"Is that okay?" he asked, looking very out of his element in his name-brand running gear and expensive sneakers standing outside of my rickety old barn.
“I would never turn down some help,” I told him, giving him a wide grin.
He returned the smile and gestured for me to lead the way.
“What do you need help with?” he asked as we walked towards the house.
"Well, can you help me rinse the mud off me? I want to get as much of it off out here before I go inside."
He shot me an edgy look but didn't balk when I passed him the water hose. I turned on the faucet and waited for the water to spray out. Running his fingers under the water, his eyes widened as he looked at me.
“This water is freezing. You are going to be so cold in this. Why don’t you just run inside and rinse off there?”
"There is no hot water inside either. I would be warmer out here in the sun anyway. It won't take me long."
He didn't say anything but held up the hose so I could start scrubbing the mud off. We worked together to wash away as much of the muck as possible. The water was cold, sending pinpricks all along my skin, but I felt warm enough, especially considering the heat I felt from his gaze on me the entire time we worked.
I left Alexander in the kitchen with a glass of water and rushed through the shower, wanting to pull on clean, dry clothes as soon as possible. When I emerged from my bedroom, I found him hovering over my mess of a dining room table.
“Do you feel better?” He asked me.
“Much.”
A beat of silence, and then he cleared his throat.
“So,” Alexander said, shifting his attention back to the pile of letters under my dining room table, “you want to tell me what all these papers are about?”
"I know it doesn't look like it, but I just sat down and went through it all. You and I know this farm is not exactly raking in the profits. Those letters are just proof of that."
“Ahh,” he mumbled, sipping on his water as he eyed me over the rim of his glass.
"I wish my father had told me how tight things had gotten. I could have been sending him money from New York. I could have helped him come up with a better business plan. I could have done much more if he had just told me."
“He was a stubborn, prideful man, Agotia,” Alexander remarked. “I think, in that way, you two are alike.”
I nudged him in the side at that, but I knew he was right.
“I guess so,” I conceded. “I doubt he would have accepted my help anyway. He certainly would not have taken my money. But now, I am left with a debt that will take me a lifetime to pay off.”
“Surely it can’t be as bad as all that? Especially not with the new products we talked about.”
I appreciated his optimism, but with my failed attempts of soap-making covering the top of the table and more red stamped envelopes showing up by the day, I was beginning to lose hope. I shrugged him off and skirted around where he stood, thinking that if we left the table behind, he would stop asking about it—no such luck.
"How far behind are you? Your father's medical treatment could not have been cheap, especially if he didn't have insurance. And running a farm comes with a lot of day-to-day expenses. Not to mention the extensive repairs this place could use. How much money? One hundred thousand dollars?"
“I don’t know for sure, but fifty is a pressing amount,” I answered with a sigh.
“Where do you want me to send it?”
My eyes shot to him at that question. I searched his face for any sign that he was playing some? kind of sick joke on me. There was no way this man I had had one dinner with was happy to hand over fifty thousand dollars.
“I can’t let you do that,” I told him, adamantly shaking my head.
“Why not? I have the money. I just donated that much today to a school. Why shouldn’t I give it to a local business that I want to support?”
I shook my head again before saying, “I appreciate what you are trying to do, Alexander, but -”
“Alex. Please call me Alex.”
