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  “I talked to the attorney about that stuff, just to get a timeline, yeah. I mean not exactly that stuff, but the stuff I know you’re worried about.”

  “Okay. What did he say?” Lacey leaned forward, and Sam looked at her bright-eyed resolve.

  There was a reason he had gone right to Lacey Radcliffe when he had the beginning of an idea to open a clinic in their neighborhood.

  He could have gone to Mike, who was also master’s prepared, a hard worker, and even a better choice than Lacey at putting up with his bullshit.

  Except, in this case, it wouldn’t work.

  Mike was always going to care more about Sam than the clinic. Plus Mike was solid with what worked.

  When Sam thought about this clinic, he had never thought about just doing “whatever worked,” he wanted to make the best clinic possible for the neighborhood.

  He thought about the kind of clinic that Lacey Radcliffe would work in.

  Sam had a lot of admiration for Lacey, but the truth was, Lace had always had a hard time. She was perfectionistic and idealistic and she noticed everything. As a kid, she was all eyeballs in a pointy-chinned face with a wrinkled brow. She always asked a million questions and was forever looking things up for answers.

  She needed to know the answers. Needed to know them because they would save her, somehow. From what, no one was ever entirely sure.

  Except that it probably wasn’t good, the thing Lacey was trying so hard to outthink.

  Sam suspected PJ knew.

  Sam suspected that whatever PJ knew, it was the reason he loved her and the reason Lacey called him Paul.

  Sam looked at PJ, and PJ looked at him, and Sam hoped to God that brother telepathy was some kind of real thing, because he needed it right now. He needed his brother to hear him, and hear him when he said, Lacey has to believe in herself.

  PJ grinned at Sam, and said, actually said out loud, “Message received.”

  Which made Sam want to bear-hug PJ and tell him that he loved him, and he thought about this entire spring and summer when that hadn’t been remotely possible, all the times that was never remotely possible, and he wondered why. He wondered how he could love PJ so much and PJ not really know it the way he deserved.

  PJ didn’t have a single problem with expressing his love, but every time he tried, Sam didn’t let him, didn’t let PJ in.

  If he could possibly help it, that would never happen again.

  “So the timeline’s not good” was how Sam started. He hated himself for everything he said after: even in the most expedient process, which meant Sam signing whatever the board wanted him to sign, he still had to wait until the board meeting next month, which fucked up the clinic with their first audit, which would have to be rescheduled. But the attorney probably wouldn’t want him to sign everything, for what were probably good reasons, and so that meant credentialing would be easier, but later. Much later.

  The worst part of telling Lacey all of this was watching her face.

  Sam wasn’t sure he was an entirely good person—one reason he’d always trusted Lacey was that she’d gotten herself knocked up in college and couldn’t resist good-looking guys no matter what came out of their mouths.

  Made her more human around the edges, plus Nathan was a fucking great kid.

  PJ—he loved her. Loved her at her most neurotic and perfectionistic and at her most human. All he saw when he saw Lacey was the woman he loved.

  Sam had only just recently, much older, understood this kind of love. PJ’s love for Lacey wasn’t conventional, but he had always been certain it was a pure love, the kind of love a Burnside falls into, and pure in the church way, besides.

  Also, though Sam couldn’t be sure because he sucked at stuff like this, there had to be some reason PJ was still around, some reason Lacey suffered him, and all of her jokes and eye-rolling seemed like protesting a bit too much.

  Paul.

  Right now, Lacey looked devastated.

  So right now, Lacey needed Paul.

  “Here it is, Lace,” PJ said, “the clinic doesn’t need anyone but you.”

  “Sam’s my physician partner. My collaborating partner, we have a Standard Care Arrangement.”

  “We still can,” said Sam. “As soon as my stuff’s done. In the meantime, I did check, your SCA with the hospital will stand because we’ll be taking their low-income clients within our boundaries.”

