Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 96178 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96178 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
Eventually Fitz turned on some music, and they rolled over the next couple hundred miles in easy quiet. Ren wondered what he was thinking, wondered what she’d be thinking in his place. She’d bet he grew up in a giant house, perched high on a rolling hill, with manicured lawns, polished hardwood floors, and some variety of servants milling around. From the way he was so unimpressed with their hotel room last night, she imagined his bedroom as this high-ceilinged space stretching bright and glossy as far as the eye could see. She wondered if his family had a ten-car garage full of luxury automobiles buffed to a gleaming shine. Max was pretty banged up, but Steve loved clipping old magazine photos of classic cars and would be proud to know she’d spotted the 1970 Wimbledon White Ford Mustang right away.
“Tell me about your homestead,” Fitz said out of the blue, reaching to turn the music down.
Ren grinned over at him. “Here we are, both thinking about where the other one lives.”
He let out a short laugh. “Oh yeah? Where do you think I live?” She described it to him, and he laughed, harder now. “That does sound like my father’s house. Though my room isn’t that huge.”
“It must’ve been amazing to grow up there.”
He exhaled another short laugh through his nose. “I’m sure. Now you tell me about your homestead.”
She turned in her seat, excited to try to describe the beauty of the land. “It’s the prettiest place you’ve ever seen,” she gushed. “You turn off Corey Cove and, in my head, it’s what the Shire must’ve looked like. Have you read The Hobbit?”
“I’ve seen the movies.”
“More than one movie? Like, just for that one book?”
He laughed at this. “Right?”
“Maybe we can watch them together at the hotel tonight?”
Fitz’s smile faded, and he didn’t answer.
She went on to tell him about the cottonwoods that lined the dirt road, with a stream just on the other side. She told him about their cabin and how they rocked the chimney with their own hands, about the big red barn and the picket fence around the little vegetable garden where they grew their own food. “We grow all kinds of things—wheat and potatoes and corn. Beets, asparagus, all kinds of lettuce. We have so many fruit trees: pear and apple, peach and nectarine.”
“For real?” he asked, awed.
She nodded. “We have three horses, two cows, a ton of chickens, seven pigs. There are cats that hang around, and my favorite is Pascal. We have beehives that make more honey than they can use, so we jar the extra and sell it at markets. Steve even raises carrier pigeons.”
“Do you grow things to sell mostly?”
“A few people around us have farmsteads, which means they’re more like working farms, a business that grows things specifically to sell. We only sell what we don’t need.” She fidgeted with the hem of her T-shirt, feeling a pang of homesickness. “Gloria doesn’t like it when we buy something we can make, so we do a lot of trading with our neighbors and at the market. And since we don’t have Wi-Fi or a landline or anything, we can’t just order something online if we need it.”
“Wait,” he said, steering off the highway toward a gas station. “If you don’t have Wi-Fi or a landline, how did you talk to your mom earlier?”
“I knew she’d be at the five-and-dime when it opened this morning. We go—they go—every Wednesday.”
She felt him watch her at a stoplight, really studying. Finally, she looked over, meeting his eyes. “What?”
“I’ve just been thinking about what you told me,” he said. “How you said they’d keep you home if you brought up this guy in Atlanta.” He turned back to the road. “I mean, they probably lived out in the real world for a lot of their lives, right?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I’m not totally sure what they each did for work because they don’t like to talk about it, but I think Steve was in construction and Gloria worked in an office or something.”
“At least they know how the world works, right?” He smiled sweetly. “Here I am worried about you all alone in a big city at some point, but I’m sure they helped you learn how to fend for yourself and whatnot.”
She swallowed. “Well, fend is a strong word. They focused on self-suffi—”
He waved off the wobble in her voice. “I just mean they taught you some basic self-defense moves, right? Like if someone approaches you on the street, how to protect yourself. Or, like, in a restaurant.”
“A restaurant?”
“You know. Because in the city it’s very different from the small towns. Someone’ll pick a fight because they feel like it.”
Blinking, she asked, “That happens?”
Fitz shrugged easily. “Sure. I mean, it probably won’t happen more than once or twice a week. Listen, ignore me, I’m just babbling about boring stuff. My point is this: At the end of the day, your parents must love you a lot if they let you go to school. Especially if it scares them so much.”