Chapter 5: Feed Store

I went into town that morning with his smell still on my skin and a list of mineral blocks in my pocket.

I had washed twice.

It made no difference.

Every time I shifted in the truck seat I felt the ache between my legs.

Every time I felt it I thought of his mouth.

I wanted to be sick with how much I wanted him again.

The feed store in Frenchtown smells of molasses and diesel and cold concrete, and half the valley shops there on Friday mornings.

I had a cart and a clipboard, and I was reading the milk replacer labels when a man said my name behind me.

"Karin."

He was tall and tired-looking, thirty-three, in a Carhartt jacket with a vet's clinic patch on it.

It was the second name on my father's list.

I had met him twice, once at a calving and once at the funeral.

"I'm sorry to come up on you like this," he said. "I think you should know something."

"All right."

"Brent Colby told the whole counter this morning that you said yes to him at the funeral supper."

My hands went still on the clipboard.

I looked past the vet.

Four men by the register had stopped talking.

An older woman holding a bag of layer pellets was looking right at me with her mouth pressed together.

"He says you two are waiting until June to announce it," the vet said. "He says the trustee is the only thing in the way."

"I see."

"I didn't want to be the name on the list that kept quiet."

I put the clipboard in the cart.

Then I turned to face the counter and raised my voice, the way my father used to at a sale barn.

"Excuse me, everyone."

The men looked up.

"I have said yes to nobody," I said.

"Not at a funeral and not anywhere else. If Brent Colby wants to tell you my business, he can tell it to my face."

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