  “Our applications favor a physician partner for all the qualifiers.”

  “They favor it,” said Sam, “but it’s not a requirement. Plus, we’re done with all those apps.”

  “You’re the clinic, Lacey,” PJ said. “You’ve always been the clinic. You’re what makes people trust the clinic. People around here love Sam as a doctor, but they don’t think of it as Sam’s clinic, they think of it as yours. This has always been yours. The only reason people think it’s a real clinic and not some sign on a card table that says PHYSICALS 5 CENTS is because it’s yours.”

  Lacey was looking at PJ, her cheeks red.

  “True facts,” said Mike. “I wouldn’t take my dog there if you weren’t in charge. Sam coulda asked me, and he didn’t, because that’s exactly how smart he is. Not quite smart enough to hang on to his medical license, but smart enough to know to ask you to do this thing.”

  “But what are you asking, Sam?”

  Then the door knocked again, and Sarah came through, effortless on her forearm cane, and Daniel, the ex-priest guy behind her, for some unknown reason. Sarah came right up to the counter, and Daniel hung back by the door.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, “I didn’t know I’d be following Sarah into a gathering.”

  “No worries, Father. Pull up a stool.” Mike slid down and indicated where Daniel should sit.

  “You don’t need to use the honorific, Mike. I’m not a priest anymore.”

  “And don’t Betty know it? But I figure it’s like how you always call even ex-presidents ‘Mr. President,’ it just shows respect for the office.”

  Daniel laughed. “Sure. This really okay, Sam? I just came with Sarah because she needed a ride and said you might need someone to talk to, but it looks like you’ve already gathered a conference.”

  “We were just talking to Lacey about how she should go solo on the southie clinic,” Mike said.

  “Oh yeah? Lace, that’s great, you should. I’ve been saying that all summer, no offense, Sam.” Sarah elbowed him in the side with her tiny, pointy elbows.

  “Is that what you’re asking, Sam? For me to take over?”

  “Well, you have to, anyway, if we’re going to do this thing. But even before all this stuff with the board, I’d been thinking about it. It’s not just mistakes I’ve made, either. I realized that part of my fuckups wasn’t only my ADHD, it was that my heart isn’t in it. Not the clinic, but all the work you’re doing. The worst part is, I haven’t been letting you love it.”

  Lacey was quiet.

  “You do love it, Lace,” said PJ. “You love it. I’ve never seen you so happy. You keep complaining and saying you need Sam, but I haven’t seen you swamped, at all, ever. It’s like this big puzzle with all these parts and edges and ways it could fit together, and you move the pieces around and look at all the possibilities. This is it. It’s your verb, babe.”

  Everyone leaned forward a little at PJ’s babe but he didn’t notice, because he was only noticing Lacey.

  Sam thought, Here is another love I missed.

  Lacey’s love for this work, her finding her passion, her immersion in this clinic wasn’t just about showing him up, it was about her getting lost in the work of her life.

  “What about you, Sam?”

  “Hire me.”

  “As a doc?”

  “Yeah. I’m not smart enough to be a nurse.”

  “Okay,” Lacey said.

  “Great.”

  “But the offer’s contingent on your license.”

  “That seems fair.”

  Then Sam and Lacey sh
ook hands, and Sam felt better, for the first time in days. He’d have his patients. His exam room. He’d be helping, working for the people he loved in the neighborhood he loved, being a part of something.

  If he was lucky, maybe he’d be a farmer, too.

  He’d like that.

  “Hey Father,” Sarah said.

  Daniel looked up from a big bite of the pie. “Yeah?”

  “Did you get my email about the wedding?”

  “I did. Ready to go.”

  “I feel like all kinds of shit is just all settled up,” Mike said. “I think this is fucking magic pie.”

  Sam just looked at Lacey. The color in her face hadn’t gone away. She was tracing a pattern into the Formica of the breakfast bar. She wasn’t smiling, and she seemed far away.

