Total pages in book: 62
Estimated words: 58051 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 290(@200wpm)___ 232(@250wpm)___ 194(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 58051 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 290(@200wpm)___ 232(@250wpm)___ 194(@300wpm)
I had a plan. For York Farm and for Everest.
The farm was the easier task to tackle, so I focused on that while I grabbed pliers and twisted the wire around the wood posts, replacing as necessary. The land was big by family farm standards, but there was enough room to grow squash, soybeans and tomatoes on the main plots. Eggs from the chickens would sell well, because they always did, and if the trees on the west end of the property were still good, maybe apples and cider in the fall. The vertical farming buildings were already producing, so the farm could start making a profit sooner rather than later, which would help replenish the money I’d spent to fix this place up and make it livable for me and Everest.
I had a stack of parenting books in my nightstand drawer. Admittedly, that wasn’t the most exciting thing to have in that particular drawer, but the books were a greater necessity than battery operated lovers. I now realized that audio books might have been better, since most of my time was spent outdoors, and that way I could multi-task, learn the best ways to parent a child who’d lost his mother, while catching up on my never-ending to-do list.
Mending the farm fence was a hell of a lot easier than the other fence I would have to mend someday. I wasn’t much of a fence-mender in the real world, more of a fence burner. Hell, even that wasn’t accurate. The truth was that I was more of a barn burner, I didn’t just burn the bridge, I blew up the entire structure. It was my modus operandi because life was easier to deal with that way. Scorched earth meant there was nothing to return to, or attempt to fix later.
“What a joke,” I muttered as I examined my handiwork. The fence looked good, but it was the only fence likely to actually get mended. At some point in the future, before I die, I would have to reach out to my four siblings, Abel, Amara, Andora and Alex, and do something or say something. Maybe an apology or something, I didn’t have a clue what would do the trick, which meant it wasn’t important enough to make it onto my to-do list.
Yet.
Everest likely needed more family than just me, and I had family members in abundance. Maybe the York family could be for him what they had never been for me. Or maybe I just hadn’t given them a chance.
I guess my family would go on the list sooner rather than later.
Some days being the adult, the logical and reasonable one, really sucked.
Chapter 2
Derek
It hadn’t taken long for boredom to set in once I got back to Carson’s Creek. I lasted one week staying with Ryan and Pippa. They were disgustingly in love and I was happy for them, but I didn’t need to see my brother and sister-in-law making out while trying to enjoy my morning coffee. And my niece Ryanna was as cute as they came, but she was curious as hell, and when she couldn’t explore she proved to have the famous Gregory lungs.
Roman’s place was empty, so I stayed there for a few nights since I’d sold my house in Carson Creek last year. Selling the house was a good decision at the time, since I didn’t spend much time in my hometown, and when I did, I had three siblings and an ornery father to stay with. But my current stay in Carson’s Creek wasn’t quite working out as I had hoped. After one too many eager groupies showed up at my baby brother’s door, I knew that at this rate my social media restriction wouldn’t last long.
So I did what any reasonably wealthy and completely exiled rock star would do.
I bought a farm. Or was it a ranch? It was a giant plot of land with several smaller buildings on it that I hadn’t bothered to look into as carefully as my business manager would have liked. It was out on the outskirts of town, which made it perfect in terms of privacy, and there was enough room that I could probably turn one of the buildings into a studio. This exile might be the perfect time to start building my credentials as a producer, at least that’s what I told myself, but seven weeks in, and I hadn’t even called a contractor. Or hired anyone to tend to the overgrowth which was out of this world.
I thought about asking my neighbors next door, since the rumor in town was that someone had actually purchased or rented the York Farm, but I hadn’t seen any evidence of their existence beyond a shiny truck and crops growing day by day. Great, they were actual farmers, which probably meant early to bed and early to rise.