“Give them to me anyway. A present.”

“Kiss me,” I told her, and she did. I would give her my thoughts, those that she could bear. “I missed you,” I said. “I always miss you.”

“Liar.” She cupped my chin in one hand. “Filthy rotten liar.” She kissed me again. “Do you know how long it’s been?”

I did-seventeen months and just under two weeks, each day an agony and an exercise in longing. “No,” I told her. “How long?”

“Never mind,” she said. “Let’s not dwell on it.” I saw the pain in her eyes. The last time I’d been with her was the night my mother died. I could still see the reflection of her face suspended in the windowpane as I stared into the night. I was searching then, looking for the strength to give her the truth. But her words had stopped me. “Don’t think about such nasty things,” she’d said. So I had not.

“Ezra’s dead,” I told her. “They found his body two days ago.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I truly am.”

She would never have raised the subject. Just one more way that she was unlike every other. But she’d always been like that. She didn’t push or pry, didn’t care for details. Vanessa lived in the moment; I’d always envied that about her. It was strength.

“How’s Jean taking it?”

She was the first person to ask me that. Not what happened. Not how I was handling it. Her thoughts were of Jean because she knew that would be my biggest concern. I shuddered at the depth of her understanding.

“I’m scared for Jean,” I said. “She’s gone far away, and I don’t know if I can get her back.” I told her about my run-in with Alex. About Jean on the porch. “She’s left me, Vanessa. I don’t know her anymore. I think she’s in trouble, but she won’t let me help her.”

“It’s never too late. For anything. All you have to do is reach out.”

“I have,” I told her.

“Maybe you just think you have.”

“I told you, I have.”

I felt the force of my words as they passed my lips, and I didn’t know where the anger came from. Were we talking about Jean or Vanessa? She sat up in the bed, cross-legged, and stared at me.

“Take it easy, Jackson,” she said. “We’re just talking.”

Vanessa had never called me Work. She used my given name and always had. I’d asked her once why that was, and she’d told me I would never be work for her. I’d told her it was clever, and about the nicest thing I’d ever heard. I could still remember the way she’d looked. Sunlight flooded the open window and I’d noticed for the first time that she was not the young girl I’d once known; time and hard work had left their marks. But I didn’t care.

“You’re right, just talking. So how have you been?” I asked.

Her face softened. “I’m growing organics now,” she told me. “Moving more and more of my production in that direction. Strawberries, blueberries, whatever. People are into that these days. It pays.”

“So you’re doing okay, then?” I asked.

She laughed. “Hell no. The bank’s still after me every month, but I’m ahead of the curve on this organics thing. It will make a difference. This farm will never leave my hands. That, I promise you.” She talked more about organic farming, about her aging tractor and the truck that needed a new transmission. She talked about her plans and I listened. At one point, she got up and brought two beers from the kitchen.

To me, Vanessa was a breath of fresh air. She moved to the seasons, touched the living earth every single day. I knew when it was raining, but not until I got wet.

“You know, time’s a crazy damn thing,” she said, handing me a beer. She slipped back onto the bed and put a pillow in her lap. A strand of hair hung over her left eye. I asked her what she meant. “I was thinking of our families,” she told me. “The rise and fall of family fortunes.”

I sipped at my beer. “What about them?”

“It’s just crazy is all. I mean, think about it. Where was your family at the end of the Civil War?”

She knew exactly where my family had been; we’d talked about it many times. Five generations ago, my ancestor was a foot soldier from Pennsylvania who had the misfortune to get most of his foot shot off. He was captured and delivered to the Confederate prison in Salisbury, where he lingered several weeks before dying of dysentery and infection. He was buried in one of the four trench graves that eventually came to hold over eleven thousand Union soldiers. That was at the end of the war. His wife learned of his death and, pregnant with his unborn child, traveled to Salisbury. But he had no marker; his bones were lost among the thousands of other nameless souls. Word is, it broke her heart. She gave her last dollar to the physician who delivered my great-great-grandfather and died two weeks later. I’ve often thought of that ancestor, and wondered if her death drained the last true passion from my family.

She died of a broken heart. My God. What a thing.

Her son was passed around the county and spent most of his life shoveling manure on another man’s plantation. My great-grandfather delivered ice in the summer and stoked rich men’s furnaces in the winter. His son was a worthless drunk who beat my father for the fun of it. The Pickenses were poor as dirt and treated like shit in this county until Ezra came along. He changed everything.

The Stolen family was just the opposite. Two hundred years back, this farm had been over a thousand acres, and the Stolens ran things in Rowan County.

“Lot of history in this bed,” I said.

“Yep.” She nodded. “Lot of love, too.” I said nothing, and the silence spoke volumes, an old tale. She loved me and on good days understood that I loved her, too. Why I could not admit that was the problem. She didn’t understand and I was too ashamed to explain it to her. So we existed in this horrible undefined state, with nothing to cling to when the nights were cold and endlessly successive. “Why are you here, Jackson?” she asked me.

“Do I need a reason?” I replied, feeling cheap.

“No,” she said with feeling. “Never.”

I took her grasping hand. “I’m here to see you, Vanessa.”

“But not to stay.”

I remained silent.

“Never to stay,” she continued, and I saw tears in her eyes.

“Vanessa…”

“Don’t say it, Jackson. Don’t. We’ve been here before. I know you’re married. I don’t know what came over me. Just ignore me.”

“It’s not that,” I said.

“Then what?” she asked, and I saw such anguish in her face that I lost my voice. I was wrong to have come. So very, very wrong.

She tried to laugh, but it died halfway. “Come on, Jackson. What?” But I couldn’t tell her. She stared into my eyes for a long second and I watched as the fire burned out of her face and the resignation settled in. She kissed me, but it was a dead kiss.

“I’m jumping in the shower,” she told me. “Don’t you dare leave.”

I watched her as she padded barefoot and naked from the room. Normally, we’d be in the shower together, her body alive under my soapy hands.

I drained my beer and lay weakly, listening to the birds outside. I heard the shower run in the bathroom and pictured Vanessa’s face upturned to water straight from the well. It would taste fresh on her skin. I wanted to wash her hair, but instead I got up and went downstairs. There was more beer in the refrigerator and I carried one to the front porch. The sun felt good on my naked skin and it dried my sweat. Farmland stretched to the distant tree line and I guessed I was looking at strawberries. I leaned against the post and closed my eyes to the breeze. I didn’t hear Vanessa come downstairs.

“Oh, my God. What happened to your back?” She moved quickly onto the porch. “It looks like somebody beat you with a bat.” She put light hands on me, tracing lines of my bruises.

“I fell down some stairs,” I told her.

“Were you drunk?”

I laughed. “A little, I guess.”

“Jackson, you need to be careful. You could have killed yourself.”