Page 21 of First Moon

“You wear your good jeans—at the very least. Everyone goes there for special occasions.” She leaned forward, pointing ahead. “And there’s the feed store. Everyone gets their supplies there, but it’s also a great place to gossip.”

On the side of Juniper Creek Feed & Seed, someone had painted a mural of the creek winding past a white farmhouse, a blue heron standing in the shallows, wings half lifted like it might take flight if nobody was watching.

The radio had been low under our conversation, but, as we rolled past the town square, the first notes of “Finally Home” came through the speakers.

“And here it is again,” Ivy said, laughing.

“Fifteenth week at number one.”

“And I’m grateful for it,” Ivy said. “But mostly that it brought me you.”

“Back at you, pretty girl.”

When we’d recorded it, I knew it was a good song, maybe even great. I hadn’t known it would be this big of a hit. It was everywhere. Coming out of truck speakers at gas stations, floating through hotel lobbies, playing in restaurants, bars, grocery stores, backstage corridors, and once, memorably, in a dentist’s office in Tulsa while I was getting a crown on a tooth I’d broken on a corn nut.

None of it mattered as much as finding Ivy. Since that first night at my house we’d been as inseparable as two people could be who performed on the road for their supper.

Downtown gave way to smaller houses, a church, then a baseball field, and finally the low brick sprawl of Juniper Creek High School, where the football stadium rose behind it with fresh white lines painted on the field. A few boys were on the field running drills under the eye of a man with a whistle around his neck and a clipboard in his hand.

“That’s Waylon. Hard at work,” Ivy said.

I slowed the car and Ivy rolled down the window, sticking her head out and waving wildly. “Waylon.”

Waylon turned to look, and even from this distance I could see his grin. He took off his baseball hat and waved it at us.

“He’ll be coming for dinner,” Ivy said, settling back into her seat.

The road narrowed. Storefronts and houses thinned into pastureland, wooded hollows, cattle ponds, old barns, and white farmhouses set back behind fences. The hills rolled soft and green in every direction, the September light a coating of warm honey over the landscape.

A few minutes later, Ivy pointed ahead to a gravel driveway on our right. A sign hanging from the gate read: Whispering Oaks.

“This is it. Turn here.”

I did.

The James family driveway began beneath an archway of old trees, oaks mostly, with trunks thick enough that two grown men couldn’t have wrapped their arms around them. Their branches reached across the gravel drive and tangled overhead, creating a canopy. Late-afternoon sun filtered through the leaves, making green-gold patches on the hood of my truck.

Instinctually, I slowed, as if the truck and I both knew we were about to step into a quiet, serene world where hurrying wasn’t at all necessary.

Beside me, Ivy turned her head and smiled. “Whispering Oaks has been in our family for four generations. Used to be a working farm back in the day. Now Mama just keeps chickens and a few horses, which she loves more than us. And her garden’s epic.”

“Why is it called Whispering Oaks?” I asked.

“My great-great grandfather named it for the way the wind moves through the trees like a whisper.”

Past the fence line, the land rolled away in green swells, pasture on one side, woods on the other, with a few horses grazing under the shade of a massive oak. Black board fencing ran along the drive, weathered but well kept.

“I’m nervous,” I said.

“They’re harmless. Don’t let them fool you into thinking otherwise.”

“You’ve told me too many stories to believe that now,” I said.

“In hindsight, maybe I should’ve kept those to myself.”

She’d told me enough to know her brothers were protective of her and not afraid to use their powers of intimidation to make sure no one took advantage of her. I’d also heard how notorious they all were in this part of Tennessee. Wild boys who refused to entertain any ideas of marriage or getting tied down to one woman. Apparently, they’d been proving their point with a string of broken hearts from Juniper Creek to Nashville.

At the end of the drive, the trees opened, and a white farmhouse with a deep front porch and black shutters came into view, sitting on a gentle rise as if it had grown straight out of the Tennessee hills. The roof was tin, catching the sun in pale flashes. A white picket fence wrapped around a garden to the side of the house, where tomatoes climbed cages and zinnias and black-eyed Susans spilled over the borders. Beyond that sat an old barn, its red paint faded to the color of dried clay, and a chicken coop that looked sturdier than some apartments I’d rented early in my career.