“Sounds good.”
As I turned onto the road, I caught sight of her texting. Unlike me, she used both hands, like a miniature typist. I was more of a single-finger texter. “Letting your friends know where we’re going?”
“Of course,” she responded. “And your license plate,” she added. “I took a picture before I got in.” When she finished, she lowered the phone. “Oh, by the way, I googled heirloom tomatoes after talking to you today. I didn’t realize there were so many different kinds. How do you know which ones to grow?”
“Research, like anything else. There’s a guy in Raleigh who is kind of the world expert on heirlooms, so we met with him to find out what types grow best in our area and what flavors to expect. We spoke to other farmers who grew them, to learn the ins and outs, and then met with potential customers like supermarkets and chefs and hotels. In the end, we started with three varieties, and we’ve added two more.”
“By we, do you mean you and your parents, or your brother…?”
“My aunt,” I said. I wondered how much to tell her, before finally deciding to just come out with it. “She’s kind of like my mom. My mom died when I was little and I never knew my dad, so my aunt and uncle raised my sister and me. Then my uncle ended up passing away, too.”
“Oh my God!” Morgan’s shock was evident. “That’s terrible!”
“It was hard,” I admitted. “Thank you. So, anyway, my aunt and I run the farm. Not alone, mind you. We have a general manager and a lot of employees.”
“Where does your sister live now?”
“Paige lives at the farm, too—actually, we still live in the house we grew up in—but she’s an artist.” I told Morgan about the Tiffany-replica lamps. From the visor in my truck, I pulled out a photo of Paige holding one of her lamps, which I had printed from my phone. When I handed it to Morgan, our fingers brushed.
“Wow! It’s so pretty!” She tilted her head, studying the photo. “She’s pretty, too.”
“There’s always a wait list for her lamps,” I went on, with a trace of pride. “As you can imagine, the lamps take a long time to make.”
“Is she older or younger than you?”
“Six years older. She’s thirty-one.”
“She looks younger.”
“Thanks. I think. But how about you? Tell me about you.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Anything.” I shrugged. “How would you describe your childhood? What are your parents like? Do you have brothers and sisters? What’s it like to grow up in Chicago, especially considering you have to carry Mace when you go out?”
She burst out laughing. “Lincoln Park is very safe. It’s kind of a fancy area. Big houses, big yards, big leafy trees. Ridiculous decorations for Halloween and Christmas. I camped out in the backyard for a slumber party once, though my dad did stay on the porch all night. It wasn’t until I was older that my mom and dad bought the Mace, and it had more to do with me going off to college and to frat parties or whatever.”
“Did you go to a lot of frat parties?”
“A few,” she continued, “but I was pretty busy most of the time. I did go to a formal, which was fun, even though I didn’t really like the guy all that much. But, okay, about me: In a lot of ways, it was a typical childhood, I guess. School and some after-school activities, like most people…” When she trailed off, I thought I detected a hint of reticence.
“And your family?”
“My dad’s a surgeon. He emigrated from the Philippines in the 1970s to study at Northwestern. He ended up going to medical school at the University of Chicago, where he met my mom. She’s a radiologist, German-Irish stock from Minnesota. Her family had a cabin on a lake up there, where we spent a part of every summer. And I have a sister, Heidi, who’s three years younger and looks nothing like me, and even though we couldn’t be more different, I think she’s amazing.”
I smiled. “Your family sounds anything but typical.”
“I don’t know,” she replied, then shrugged. “A lot of my friends’ parents were doctors or lawyers, so it wasn’t that big of a deal, and their families came from all over the world, too. I don’t think my family stood out at all.”
Where I’m from, they definitely would. “And you’re the same kind of overachieving academic as your parents, I take it?”
“Why would you say that?”
“Because you just turned twenty-one and you’ve already graduated from college?”
She laughed again. “That had less to do with grades and SAT scores than my desire to get away from my parents. Trust me—my sister is a lot smarter than I am.”
“Why did you want to get away from your parents?” I asked. “It sounds like you had a pretty comfortable life.”
“I did, and I don’t want to sound ungrateful, because I’m not,” she hedged. “But it’s complicated. My parents can be…overprotective.”
When she paused, I glanced over at her. In the silence, she seemed to be debating how much to tell me, before finally going on.
“When I was seven, I was diagnosed with a pretty severe case of scoliosis. The doctors weren’t sure how my condition would progress as I grew, so in addition to having to wear a back brace for sixteen hours a day, I ended up having a bunch of surgeries and procedures to fix it. Obviously, since my parents are doctors, they made sure I saw the best specialists, but as you can imagine, they worried and hovered and wouldn’t allow me to do the things other kids did. And even though I eventually got better, it’s like they still see me as the damaged little girl I once was.”
“That sounds rough.”
“Don’t get me wrong. I know I’m not being completely fair to them. I know they care about me; it’s just that…I’m not like my parents. Or my sister, for that matter. Sometimes it feels like I was born into the wrong family.”
“I think a lot of people feel that way.”
“That doesn’t mean it isn’t true.”
I smiled. “Does that mean you’re not going to become a doctor?”
“Among other things,” she admitted. “Like…I love dancing, for instance. I started in ballet because the doctors recommended it, but I got hooked. I also learned tap, jazz, and hip-hop, but the more I got into it, the less my parents approved, even though it was good for me. Like I wasn’t quite measuring up to their expectations, you know? Anyway, to answer your question, by the time I started high school, I was already itching to get out and become an adult, so I started taking classes at community college and did a summer session at IU. I took accelerated classes so I was able to graduate early. And, yes, I was pretty much one of the youngest freshmen on campus. I’d only been driving a little more than a year.”
“And your overprotective parents were okay with you leaving home that young?”
“I threatened that I wouldn’t go to college at all. They knew I was serious.”
“You drive a hard bargain.”
“I can be a bit headstrong,” she offered with a wink. “But what about you?”
“What about me?”
“Did you go to college?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I never liked school all that much to begin with, so it wasn’t really in the cards.”
“Do you regret not going?”
“I probably would have failed out.”
“Not if you tried.”
“I likely wouldn’t have tried.”
She smiled. “I know that school’s not for everyone. And you still figured out what you want to do early on, which is more than a lot of people can say.”
I considered what she’d said. “I have a knack for farming,” I conceded, “and now that most of the transition work is behind us, my days aren’t as long as they once were. But it’s not what I grew up imagining that I’d be doing.”
I could still feel her eyes on me, her delicate features intermittently illuminated by passing headlights.
“You love music,” she announced. “That’s what you really wanted to do, right?”
“Of course.”
“You’re young, Colby,” she pointed out. “You still have plenty of time.”
I shook my head. “It’s not going to happen.”
“Because of your family?” Though I didn’t answer, she must have seen my expression, because I heard her expel a breath. “Okay, I accept that. Now, changing gears, since I told you about my boring childhood, what was your life like growing up in North Carolina?”
I gave her the highlights, trying to inject some humor into my dumb middle and high school exploits and responding in detail to her questions about the farm, about which she seemed endlessly fascinated. When I finished, I asked her what she liked most about college.
“The people,” she said, her answer almost automatic. “That’s where I met Stacy, Maria, and Holly. Others, too.”
“What did you end up studying?”
“Can’t you guess?” she asked. “What’s the last thing I said to you on the beach?”
I love your voice. But still unsure what that had to do with her choice of a major, I gave her a quizzical look.
“I majored in vocal performance.”