  So he looked at PJ, who said, in his new telepathic way, She’s okay.

  So Sam believed that she was. He believed that he had done the best that he could. The best you could do didn’t always work out, but it sometimes did.

  Or maybe it always did, in some way.

  It was okay though, it had everything he needed for the normal measure of faith.

  His parents and his home had given him that much.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “What are you looking at?”

  Tay was swinging in her chair hammock while Nina sat at her picnic table with her laptop.

  “An email from my dad.”

  “What about?”

  “About how their farm evaluates the migrant workforce they use and all the regulating bodies.”

  “I thought he was going to write about what it was like for him and your mom.”

  “I don’t think he wants to, so he started talking about all of this stuff. It’s interesting, hearing about his management of the hands. There’s a way I can kind of read between the lines about his experiences in migrant labor by hearing what decisions he makes on behalf of the workers.”

  “You think you’d ever let Paz Farms contract with guest labor?”

  Nina watched Tay’s chickens forage around the edges of her patio for a long moment. “How would you feel about that?”

  “I don’t know. I heard about a lot of seriously upsetting practices when I was with big ag.”

  “I don’t know either. There isn’t enough support for guest workers, globally, for them to have protection, so then you’re depending on the word of independent contractors, and there’s too much power imbalance for the workers to speak up. I think my dad has it good because he can talk to a lot of people, has trust with the workers, and is in a supportive community.”

  Nina read through her dad’s email again, looking less at the information, looking more for a story. She had started talking regularly to her mom again, without planning phone calls, just to talk, and while her mom was never one to talk about anything too serious, it was nice.

  Nina was so many things to so many people.

  It was nice to be a daughter again.

  “Hey Nina?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I want to hire somebody.”

  Nina looked up from her computer and Tay had spun in her hammock chair to face her. She had questions stuck in her mouth, but she stayed quiet. The insects sang in the meadow grass around Tay’s place.

  For once it wasn’t too hot, but the cooler weather wasn’t why she had chills.

  “If it would be okay. I should have talked to you, but I’ve already asked around. I’ve gotten a few responses. I actually know a lot of people, and of course you’ll have the final say, but I think I could find someone great. Someone who sees Paz the same way I do, as part of some larger system—a larger system of people and of the land.”

  “I don’t want—”

  “Oh, baby, I know. I don’t want it either. I thought I wouldn’t mind getting reports from Adam and going over them every night. Calling plays from the sidelines like the fat coach no one can bear to tell to go home. But I don’t. I don’t like it at all. It’s never what I wanted to do. I could never do what you do, talking to the producers and running all over the place, learning how to make those pivot table things.”

  “Adam said that—”

  “Yeah, he had the same look on his face that you do right now. I know you guys want me to just do things that make me a placeholder in my own life, but what I’ve realized is that that isn’t my life anymore. This is my life. Learning about my body and taking it through this war. It’s what I’m supposed to be doing. I want it to be what I am doing, and that doesn’t make any sense, but I do. It’s a process I need to fully participate in.

  “Adam is a process I need to fully participate in. I want him to call me because he saw a bird on my bird list or has gossip about one of our friends or was just thinking about me. I don’t want to talk about Paz and culverts and new scales for the farmer’s market.”

  “Tay,” Nina said, but she couldn’t continue now that her voice was full of tears and anger, too. She hadn’t planned for this either. She thought about her conversation with Adam about the pepper field, her indecision. Thought about when Tay had told her she had told Adam yes and something inside of her hadn’t wanted it. Hadn’t wanted any of it. To make the decisions.

  To have to make the decisions.

  Yet here it all was anyway. All of it. Everything kept moving whether she planned or made decisions or turned away from them.

  There wasn’t a present; it was all future, until it wasn’t, until it was taken away.

