Chapter Twenty-Eight

The next morning should be a school day, but I argue that if the farm is selling, I should be there, so Mom lets us stay. She’s in the middle of making bacon when Mr. Ferro pulls up to the house.

The screen door creaks open as I step out and wave him inside. At the table, I pull out a chair for him. Grandpa gives me a look, but I pretend not to notice as Mr. Ferro settles down beside him.

“Thank you for inviting me. It’s been a long while since I shared a meal that wasn’t at a restaurant.”

“When there’s a big job ahead, a home-cooked meal adds a little steel to the spine.” Grandpa passes a plate of hash browns and eggs. “You’ve got that article to write, and we’ve got papers to sign as soon as Miss Dolly comes. At least we can face the work with full bellies.”

Mr. Ferro peers at my necklace. “Did you always have that peacock medallion, or is it new? Such fine workmanship.”

“Kimana made it.” I hold it up so it catches the light. “It’s Royal on the front, see?”

“I do. Your friend is very talented.”

“You bet she is. Kimana can bead and program and code better than anyone I know. She makes pieces like this to earn money so she can buy her jingles and other things to finish her regalia­—that’s a special dress she needs for competitions like her cousin’s powwow that’s in a few weeks.”

“How’s Royal?” Scotty asks.

“He’s good.” Mr. Ferro pulls a picture up on his phone of Royal standing beside a peahen, and shows it to us. “The vet gave him a clean bill of health, but the way that bird paces the edge of the aviary, I have no doubt he’d fly off the second I opened the door if he got the chance.”

“Would he fly here?” Scotty holds his glass while I pour orange juice into it. “He likes our trees. Peacocks roost up high to protect themselves from predators and to watch for intruders, just like guard dogs.”

“Your guard dog barely opened an eye when I pulled up.” Mr. Ferro grins. “The cats, on the other hand, came right over. That little orange one—Scumbag, was it?”

“Scuzbag,” Scotty corrects.

“Right. Scuzbag and the black one wouldn’t let me up the porch steps until I gave them both a good scratch.”

Mom sets the bacon plate on the table, and it’s Scotty’s turn to say the prayer before everyone dives in, but my plate stays empty.

“I finished my report for school.” I tap my papers on the table beside my wishstone. “Wanna hear?”

“Sure, honey.” Mom peppers her eggs.

I stand, slide my chair in, and take a breath. “There are lots of people who made a difference in my life. Famous people that got me the right to vote when I’m old enough. People who explored and invented things. But until this year, I didn’t really understand that I’d built my whole world to begin and end with one man: my dad.”

Scotty grabs a bacon strip and chomps down, but the others are watching me, so I keep going.

“See, my dad taught me how to fix things, and when he saw I was good at it, he told me I was smart and gave me tricky things to troubleshoot, and when I fixed all that, he gave me new puzzles to solve.”

I glance up from my report. Everyone’s still listening.

“Because of him, I know that there’s a season for everything: a time to plant, to grow, to work, and to harvest. It’s all connected with family, ’cause in the middle of all that hard work, there’s times to laugh and love—and family holds it all together. Trying to run our farm alone is like running an engine without any oil. It might go for a little while, but all the parts wear out and everything seizes up.” I sneak a glance at Grandpa.

“Hey,” Grandpa says, rubbing his chest, “I’m not worn out yet.”

I smile. “I was talking about me, Grandpa.”

“Bah.” He chuckles. “You’re still a spring chicken.”

“No. I’m like our peacock.” My eyes flick to Scotty and Mr. Ferro as I turn the page. Might as well skip ahead. “Peacocks protect their territory against intruders. They sound the alarm when there’s danger, and they fight to protect what’s theirs.”

“I told Paige that,” Scotty whispers to Mr. Ferro.

“Peacocks carry a long, beautiful tail—maybe the prettiest tail in the whole world. It makes them feel safe and helps them find love, but it can trap them and weigh them down if they don’t let those feathers go.”

I slide the page to the back of the stack. It’s not the order I meant to read things, but it feels right. “I used to know exactly how I fit in the world, but when Dad died, nothing fit anymore. I tried to fix the puzzle by doing more, by taking on all his jobs and stretching myself thin to fill the space he left behind, but I couldn’t do it right. And I pushed other pieces out of place.”

“I tried my hardest and worked till I was dead tired, but wishing for things to be the way they used to be is like ramming straw down a bolt hole and hoping it holds. It can’t hold, because the piece you need is gone. And it seemed like my life would never be okay again because the pieces I knew didn’t fit in this new picture.”

I meet Mr. Ferro’s gaze. “But I learned some things from Royal, and then you showed me pictures of your grandparents’ peacocks and the painting on the garage. See, my life isn’t just a puzzle picture stuck inside a frame. There’s not just one single way to make all the pieces fit—and that’s okay.

“My life is a mural.

