Chapter 24: First Snow

The first real snow of the year came down on the Halvorsen farm the Saturday before Thanksgiving.

I stood at the kitchen window in Soren's parka and watched it settle on the roof of the barn.

Sixty cows stood in the lit doorway, steaming.

"They look unbothered," I said.

"They're always unbothered," Soren said, behind me. "That's why I wanted a PhD."

His father laughed from the table, a big slow laugh, and shifted his bad knee on a stool.

"Careful, Dorinda. He'll have you milking before supper."

"I'd like to learn."

"Then you'll start at four in the morning," Soren's father said. "The cows don't know about snow."

My father had driven us from Beckley in a rented van, with Pearl in the back seat telling him how to drive.

He sat now at the long farmhouse table in his shirtsleeves, across from Soren's father.

The two of them were arguing about diesel engines.

It had taken them one handshake.

I had watched it happen and still couldn't believe it.

Pearl was filming the pies.

"Don't," I said.

"It's content."

"It's pie."

"It's pie in a farmhouse with a dairy man looking at my sister like a golden retriever," Pearl said. "That's content."

Soren, who was carrying the gravy, turned a color I had never seen on him.

At the head of the table, my father held up his hand.

"Soren," he said. "I'd like to say something."

Everyone stopped.

"I don't know much about universities. I fix buses." He cleared his throat.

"But my daughter called me last week to say she'd taken the hospital project."

"She was worried it was too much to accept."

"She has never taken anything without checking she was allowed."

Keep reading free with an account. Start His Test Cost Him a Wife, Not a Negotiation from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.