Gone

CHAPTER 5

After the milking was done and the cows were put back to pasture, the older girls went with Shawna and Chrissy to the henhouse to collect eggs.

The girls returned shortly, and Cody insisted that everyone have breakfast at his house.

“You want to keep the hands happy, you got to keep their bellies full,” he said.

We filled our bellies, all right. After we hosed off the wellies, we were greeted by Cody’s short and stout sweetheart of a housekeeper, Rosa, who cooked us up a feast of steak and biscuits and scrambled-egg tortillas with lots of homemade salsa. As Rosa busted out the churros, I even put a drop of the superorganic milk Mary Catherine had brought in from the barn into my coffee.

“Who says country living is boring?” I said to Mary Catherine, with a wink. “My horizons are expanding at warp speed.”

It really was a great morning. Looking at my kids, hunched around the two tables Rosa had pushed together, eating and talking and laughing, I couldn’t stop smiling. We may have been dislodged from our lives back in New York, but they were actually making the best of it. We were together and safe, and that was all that really mattered when it came down to it. Team Bennett had gotten knocked down, but we were getting back up again.

As the kids went outside to kick a soccer ball around the dusty yard with the dogs, I sat with Cody and Seamus, sipping a second cup of coffee.

“You got things pretty good out here, Aaron. The view is amazing, you grow all your own food, have fresh water. I mean, you pay for-what? Electricity? You could probably get along without that.”

“And have,” Cody said.

“You love this life, don’t you?” I said.

“Love’s a strong word,” the weather-beaten farmer said. “I don’t love when the cattle get themselves stuck in a ditch at three a.m., or when feed prices skyrocket, as they do from time to time, but it’s a life, Mike. Don’t suit everyone. You have to like being alone a lot. All in all, there’s something to be said for it. It’s simple enough, I guess.”

“I like simple,” I said, clinking coffee cups with the farmer.

“You are simple,” Seamus said.