“The picture of my family that I love so much? It’s in the corner, at the start of my life. It’s my beginning.”

I set the papers down beside the wishstone. “But the cool part about a mural is that we don’t leave our beginnings behind. Because of Dad, I know how to help a newborn calf come into the world, and how to lose a crop and move forward anyway. And I’ll never have to ask someone what’s wrong with my car, ’cause I’ll know how to fix it. I know how to solve problems and work hard, and those things matter—no matter what happens next.”

Dad’s picture is taped to the next page—him smiling at me from the seat of the tractor when he said I was the best part of his whole day. Scrawled across the page beneath him are big, bold leters that say, “Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.”

“I thought our home here was perfect, and maybe it was, but that season is over for the farm. There’s a new season starting, and I’m not full of holes and missing pieces like I thought. Our roots are still connected—my family, my farm—all painted in the corner of my mural. All I gotta do is paint the next scene.”

The moment hangs there quiet between us, a butterfly perched on a blade of grass, its delicate wings open. Then Grandpa breaks the spell. “I find duct tape does wonders for holes—if’n you still have any left.”

I laugh. “No, Grandpa. I’m okay.”

“You forgot to say that peacocks symbolize eternal life and rebirth.” Scotty pours ketchup on his eggs. “Will your teacher let you have more pages for your report? How about three? I can tell you three pages of peacock facts.” He scrunches his face up. “Maybe five. Yes, you need five more pages.”

“Her report is perfect just the way it is.” Mom pats my hand as I sit down to eat. She has tears in her eyes, but I think they are happy tears this time. “Thank you for sharing it with us. It’s nice to think we can begin again. Focus on the positive, right?”

“Where did you say you live?” Grandpa asks Mr. Ferro.

“I’ve got an apartment in Boston.”

“An apartment, eh?” Grandpa points his fork at Mr. Ferro. “How do you sleep with your neighbor snoring so close to you?”

“Grandpa snores every day. So does T-Rex.” Scotty stands with his plate. “Can I go?”

After the plates are cleared, Mom and Grandpa hover near the windows like bees on a Coke can, waiting for Miss Dolly and that buyer of hers. I hope she takes her own sweet time in coming.

Mr. Ferro sits on the porch swing and taps on his tablet, writing his report.

I perch on the seat beside him, slip Kimana’s peacock off my neck, and cradle it in my hands. “You can look closer if you want. It’s even prettier out here in the sunlight.”

As he tilts it, shafts of light reflect off the peacock beads and dance across his face like freckles of sunshine. “Amazing.”

“It’s not just a necklace. It’s a lanyard. See the clip on the bottom? It’s great for holding a key or a press badge.”

“What use would you have for a press badge?” His thumb rubs small circles over the beads, like I do with my wishstone.

“None at all. But you need one. See? Then you’d have your grandpa’s peacocks with you all the time when you work. It’s like a piece of your roots that you get to carry with you.”

“With me?” His thumb stills. “But this is yours.”

“It was mine, but I feel like it belongs with you, like maybe it was meant for you all along. So I’m giving it to you.”

“Don’t you want it?”

I hold a hand up to stop him from giving it back to me. “I do love it, but Kimana says it carries good thoughts and things with it, and I think you need it more—to remind you of home.”

“Well, then.” He lifts the lanyard over his head. He doesn’t even have to remove that silly hat of his. “Sounds like we need to agree on a price.”

“But it’s a gift,” I protest.

“No, this is too fine a gift. I can’t accept without a fair price.”

Since he insists, we haggle back and forth like a couple of ganders, and when we shake hands, it’s all I can do to keep my smile under control. With the money Mr. Ferro paid, Kimana should be able to have everything she wants for the powwow for sure—not that I’m cheating him; her work is worth every penny.

I tuck the money into my sock for safekeeping. I’ll run it right over to Kimana as soon as she’s out of school for the day.

We swing slow for a few minutes before I point at the trees.

“Remember that day you sat on the grass and watched Royal playing up in those trees?”

“Mm-hmm.”

A breeze teases red strands across my nose, and I brush them behind my ear.

My boots click on an uneven board as we swing back and forth.

Click, click.

Click, click.

“Would it be so bad if he got to do it again?”

The swing stops, and my fist tightens around my wishstone, but I don’t dare look at him yet.

Gravel crunches under tires as Miss Dolly’s black Cadillac turns down the drive. Her tires spin faster than chain saws, eating the distance in no time at all.

“Hello!” Miss Dolly waves as she steps out of the car with a man in a suit, then laughs at something he says. With his sunglasses and pinstripes, I can’t remember if he was here before or not. They all looked the same to me. No hats, dress shoes on every one. One gray rat looks an awful lot like another.

“Come on in.” Mom opens the door, and I flinch at every step Dolly’s heels take as she prances inside, the man right behind her. I know Miss Dolly is just doing her job, but now that the moment is here, it’s hard.

