He was testing his uncle’s feelings rather than looking for agreement, but it was a risky suggestion.
“Do you have money?” Uncle Ryan said. “Do you have any idea where Lucy might have gone?”
“We-ell—”
“I thought not. Don’t worry about it. We’ll manage somehow.” Uncle Ryan nodded along the ridge, to where Dawn was deep in the thicket. “You were too young to notice when you were here. But didn’t your mother ever mention Dawn’s problems?”
“Not one word. Did she know?”
“Maria told her everything, when the two of you were out here eight years ago, and then later. I can’t think why your mother didn’t say anything to you. Maybe she was just hoping for the best. Dawn was better for a few years, like when you were here last time. I thought for a while that she was making real headway. But then Maria got sick, and died, and I wasn’t much help with anything. I guess I was too messed up myself. It was a godsend that Stacy came along when she did. Without her, I’d have gone downhill all the way.” Uncle Ryan’s face brightened. “Isn’t she the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen?”
Josh couldn’t tell the truth: that he’d give Stacy up anytime for Aunt Maria, fat and cheerful and comforting. He nodded, but he couldn’t bring himself to speak.
Uncle Ryan said, “I’d better be getting back down. Stacy likes me to set the table for her. You stay here with Dawn, bring her back with you. No rush.” He started down the hill, then turned and added, “Make sure you’re home within half an hour, though. Stacy’s a great cook, but she gets real riled up when the food is ready and people aren’t.”
Dawn was still crouched in the middle of the bushes. Josh went along the ridge toward her, wondering what she could be doing. The last time he had been to Burnt Willow Farm it had been fall. It was months too early now for ripe nuts.
As he came closer, he saw that Dawn was not alone. A little wild rabbit sat crouched in front of her. She was gently stroking its gray back with her left hand. At Josh’s approach it darted off into the grass and straggly weeds at the base of the bushes.
Dawn stood up. Her knees were marked yellow by the dust. She took his hand, turned it palm up, and poured into it what she was holding in her right hand.
Josh looked at his open palm. The nuts were tiny, green, and immature.
“You can’t eat these, Dawn. They’re not ready.”
She showed no emotion, no sign that she understood what he was saying.
Retarded. Aunt Stacy was right, and Uncle Ryan was kidding himself with his science talk. Dawn must be a real drag on everybody if she was always like this.
“Not ready,” he repeated. “You’ll have to come back in another couple of months.”
She smiled at him. “I had a great time here, Aunt Maria,” she said in a child’s high-pitched voice. “I wish I didn’t have to go, but Mother thinks she has a shot at a part in Philadelphia. Not a big one, but better than the Seattle job. Maybe I can come back next year. I hope I can.”
He stared at her. The first real words that she had spoken—and they sounded an echo inside his skull. She was waiting expectantly.
“That was me,” he said at last. “Wasn’t it? When I was little, when I left Burnt Willow Farm last time. I said those things. But that was nearly eight years ago! Were those the very words that I used, when I was saying good-bye?”
Dawn nodded. She reached down for her shoes and put them on. Then she slipped her arm through Josh’s and turned down the hill toward the farmhouse.
“Maybe I can come back next year. I hope I can,” she said again. Then in a changed voice, deeper and more adult, “Joshua, it’s dinnertime.”
Chapter Three
Josh and Dawn arrived at the farmhouse with fifteen minutes to spare. Uncle Ryan used the time to give Josh a quick tour of the changed inside, showing where the data center was located in the old dairy, and where Josh would sleep in a little room near the peak of the sloping roof. Everywhere they went, like ghosts, tantalizing smells of cooking crept up from the kitchen and diffused through the old walls.
Even so, Josh didn’t have high hopes when they finally reached the dining room. He was used to carryout meals, or eating on the run in fast-food places, because his mother was always rushing off somewhere or too busy rehearsing or studying parts to do any cooking. Uncle Ryan said that Aunt Stacy was a great cook, but it was obvious that he was totally bowled over by his new wife. He probably thought that everything she did was great, no matter how bad it was. In any case, it didn’t seem possible that the reality could live up to the aromas.
As it turned out, Uncle Ryan was right. Aunt Stacy served a superb three-course dinner, soup and an herb-flavored meat pasta, followed by a wonderful chocolate soufflé so light it seemed to float off the plate, all served on the delicate bone china that adorned the dining-room table.
The whole meal was like a trip to paradise. If Josh had a single complaint, it was that he could have eaten more. He remembered Aunt Maria’s dinners, loaded dishes arriving in random order and vast quantities until you wondered when they would end. There was no doubt, though, that Stacy was a superior cook. And Josh had as many salad vegetables as he wanted, and as much apple juice as he could drink.
Aunt Stacy even offered a logic for serving smallish portions. “You live longer if you don’t overeat, Joshua, and you live healthier. Did you know that animals increase their life spans thirty or forty percent if they are put on a minimal diet? Not that I’m proposing anything as drastic as that!” She smiled at Uncle Ryan, sitting at the head of the table. “But Ryan used to be terribly overweight. I told him he was digging his grave with his knife and fork. Now he eats right. I make sure of that. I want him to live forever.”
Josh nodded, barely listening. After four days and nights on the bus, as soon as his hunger was satisfied all he could think about was bed. During dinner he hadn’t said much more than Dawn, who ate in complete silence except for “Thank you.”
Aunt Stacy and Uncle Ryan more than made up for them. They were having what sounded to Josh like an ongoing discussion.
“You ought to at least listen to them, Ryan,” Stacy said. “Let them come in here again, and let them make an offer. What do you lose? If you don’t like what they have to say, you refuse it.”
“My family has owned and farmed Burnt Willow for two hundred years.”
“I know that. But every year it becomes more difficult. You’ve told me so, a hundred times. Seven hundred acres. Nobody farms seven hundred acres any more. It’s too small to be worth bringing in the big equipment. But Mort Langstrom says that for the price that Foodlines would offer for Burnt Willow, you could retire for life.”
“I don’t want to retire, Stacy.”
“All right. Don’t retire. But I bet you could talk Foodlines into giving you a spread on Solferino a hundred times as big as Burnt Willow, as part of the deal. Land is going begging there, and they have that exclusive land development franchise.”
“It should be cheap. Hey, considering where Solferino is, it should be free. It’s out on the edge of the Messina Dust Cloud; twenty-seven light-years from anywhere. Three years ago nobody knew it even existed. The only people who’ve been there so far are the first survey team, and a little Foodlines colony of researchers. Nobody knows what Solferino really has to offer. It’s virgin territory. It wouldn’t be so much farming, as exploration. That’s why land is available, as much as you want of it.”