  “This is my life, Nina. Please be my friend in this life. Please. I want to find the joy in this life, too, I don’t want my joy to be nothing but hope and wishes and a kind of yearning that I get back to some other thing. I don’t want my only joy to be that my life is something to be made the best of, mostly for the benefit of other people. I’ve watched people I love live a life like that.”

  Then Tay leaned over and put her hand over Nina’s. “If I live the life I have been given, Nina, I will live. If I survive, I might find that what’s on the other end of survival isn’t something I wanted, anyway. Let me live, please, Nina. Be my very best friend in this and Let. Me. Live.”

  Nina got up and lurched into the hammock chair with Tay, put her arms all the way around her, put her face in her neck, and let Tay comfort her, because in this, Nina had no idea. None. She had no idea. She had no ideas. She didn’t have the ideas that lit the way out.

  Trust. She would have to trust this woman like she had never trusted her, not even with her fields or her livelihood, all the pieces she had put together with her life.

  She was trusting Tay with life, and that she would live a life with joy in it and that she had joy in her life.

  “I’ve never done this before” was what Nina finally said.

  “I know.”

  “No, I mean I have never done this thing where I believe that there is joy, I have never done that thing, I have never believed that thing. I have never done this.”

  “Shh,” said Tay. “I know.”

  “Why does it hurt so much to think about? Why don’t I want joy?”

  Tay laughed and put her strong hands in Nina’s hair. “I think it’s because joy is easy, Nina. It’s easy, so we think we haven’t earned it, or that it’s not for us. We don’t have the muscle that lets us feel it. You know the first time I thought of this?”

  “No.”

  “When I told you and Rachel, that day in the café, what the doctors had found and you both got up and put your arms around me. I wasn’t crying because I was sad. I remember looking down at both your arms crossing over each other’s protecting me and my body, and it made me cry because I was so joyful I had all that love in my life, that I had arms around me. I felt joy, and it was a creaky, rusty, uncomfortable feeling. I wondered how good it would feel if I gave in. If I started to get used to it. Look for it.”

  “I love you,” Nina said.

  “I love you, too. Get used to hearing it. All the time. Let me get used to hearing it from you. Let everyb
ody get used to hearing it from you.”

  “I love you. I love you.”

  “I love you, too, Nina Paz.”

  They swung back and forth in the hammock chair for a long time. Toeing the ground and spinning, slow.

  It took all the time for Nina to feel like she could breathe, and not trip over tears, but even when she cried more, Tay just squeezed her.

  “Hey, Neens?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Can you help me out with something else, before you go?”

  “Of course, whatever you need.”

  Tay laughed. “It’s gonna be fun.”

  * * *

  “Oh shit.” Sam leaned back and almost fell of the stool.

  “That’s right, baby, it happens.”

  “But that is a lot of shit.”

  “Just keep going, don’t lose your rhythm.”

  “I can’t help it, every time I look at you, I lose my rhythm.”

  Sam adjusted his hold on the goat’s teat, and tried for another compression and a pull, his brow wrinkled.

  Nina ran her hand over the smooth skin of her scalp and grinned at him, how serious he looked.

  “You don’t like it?”

  Sam looked up and squinted at her, and stopping made the doe shove her bony hip back into his shoulder so he would keep going.

  “It makes your eyebrows look like they take up your entire face.”

  Nina laughed. Sam looked at her again and laughed, too. Then shouldered the goat’s butt back away from his body.

  “She likes you.”

  “I like her, actually, but this is taking for fucking ever. I’ve had surgeries take less time than this. You milked yours in the time it’s taken me to figure out how to sit on this stool without falling over.”

  The little milking shed was warm, even with the door open to the alley. Laverne and Shirley’s goatherds were on something they called “a babymoon” in Jamaica, and had asked Nina to milk their city goats while they were gone in exchange for extra shares of the cheese and milk they sold to Paz Farms.

  It seemed like a good job for an out-of-work doctor to do.

  She heard a hard stream of milk hit his sterilized bucket.

  “Hey! There you go, Opie!”