Seasons of Davenport Ridge: S1E4: “She’s beautiful, I can admit that.”
ISAIAH
“Good morning, Mr. Rhodes,” I heard as I stepped into the kitchen. The greeting came from someone on my housekeeping staff who was exiting as I entered.
“Good morning,” I exchanged with a smile.
I stepped into the smell of a spinach omelette covered in hollandaise sauce.
“Mmm,” I moaned to myself. “I could smell this from out there. Good morning.”
My chef, Cheryl, chuckled to herself. “Good morning, Mr. Rhodes.”
She slid a plate of exactly what I’d smelled, paired with sides of home fries and one slice of toast.
“Enjoy,” she added, setting my orange juice down beside it.
“I always do,” I said back. “Thank you.”
It was another morning on Rhodes’ farm, and like routine; I was having breakfast at my kitchen island.
I could sit in the massive dining room, only feet away, but I enjoyed being in the center of the action. Reminded me of when I’d close restaurants for privacy, just to sit in the kitchen and watch the cooks work.
I’d forked a piece of egg into my mouth when I leaned to the side to pull my phone out of my back jean pocket. Pressed the side button to see the screen light up.
All that was present was the time at that moment. I wasn’t looking for that.
I’d been looking for a call.
From Cori.
I chewed slowly, listening to footsteps pass in front of and behind me, my mind replaying the day before like a rerun of my favorite show.
It surprised me to see her again. Thought I’d only get to see her in my memory or on Main Street whenever I made my way there.
Never imagined her returning here.
Her arrival and presence intrigued me.
“So,” Cheryl said, tossing a rag over her shoulder and leaning an elbow on my counter.
I lifted my eyes from my plate to focus on her.
She smiled, and I smiled back.
“You had company yesterday,” she said, making her brows jump.
I snorted a laugh and shook my head.
Cheryl was like a big sister. A decade older than me, with a vibe that reminded me of family.
That was my motivation behind hiring my staff here. They had to make me feel like I was at home, because when I arrived here, I wasn’t.
Women made up most of my staff. I loved the work ethic of the ladies I hired. With each passing year, the farm grew in revenue and crops… largely because of them. Women understood business differently. Worked smarter. And honestly… they gave me fewer problems.
That’s why I put them in managing positions such as farm manager, housekeeping manager, and my head chef here, Cheryl… smiling wide at me after letting me know how nosey she is.
“Imagine my surprise when I’m closing down the kitchen, peek up, and see you walking past with a woman who doesn’t work here.”
I sipped my orange juice, adding nothing, smiling over the rim.
“She’s beautiful.” Cheryl grinned. “And she doesn’t look like she’s from around here.”
“She just moved out on that farm a few miles north. The Davenport Farm?”
Cheryl’s brows wrinkled. “The one owned by the elderly woman? The one she used to own with her late sisters?”
I nodded. “That’s the one.”
“Oh, God,” Cheryl pressed a hand to her chest. “Did she—”
“No, no.” I shook my head. “She’s alive and well. That was her granddaughter. Cori.”
I felt my heart flutter saying her name.
I cleared my throat, as if I needed to hide it. “She… uh… drove onto the farm a week ago, said that she’d inherited the farm. Came back here yesterday wanting to see more of it because her grandmother had left it to her and her sisters so she could live in a senior living community.”
“Okay,” Cheryl said with a slow nod. Soon her smile was back again. “Oh-kay!”
I pushed my tongue against my cheek to keep from smiling. “Cheryl—”
“So she’s going to be around more?” Cheryl asked. “This Cori?”
“Not like that—”
“I like her for you.”
And there it was.
Much like my mother, Cheryl has been a little invested in me and my heart. She didn’t do it often, but she asked entirely too many times when I would switch my focus from farming to building a family.
“You guys look good together from what I could see.”
I shook my head and lowered my attention to my eggs, now focused on finishing them so I could escape this conversation.
Because I really didn’t need to hear this right now.
Not when I was still sorting through these feelings I’d been having.
My heart fluttered when I even thought of Cori or mentioned her name.
I checked my phone every few minutes, worried I’d maybe missed her call.
“She’s just passing through,” I said. “I don’t think she’ll be here for long.”
Cheryl tipped her head to the right, eyes analyzing me, as always.
“You saw her.” I forked a piece of potato into my mouth next. “A farmer she is not. She’s just trying this on like a new pair of shoes. She said it herself; she’s just trying to see if everything fits here.”
