and sit a little too close together, torturing my seventeen-year-old self.
Now I was just torturing my thirty-four-year-old self.
* * *
KRYSTAL
When we pulled through the gate at Bloom’s Farm, I couldn’t help but smile. The Blooms had been involved in Minden and the church there since I was a kid. Their kids were mostly older than me, but I’d been friends with Rose and Lavender. They hosted most of the youth group summer bonfires and hired a bunch of us to detassel corn in the summers.
Good times. Hot, but good.
I took in the changes. I didn’t remember the dark wooden barn near the entrance, with its cottage style accents. A bed-and-breakfast sat up ahead. “That’s new right? Or was I just oblivious as a kid?”
Bryce laughed. “The house was always there, but it wasn’t anything to write home about. Daisy fixed it up and runs it as a restaurant and bed-and-breakfast.”
“Cool. Wait, I thought she went to New York after high school?”
Bryce pulled his lips to one side. “Maybe? If so, she’s been back for a long time.”
“She was going to be a dancer.” I remembered admiring her courage. A few years older than me, it had seemed like she and her sister, Andi, were the only ones who’d ventured farther than Indiana University down in Bloomington. Daisy had ended up back here after all?
“Yeah, okay. That sounds kind of familiar. I think maybe she got hurt or something and then eventually came home.” Bryce shrugged. “She’s married now to a guy from Greencastle. They’ve got two kids and a house on the far side of the farm.”
“Huh. Interesting.”
I wouldn’t mind talking with Daisy. I have to imagine her attempts at professional dancing didn’t look too different from my pursuit of acting. But she’d come home.
Bryce said she was hurt, though. Didn’t that make it a little different? It wasn’t like there was anything keeping me from pursuing my dream anymore. If she’d been injured, then she didn’t have a reason not to come home.
The bed-and-breakfast slowly disappeared from view as we ambled along the gravel drive. Bryce followed the signs pointing us to the petting zoo. “Since when do they have a petting zoo?”
Bryce chuckled. “Rose started it before she moved to Montana. Guess the new guy kept it going.”
Rose was in Montana? I hadn’t known her super well, but I was pretty sure she’d never wanted anything more than to take over the farm. Maybe she had chased a dream I didn’t know about.
We paid the attendant for a cup of pellets and a bottle of milk to feed the baby goats.
“Awww,” I said. “Look at the little teeny ones. They’re so cute.”
“Come on, let’s go meet them.”
Apparently, it hadn’t taken long for the babies to realize that food was available if they got close, because as soon as we stepped up to the fence, the little ones were running over.
And, much to my dismay, so was a big one with horns that kept pushing the kids out of the way. He bleated loudly, demanding to be fed.
“Get out of here, you big bully.”
“Here.” Bryce took a handful of pellets from the cup and handed it back. “I’ll keep Chewbacca here busy while you feed the little ones.”
True to his word, Bryce slowly doled out one pellet at a time, while I was able to bottle feed the baby goats. As soon as one would lose the bottle from his mouth, the other would swoop in.
I squatted down to pet them and laughed at their antics
“Chewbacca incoming!” I heard Bryce call just before the large brown goat nudged through the gap in the railing, bleating in my ear.