“No. Aunt Berry was sort of a local legend,” I told him, moving over to prop myself against the other gate post. “People used to give her all kinds of things as gifts and payment for services rendered. She got this farm in trade if you can believe it.”
He glanced up at me in surprise. “No shit? What the hell did she trade?”
“She was a naturopath. Apparently, she traded her healing abilities and saved the man’s great-niece from a wasting disease. Knowing what I know now, I think it was probably celiac disease. But this was back in the sixties. Before coming through Aster Valley, she traveled around apprenticing with any natural healer who’d allow her to shadow them. She wanted to learn everything there was to know about using natural remedies to heal the body. My grandparents managed the Rockley Motor Inn back then—that’s how my dad ended up managing the ski resort. He went into hospitality because of his dad. Aunt Berry—who was actually my great-aunt—came through Aster Valley to visit her brother and sister-in-law, my grandparents, just for a few days. It was all a fluke, really. She ran into a man while taking a walk. He was crying and praying on the ground in the woods.”
I thought about the box of letters I’d found from Sid Staughton to Aunt Berry. Over the seven years he’d written to her, his words had morphed from eternal gratitude to a kind of hero worship. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought Sid was half in love with my aunt. But Sid and his “best friend,” Warren, had been as thick as thieves. When I’d finally grown old enough to see their relationship in a different light, I’d understood they were life partners, and it had made much more sense.
“Anyway,” I said, trying to choke back the memory of how difficult it had been to learn about being gay on my own, without anyone to talk to about it, “Berry found out what he was so upset about and offered to help. The little girl, who’d been shuttled around from doctor to doctor with various diagnoses and ineffectual treatment plans, suddenly began to heal under Berry’s care. Sid thought it was a miracle. He thought Berry was a miracle.”
“She sounds like an incredible person,” he said with a soft expression on his face.
“She was.” I rubbed a little speck of dirt off my finger. “She always made the people around her feel like…”
Sam waited patiently while I searched for the right way to say it. I spotted the row where I grew sunflowers. It was located directly outside my bedroom window so I could see their tall sunny faces as soon as I woke up on summer mornings.
“Like the biggest, brightest bloom in a bouquet,” I finished. “And I needed that. I needed her.” My voice revealed too much emotion, so I stopped talking and focused on rubbing away the spot of dirt on my finger that I was starting to think was probably a freckle.
Sam’s movements were slow and deliberate. He walked over to me and set the shovel down against the working half of the gate before sliding his arms around me and pulling me into his body for a hug.
The gesture shocked me. My brain blinked erratically a few times before shutting down. Then it was just his big, strong body against mine. The heat of him. The masculine scent of his sweat. The overwashed softness of his shirt against my cheek. And the wide span of his hands against my back and sides.
God, he felt incredible. I managed to pull my arms out from between us and wrap them around his neck. If he wanted to hug me, I was going to accept it for as long as he was willing to give me the comfort, even though I wasn’t sure why he’d decided to do it.
When he finally pulled back, I expected him to go back to his task with the shovel, but he didn’t. He kept one hand on my hip and used the other to brush back the curls that had fallen in my eyes.
“It’s a mop,” I muttered apologetically.
“Mops where you come from must be sexy as hell,” he said with a slow grin. “I’d never get any cleaning done if my mop looked like this. I love your hair.”
Oh.
Ohhh.
My breathing went low-key haywire. Sam’s long fingers toyed with the same crazy bits that had driven me nuts only a few minutes ago in the house. His fingers twisted around a curl before letting it go and twisting another.
“Thank you,” I breathed, trying hard not to break the spell.
He finally seemed to realize what he was doing and stepped back to reach for the shovel again. After clearing his throat, he asked, “So the man gave your aunt the farm?”
I took a deep breath to keep from tripping after him and plastering myself against his body with a whimpered plea.
“Um, yeah. So… right. The aunt farm. I mean the aunt… the farm for my aunt. My aunt’s farm. Cripes.”
Sam’s laugh crinkled the edges of his eyes, and I thought for a mini-second it was worth accidentally making a fool of myself.
“I could eat you in one bite,” he muttered, almost under his breath.
Yes, please.
I shook my head to clear it and continued on. “She refused, obviously, but then he offered for her to stay there for the summer to look after the place while he and his partner traveled to Hawaii to visit friends. She was a total free spirit who usually followed her nose, but that summer her nose told her to stay put here in Aster Valley. I think that was the same year my uncle Dave was born, so maybe Berry stuck around to help my grandmother through that. I’m not sure. But she took advantage of the planting season and grew all kinds of things. She hadn’t had a plot to garden in the years she’d been traveling and learning, and she’d forgotten how much she loved it.”
“That’s where you got your green thumb.”
“Exactly,” I said, looking around at the freshly planted plots, the ones tilled and ready, and the ones that would remain fallow this year to prepare for the following year. “She taught me everything I know about that part of my business. She grew mostly medicinal plants and organic veggies. She gave most of the food away to families who needed it, or she sold it at the farmer’s market when she needed extra money for something or other. When Sid and Warren came back from Hawaii, they told her they wanted her to stay on as the farm’s full-time caretaker so they could retire to Hawaii to be with their friends. None of us knew at the time that Sid had already put the farm into her name.”
“That’s amazing. I’m surprised she stayed if she was used to traveling around. Did she ever marry?”
Sam continued his work, slamming the sharp blade of the shovel down into the ground and working clumps of dirt and rock to the surface.
“No. But she was always surrounded by friends. She traveled to Hawaii every few years to see Sid and Warren, and they would come see her, but eventually they both passed on. The farm had been Sid’s parents’ place. Berry tried giving it back to the family, but they refused to accept it. So she told everyone in town she inherited it when they died, but the truth makes for a better story,” I said with a laugh.
As Sam worked in the late-afternoon sun, I told him more about my aunt, about the work she did through her shop that was half natural healing and half accidental psychotherapy. I told him about how she kept an old corduroy beanbag in the back of the shop that I could curl up on to page through picture books. Every afternoon during kindergarten, I would come straight here from school and spend the afternoon dozing in a sun patch like a contented cat—or an exhausted five-year-old. I remembered loving my life during those early years, but then it had all come crashing down.