“Hmm.” Cheryl removed the rag she’d placed on her shoulder to wipe down the counter. “It didn’t look like she was just passing through.”
My eyes landed on her, and I realized she wasn’t focused on the counter she was wiping. She was staring at me.
Cheryl abandoned the rag, placing a hand on the counter to lean in. “Have I ever told you how I met my husband?”
I smiled and shook my head. “Never.”
She giggled, lifted her eyes to my high ceilings and sighed as if she were back in whatever time she referenced, already reminiscing.
“I’d just ended a relationship, another terrible one,” she started. “And I was determined to live a life alone. I was in my late thirties. Tired. Over the idea of having children and a husband. Decided I would devote my life to my career since it was the only thing in my life that had never disappointed me.”
She gestured at me. “So I’m at the market, looking for ingredients to experiment with. I walk down the pasta aisle and got what I need. See a handsome man in front of the jar of marinara sauce. Cringe, because, jar of marinara sauce? Really?”
I laughed.
“So I walk off, mind back on ingredients. Realize I didn’t get everything I needed from the pasta aisle, like tomato paste. Return there to see the man still there. He’s mumbling now, with two jars of marinara sauce in his hand. So I approach, tell him there should be no debate over which jar of sauce to get because he needs to put them both back.”
“Sounds like the Cheryl I know,” I said through my humor.
She snickered, then allowed a smile to settle on her lips. “He tells me his wife used to make the sauce from scratch, but she passed a month prior and he just wants to have pasta.”
“Damn,” I exhaled.
“Yeah,” she nodded. “So, of course, I feel like shit for judging and can only feel better by inviting him over to my home. So he comes to my place, I make the pasta, we get to talking, realizing we have a lot in common. We exchanged numbers and became fast friends.” She blushed. “Then, a year later, we decided we didn’t want to be just friends anymore… and now here we are.”
I shifted in my seat and dropped my eyes to my food. “Very storybook.”
“Very real,” she said next, placing a hand on mine to draw my attention back to her. “Falling in love is something else. You say you don’t want it, and it gets thrust in front of you in the pasta aisle.”
I chuckled.
“I know your reason for moving out here was that you needed to get away from the life you were living. And Mr. Rhodes, what you’ve built here has been such a magnificent addition to this small community, but with all the love you give, you deserve some back.”
“I get love every day from you guys.”
She smirked. “You know it’s not the same.”
I inhaled a deep breath and released it, refocusing on my food to finish up. Whenever I was here for breakfast, Cheryl would be busy prepping lunch and dinner. That often gave me time to run through everything I needed to take care of for the day.
But now she’s here, helping me think about Cori.
And there went my heart again. Doing that thing it did whenever I thought of her.
What the hell was this?
“All I’m saying is,” Cheryl added, “sometimes love shows up when you’re not looking… and sometimes as a random woman driving onto your farm.”
I shook my head. “That’s just not my story, Cheryl.”
She pursed her lips.
“She’s beautiful, I can admit that,” I said. “And, yes, her arrival here has been very random. But I just don’t feel I’m in a place for that right now. I have a rhythm my system agrees with these days; I love that. It’s enough. Besides, I promise, she’s not here for long. I’ll give her a couple of weeks before she’s out of here. A month, tops.”
“I don’t know,” Cheryl said, lifting the rag again to get back to cleaning the counter and to prep other meals. “There was something there when I saw you two. And I know these things.”
I let her words linger on my mind, trying them on in a way I swore Cori was trying on life here in Morgansville.
When those thoughts made my stomach knot at the idea of seeing her again, my heart beating just a little more with anticipation, I took a deep breath and blew the air out through my lips. As amazing as the thought of Cori was, I couldn’t take the disappointment. Not here. Not in this safe place I’ve created, away from what used to be chaos to me.
Plus, she hadn’t called, and I hated checking my phone for her call.
I finished the last of my juice and set it down, pushing my chair back. “Breakfast was delicious as usual.”
She smiled.
I pointed at the kitchen exit, my way of asking for permission to escape our talk. I was her boss, but I respected her enough to ask to be excused.
Cheryl laughed. “Fine. Go. Have a good day, Mr. Rhodes,” she said, turning away to head to the Subzero fridge.
***
I’d just pressed the button on the side of my nightstand when my phone rang.
