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“Depend on what?” I followed up.
“Onwhy.”
“Ariana offered a good price.”
“Pshh, money comes and goes.” Grandad batted his hand at me dismissively as he looked back at the TV. “Legacy lasts forever.”
Fuck it. There was no reason to beat around the bush. I needed to put all my cards on the table. “I was thinking of maybe going out to California for a while.”
He kept his attention focused on the screen in front of him. “California, huh?”
“Yeah.” My palms were sweating.
“Do your plans have anything to do with a certain blonde who ran off without sayin’ goodbye?”
“Yes.” I braced myself, waiting for him to tell me that I was crazy to even think about selling our legacy to chase a woman.
“Well, if that’s the case, then I’d say that you finally got your priorities straight.”
“You would?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
He shifted his attention back to me. “The only thing you ever loved was baseball and your family. Without those things, you have no purpose, son. See, now, the only reason I wanted you to keep this place was so you’d have roots to ground you. It seems to me that you’ve found yourself some new soil to plant those roots in.”
“But…what about the Mitchell legacy?”
Never in a million years did I think I’d be making a caseagainstselling the farm.
“The Mitchell legacy was never this place. It wasn’t the land, the barn, or the house. It waslove, son. The way I loved your Meemaw and your daddy loved your mama. That’s what ourlegacyis.”
I stood staring at Grandad, speechless, when there was a knock on the door. I figured it was one of the students who must have forgotten something in the barn. My head was a million miles away as I walked to the door and opened it. When I lookedup, I was sure that I was seeing things. Daphne Moore was standing on my porch.
“Daphne?” Her name came out as barely more than a whisper.
She lifted her hand awkwardly. “Hi.”
“What are you…I thought you were gone. I went over to see you, and Ms. Shaw said?—”
“I was. I left last night.”
My heart was jumping to all sorts of conclusions, but my head was trying to be the voice of reason. I wanted to believe that she was here because she loved me. Because she wanted to be with me. But I knew there were a million reasons she could be here. Well, not a million, but at least a dozen that had nothing to do with us.
“Did they cancel your flight?” I questioned.
“Um, no, I might have missed my flight. I think. I don’t know. I think I may have fallen asleep in the waiting area. I’m not sure, but I left. I didn’t get on my flight. I came back here.”
“You didn’t get on your flight?” I repeated.
“No. Can I come in?” she asked.
“Oh, yeah, sorry.”
I opened the door wider. As she walked in, I inhaled her fruity scent, the same scent I’d smelled when she was holding Dini the first day that I’d met her. She stood in the entryway and looked around, and I realized she’d never actually been inside the house before. Whenever we hung out, it was always at her aunt’s house. I was going to take her upstairs, where we could have more privacy, but as we passed the front room, I saw that Grandad wasn’t in his recliner, so instead, I went in there.
“Um, so I wanted to come back because I needed to tell you that I think I love you. No, I know I love you?—”
“I was going to fly out to California to tell you the same thing,” I blurted out.
“You were?”
