Even that question wasn’t as simple as it should be.
“Lydia,” I said after a moment. “You can call me Lydia.”
“Okay. Hi, Lydia.”
“Hi.” I smiled. “So what happens now?”
“Now I’ve got to go feed.”
I looked back at the house full of strangers and questions and gravy. Then I looked at the wide-open sky and the really cute boy. “Want some company?”
* * *
The tires of the old, beat-up truck rattled in and out of the deep ruts in the ground. Ethan pushed the clutch and shifted gears, and I thought that it was maybe the single sexiest thing I’d ever seen. He was so confident, so at home and at ease. This was his domain, the cab of this old truck with its big bale of hay and long line of black, hairy cows trailing behind us. They would have followed him to the ends of the earth, I could tell.
But Ethan and I stayed quiet in the cab of the truck that, even with the heater blowing at full blast, was still cold. I could see my breath. I put my hands between my knees. Ethan pulled off his gloves and handed them to me.
Finally, the silence must have been too much because he flipped on the radio and, instantly, music filled the cab. It was supposed to be “O Holy Night” but there were too many backup singers and the tempo was too fast. It made me want to be sick.
“Sorry about the station,” he said. “Emily or the twins must have been in here. They love that teenybopper stuff.”
He turned off the radio and I pulled on his gloves. They were still warm inside. “That’s okay.”
“Do you like music?” he asked.
“I used to. When I was a kid.”
“And now that you’re so old you’re over it?” he asked with a grin.
“Yeah,” I said. “Something like that. How long have you lived here?” Suddenly, I was desperate to change the conversation.
“Well, I’m seventeen now, so … seventeen years.”
“Has your family always lived here?”
“I’m generation number five,” he said, but the words sounded strange—not like Ethan had roots tying him to that place. It was more like he had chains.
“It’s nice that you have a big family. That you all get to live together and work together.”
“Yeah. I guess.”
“Why did you go to Iceland?”
I don’t know where the question came from, but I could also tell that it was the right question—that somehow the answer mattered.
Ethan shifted gears again and started over a ridge. The ranch spread out before us, white and clean and stretching for miles. It was the kind of place most people only see in movies and out of airplane windows.
“I was born here. I’m going to live here and work here for the rest of my life. And, someday—if I’m lucky, a long, long time from now—I’m going to die here. And … well, I guess I just wanted one little part of my life to be not here. And Iceland seemed about as not here as a place could possibly be.”
I looked around at the rolling hills, the distant dots of cattle. “Here doesn’t seem that bad to me.”
“Yeah.” Ethan shifted gears again. He didn’t face me. “What about you? Where is your home? Or is that secret, too?”
“No secret,” I told him. “I don’t have a home.”
* * *
“Hey, honey,” Aunt Mary said when I finally returned to the house. She was kneeling on the living room rug while Emily stood on an ottoman with her arms outstretched, dressed like an angel. “We missed you at breakfast.”
“I’m sorry I left without telling you. I—”
“You had to choose between running off with a handsome cowboy you haven’t seen in months or staying in a house full of rowdy strangers…”
“And gravy,” I told her. “I also ran away from the gravy. Which might have been a mistake.”
“Then tomorrow I’ll teach you how to make it. Would you like that, Hulda?” She looked as if she expected me to protest. Or maybe confess. I was officially paranoid.
“I’d probably burn down your house.”
“It takes a lot more than you to turn this place to ash.”
“Aunt Mary, are you done yet?” Emily shifted from foot to foot.
“Stop fidgeting,” Aunt Mary commanded, then pulled a straight pin from the puffy band on her wrist and studied Emily’s too-long costume.
“I’m tired,” Emily complained, but Aunt Mary just cut her eyes up at her.
“You’re not being very angelic,” Aunt Mary said. “So, Hulda, do you have everything you need?”
“Yes.”
“And are you settling in okay?”
“I guess so.”
“And you know you can come to me, right? If there’s anything you want to talk about. Anything at all.”
“Of course.” I smiled. I lied.
* * *
If it’s possible for real life to turn into a montage from a movie, that’s what happened next.
Every morning Ethan knocked on Aunt Mary’s door and I went to help him feed. (My job was opening the gates. According to Ethan, it was a very important job.)
Every afternoon I helped Aunt Mary cook and deliver food to the older people in the community who couldn’t get out in the snow. “Here,” she said the first day, handing me the keys. “I don’t drive much anymore.”
Emily and the twins tried to teach me how to two-step.
Clint grilled steaks and we had big, noisy dinners at Ethan’s house with everybody taking turns holding Ethan’s cousin’s baby.
Aunt Mary put me in charge of wrapping presents and the twins let me hold a baby pig.
And through it all, Ethan was there, teaching me how to drive a stick shift in the chore truck, teasing me when my boots got so bogged down in mud that I actually stepped out of them and had to walk back to Aunt Mary’s on bare feet.
He didn’t talk about Hulda.
He didn’t ask me where I was from or why I was running.
He didn’t look at me like I was a liar or a fraud or a cheat.
And, for a few days there, I wasn’t really Hulda and I wasn’t really me. For a few days, I was just … happy.
Because, for a few days, I had a family.
* * *
“You’ve got to keep stirring,” Aunt Mary told me. It was the day before Christmas Eve, and even though it was below freezing outside, Aunt Mary’s kitchen was hot. Steam collected on the windows while the brown concoction on the stove boiled and popped like something in a witch’s cauldron.