I can’t explain how quickly I scooped my phone up to see who it was, but it was in my hand before it could complete its first ring.
It was night now, exactly 9 p.m., and a part of me believed it was the phone call I’d been secretly waiting to receive.
From Cori.
But it wasn’t her calling. It was someone I loved speaking to, though.
I paused for a second, exhaling a breath. I was trying to rid myself of the disappointment that might be in my words before answering, because I just knew the person calling would pick up on it in my tone if I hadn’t.
“Hey, Mama,” I said, placing the phone on speaker.
She giggled softly on the other end of my phone. “Hey, Zay. How are you?”
I smiled. “Great, you?”
My mother, Destni Rhodes, was every bit of my earth. One of the hardest things about living in Morgansville was living far from my mama.
She’s a city girl. Woman now. Born, raised, and still living in New York City.
At nearly 70 years of age, she was still the CEO of my late father’s trucking company. She took on the role of CEO after my father passed away while I was in college. Spent a lot of my childhood as a homemaker, but stepped up and handled the business like she’d been doing it her whole life.
“Being a homemaker is a lot like being a CEO,” she’d tell me whenever I questioned how she could step into the role and handle things so flawlessly. “So managing a trucking company is really nothing.”
“I’m great too,” she replied. “Just sitting here, wondering when my last-born is planning to visit me back home.”
I chuckled. “Mama, you know you can always come out here to Morgansville right?”
She groaned and I couldn’t help but laugh.
My mother was as turned off about rural life the way I now was about living in the city.
“Too quiet,” she said. “I can’t stand the quiet.”
“Well, I can’t stand the noise,” I offered. “So there’s that.”
She giggled. “So there’s that. But Zay, I worry so much about you being out there all alone. Isolated in the middle of nowhere.”
I laughed, taking a seat in bed, pushing the covers back to make room for myself.
My eyes moved around my large room, settling on the large king-sized mattress I’ve slept in alone for the past seven years. “Mama, I have a staff of over fifty people I see every day. Isolated and alone is not happening over here.”
“And which one of them are you romantically involved with?”
I groaned. “And here is what she really wanted to ask.”
My mother’s laugh on my phone warmed my heart. Of all the things I missed about her, it was her smile.
But as much as I missed it, I didn’t miss New York City. I’d done well to settle my nervous system. To rid myself of thoughts that were harmful to me since I’ve changed zip codes.
As happy as I was out here, and as sure as I was that I was better here, I worried that even a visit back to the city could undo everything I’ve worked hard to build within myself.
“Well?” she pushed. “I don’t think I got an answer to my question.”
“Mama, you know I’m not involved with anyone here,” I answered. “Dad was a huge believer in not mixing business with pleasure.”
“That he was,” she replied. “Hmph… some days I can still hear him in this house of ours.”
I inhaled a breath and nodded.
My father was a prominent figure in the trucking business. Had a fleet of trucks and had expanded to helping other trucking companies reach the same success he could reach before a massive heart attack took him from us.
The trucks I had on my farm were from our family’s business. I made sure that my mother owned a share of the estate for that reason.
“I just feel you’re so far out there, being all work and no play, that you’ve closed yourself off to any opportunity for love.”
In that moment, my mind drifted to Cori. For a second, I contemplated telling my mother about her. That this worry my mother has may not have to exist at all, because I think love just walked onto my farm when I least expected it.
That maybe I can have this life and a love that makes my heart flutter at just the thought of a name.
But I shook my head, like I always did to rid myself of thoughts, because it’s like I told Cheryl, Cori and me just couldn’t be my story.
Besides… she would have to call first, right?
“You’re risking my chances of having more grandchildren, Zay.”
I couldn’t help but snort a laugh at that. “You have plenty.”
And she did. Four and counting. My older brother, Ezekiel, had the grandchildren factory handled, and was expecting his fifth by next spring.
I wondered if Cori had children.
Wanted them?
I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to press the question out of my mind.
That woman is not here to stay. I needed to understand that and follow my gut about it.
But damn, she was on my mind a lot lately.
“Zay—”
“Mama, I love you, and I’m thrilled to hear from you as always,” I cut in. “Let’s move past this conversation because, it’s like I always tell you, I’ve done fine without love and I will not start looking now. So, let’s talk about something else. Please. How’s Brooklyn?”
A New Episode of Seasons of Davenport Ridge Will Be Posted And Sent On Monday, April 13th!
