“Hey,” she says, yawning at the end of the word so it comes out stretched.
Charlie glances over at her as if he hadn’t noticed she was awake, which seems unlikely considering how noisy she was while trying to get her neck to cooperate. “Oh. Hey.”
“How are they doing?”
“Good. We’ll take them back to their moms soon, let them eat. You should go to the house, clean up. Get some real sleep.”
She shakes her head. “Nah, I’m okay.” The dog—Bonnie, she’s pretty sure—stands, walks over, and plops down in front of Gretchen. Hesitantly, she reaches out and, determining her hand isn’t about to get chomped off, gives the fluffy head a few tentative pats.
“Did you stay out here all night?” Charlie asks.
“Yeah. I didn’t want to leave them alone. I thought...” This sounds ridiculous, but she makes herself say it anyway. Testing how it feels to be vulnerable with him. For purely strategic purposes, of course. “I thought they might be scared if they didn’t have a familiar face nearby.”
He gives her a playful nudge. “Trying to get the goats to imprint on you, Acorn?”
“You’ve caught me. I’m hoping they’ll think I’m their leader and do my bidding.”
Charlie chuckles. “At least you aren’t afraid of them anymore.”
“I was neverafraid,” she insists. She stretches her arms above her head, and her back gives a satisfying crack. When she’s done, she shifts a few inches farther from Charlie, suddenly self-conscious of how dirty she is, how much she must smell like goat fluids and dried stress sweat. “I, um... mostly, I didn’t want to leave Sleepy Jean. I was worried she might... I don’t know.”
“I can’t make any promises, because nature does what it wants,” Charlie says slowly, studying the little black-and-white goat stillsleeping half-buried under one of her friends. “But based on my experience, I fully expect her to thrive. She’s healthy—in part because you did what you needed to do. You don’t need to worry about her.”
“Good. That’s good.” Gretchen swallows a lump in her throat. She doesn’t know if it’s relief or a kind of subtle dread. Maybe because she helped usher Sleepy Jean into the world last night, life suddenly feels a lot more fragile. A sudden memory of scrolling through Rachel Van Alst’s Instagram feed, full of photos and videos of someone so young and lively, makes her breath feel caught in her throat. And the full extent of what could happen to Charlie if she fails fully hits her in a way it hasn’t before.
“It’s normal,” Charlie says after a long pause filled only with the kids’ occasional bleats and a rather noisy yawn from Bonnie, “to fret over the first one you help deliver.” He stretches his legs out in front of him and crosses his ankles. Gretchen notices now that he’s wearing gray joggers instead of jeans. He has on that hideous sage-green and neon-pink sweater again, the one from the day she arrived, one she now knows his grandmother made. “Mine was named Stu.” His fingers slide under the cuff of his left sleeve, pulling it up to his elbow. Charlie points to the tattoo of the goat on his forearm and the cursive letters beneath. “S-T-U, not S-T-E-W.”
And now he’s smiling.Oh god.Gretchen isn’t sure if ovaries can flutter, but hers seem to be doing exactly that.
“I was eight years old, visiting for a long weekend around Easter. I didn’t really do all that much. It was an easy birth, but we had six in one night and a few were tricky, so they let me take care of one on my own. Grandpa let me name her.”
Charlie’s smile fades to something more pensive. She’s caughtthis look on his face several times since her arrival, and she would bet everything she has that it signals he’s thinking about how he’s selling the farm and, therefore, letting his grandparents down. At first, she thought his selling the farm was an attempt to get out from under his family’s expectations—the way she tried to rebuild her life into something else after parting ways with her father. But now she sees that his desire to be rid of the place is deeply tied to his inability to meet the expectations he had for himself. It makes sense that he might feel like he’s failed. But Gretchen hates that he does. She definitely doesn’t look at him and see a failure.
“Her? Why did you name a girl goat—”
“A doe,” he corrects.
“Why did you name a doe Stu?”
Charlie scratches at his beard. “Ah, this is kind of embarrassing, but... I had a crush on a girl at school. Her name was Brittany, but there were four Brittanys in our class, so we called her by her last name, Studebaker, which got shortened to Stu. So... yeah.”
“And what did Brittany Studebaker think about having a goat named after her?” Gretchen asks.
“I don’t really remember her reaction when I told her, to be honest. But considering we were in the third grade, she probably just said, ‘Cool,’ and went back to reading aBaby-Sitters Clubbook. Besides, I was considered the weird kid. Most of the other students at the private school I went to in DC didn’t understand why I liked to go to my grandparents’ farm for breaks instead of Monaco or whatever.”
They exchange smiles, and it feels like, at least for this moment, there’s a connection. This is her opening, she realizes, and she should take advantage of it.
“You seem to have a lot of happy memories here,” Gretchen says carefully. “So why do you want to leave?”
The old irritation returns to his voice as he says, “It’s just... it’s time. It’s past time. I need to move on.”
He exhales noisily, then closes his eyes. When he opens them, he seems to have fought off the instinct to shut her down. A tiny spark of excitement flares to life inside her when he clasps his hands together between his knees and keeps talking. “I always knew I would take over the farm one day. God knows my dad wasn’t interested, much to my grandparents’ dismay. He’s a corporate lawyer. About as far away from agriculture as you can get, unless you count representing Monsanto.” Charlie pauses for a beat. “He could make all of this go away. So, so easily. My parents have spent their entire adult lives focused solely on the accumulation of wealth. They have more than enough money to pay for my grandfather’s care out of pocket. But they won’t do it.”
“Why not? It’s your father’s father. Is there bad blood between them, or is Chuck just an asshole?”
“The latter, primarily.” He reaches over and plucks a piece of straw from Gretchen’s sleeve.
“Thanks,” she says, watching the straw fall to the ground as he releases it from between his fingertips.
