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It was exhausting to drain your soul, then drive over two hours and have to cook dinner. Cecilia was not convinced this was a good idea. But she had said she’d be there, and she was determined not to let her friends down.
Friends. Cecilia Chatsworth had friends!
That thought buoyed her spirits enough to get her to the grocery store, where she promptly realized she had no plan. After wandering up and down the aisles for 10 minutes (an impressive feat, given the unimpressive size of New Albany’s main grocery store), she finally had a lightbulb moment while staring at tubes of ground meat.
Pizza. Everyone loved pizza, but she knew how to make a really delicious homemade one. She’d be cutting it close on the rising time for the dough, but that wouldn’t be too bad. She picked up ground sausage, fresh mozzarella, fresh parmesan, fresh basil, canned tomato paste, and a new package of yeast. Simple but tasty was the name of the game.
She got to Gary’s farm with a little over 3 hours til dinner, which worked out perfectly. She made the dough and cooked the sausage, sliced and shredded the cheese and made a simple caesar salad for the side. Dessert tonight was a little bit of a cheater – store-bought ladyfingers with homemade chocolate pudding.
When she was down to waiting for the dough to rise before she could bake the pizza, Cecilia went to sit on the back steps and watch the world go by. Some horses and cows were near the barn, safely behind their rail fences. She could hear Ephraim talking about something, Gary’s low voice responding every so often. She watched the birds fly lazily overhead, soaking in the heat and the sun. Eventually she wandered out into the yard, and ended up circling the house.
Something about this house was missing. She closed her eyes and thought back to her first visit, remembered noticing the lack of flowers. Even though it was still warm, October was definitely not the time to plant flowers. Maybe in the spring, someone from church could help her. But something else wasn’t quite right.
It took two more laps around the house to realize it wasn’t the house, exactly, that was missing something. Sure, it needed fresh paint and flowers and probably a porch swing. But what Cecilia really kept wanting to see was a dog. A young puppy or an old mangy dog, it didn’t matter, but a farmhouse just needed a dog.
When Gary came in to wash his hands, she shocked him with an out-of-character comment to that effect.
“A dog? What fer?” he replied with a wrinkled brow as he wiped his hands on the towel.
Now Cecilia felt uncomfortable. “I don’t know. It just… feels right,” she finished lamely, then muttered a swift “never mind” and hurried back to the kitchen.
After oohing and aahing over the pizza, and diving in with groans of pleasure, Gary decided to share Cecilia’s thoughts with the class. A red-cheeked Cecilia kept her gaze on her plate, fork frozen with a leaf of lettuce on it, as she waited to hear the response.
“That’s a great idea!” Ephraim gushed enthusiastically. “We should visit the humane society.”
Wow. He was on board that fast.
“Hmmf,” was all Gary said while he finished his pizza. Ephraim shared a few conspiratorial grins with Cecilia.
“You know, Gary, if we got a dog, we could train him to guard the chicken coop,” Ephraim suggested a few minutes later.
“What chicken coop?” Gary groused.
“The one I’d really like to build. You’ve had chickens before, right? You could teach me?” Ephraim prodded. He seemed to know Gary’s weakness for passing on knowledge.
Gary huffed out a sigh. “In th’ spring,” he said.
Ephraim cheered like a little kid who had gotten his most wished-for birthday present, and Cecilia couldn’t help but smile. She thought maybe Gary smiled, too.
“Awesome! I’ve read a little about keeping chickens, so I think I want to get a few different breeds, but you’ll have to tell me which do best here. We can even sell eggs at the stand. And I saw this idea for making a coop that moves around. You put it on wheels, stick it in the middle of one of your fields, and use the tractor to drag it around. Then the chicken, um…” Here Ephraim blushed a little. “Uh, waste, the chicken waste fertilizes the field, and the chickens eat the old plants. Then you move them along, and eventually they fertilize the whole field. It’s really economical. And the dog would help protect the chickens from foxes and such. He would be good company, too.”
Gary simply nodded on occasion, as if none of this was new to him. Cecilia supposed he had probably had chickens for many years, and knew all sorts of things about them, and dogs, too.
Before she got up to serve dessert, Ephraim’s success with the chicken coop request made Cecilia bold to ask for her dream, too.
“Gary?” she began. He looked at her, and she had to take a deep breath before continuing. “I was wondering if… Would it be okay… I mean, I’d have to learn how…” Gary raised an eyebrow but waited patiently for her to speak. “CanIplantsomeflowersinthespring?”
How a man who spoke in monosyllables could understand her whole sentence spat out in one breath, Cecilia would never know.
“Ayup,” was all Gary replied.
When it was time for dessert, Cecilia soaked up pudding with her ladyfingers while she soaked up the delicious warmth in her heart right alongside. She had friends. She had a sort of family, right here at this table. She was loved, and best of all? She loved them right back.