Minutes.

I’ve got minutes left till our farm is gone forever.

“What do you mean?” Mr. Ferro asks. “About Royal?”

I tear my gaze from the door. “Wouldn’t it be better if all your grandpa’s peacocks stayed together, instead of being shipped off to a bunch of different places? They’ve lived their whole lives together as a pride—that’s what peacock families are called—and they could live here. In our trees. All safe and protected. Then you’d always know where they were, and you could see them anytime you wanted.”

He takes his hat off and runs his fingers along the tiny brim. “Of course I’d like to keep them together, but I’m no farmer, Paige. I might like to learn new things, get my hands dirty now and then, but I could never take care of all this.”

“That’s the thing.” I hear Dolly’s tittering laugh from inside, and I stand in front of Mr. Ferro. “You don’t have to. Mateo’s dad wants to expand their herd, but they can’t get financing, so all they can do is rent. Why not have them rent from you? If they took care of the cows, you could split the profits from the herd, but they’d do all the work.”

“I—” He starts to shake his head, but I hurry on.

“If they take on the cows and pastures, and we lease out the other fields, the land wouldn’t be lost. And you could keep the garden, the greenhouse, and the horses.”

“What would I do with horses? I live in an apartment in Boston.”

“Remember how you said you wish your kids could experience what this is like? How they could use some time away from their phones? Maybe we could figure out a way so that lots of kids like yours could come and learn how to garden and ride horses. Then folks from town could come and buy the vegetables the kids have grown. They’d learn how to work and loads of other important things. You wouldn’t even have to be here all the time—you could hire someone to help. My family could teach them.”

“Mr. McBride, I heard you had quite the health scare. I’m so glad to see you up and around,” Dolly says from inside. “This is the gentleman I told you about . . .”

“I see the appeal,” Mr. Ferro says. “And it’s a fine idea, but realistically, I don’t see how—”

My fingers tap like Scotty’s. “If you don’t like that idea, we can think of another, but after today, your chance to change things is gone. When land is lost, it takes something away from all of us because it can never be put right again. You know it matters, or else you’d have sold your grandparents’ place right off—but you didn’t, because you know those birds are a part of your legacy, your heritage. This is your chance to put down roots instead of cutting them off. Heck, maybe you could even bring your grandma’s mural here, brick by brick, and rebuild the garage. It doesn’t have to disappear.”

“You’re a smart kid, Paige. I appreciate that, but it’s hard to put down roots when I travel so much for my work. Our worlds are just too different.”

“You’re wearing the proof that they can work together.” I point at his chest. “Look at your lanyard. It can hold your reporter badge, but it’s got your grandpa’s peacock right in the center. It’s part of us here on the reservation, part of your family, and part of your job. All of it works together to make something beautiful. And if we can rent the house from you, we can stay and care for your birds. And then you’d have a place to come home to. A place where your grandpa’s legacy lives on.”

I step back as he walks to the house and stares through the screen door. When Scotty thinks about things, his brain zips like a hummingbird flitting from one flower of facts to another, but Mr. Ferro’s mind rolls more like a steam engine, steamin’ and thinkin’, turning things over slow, then gaining speed.

My words tumble out, one after the other. “If your grandma cared for those peacocks out of love for your grandpa’s legacy, wouldn’t she like it if you carried on the same tradition? You’d be connected to the land like him, and you wouldn’t even have to be a farmer. You say you don’t have roots, but you do. Maybe not in a farm, but in your family.”

His hand opens and closes, and I feel him teetering, a water skipper on the brink.

“I gotta believe Royal came to us for a reason. It’s the only thing that makes sense. He needed a new place to put down roots, and he picked here. Right here.” I nod toward the screen door. “Can’t you trust him a little? Believe for one moment that maybe something bigger than all of us brought us together?”

With his face in shadow, peering through the screen door, I can’t tell what he’s thinking. Can he feel it? Can he see the way through as clearly as I do?

“We just need to go over a couple more things and get a few signatures.” Miss Dolly’s voice drifts through the screen. “Almost done.”

I touch the back of Mr. Ferro’s wrist. Then I lift it and press my last hope into his hand. “Sometimes, you just need to follow your heart, choose to believe, and make a wish.”

Swaddled in all my hopes and dreams, and worn smooth from a thousand wishes, Dad’s heart-shaped wishstone seems to glow in his open hand.

He stares at the stone, and his gaze cuts to mine, but I don’t hide. I open my soul, letting all the hope and fear inside me shine through as I will him to feel what I feel, see what I see, and love what I love.

“It’s my Dad’s wishstone,” I whisper. “Please, please . . . make a wish.”

Dad’s stone disappears as Mr. Ferro’s fingers close around it.

I hold my breath and hope.

He opens the door. “Wait!”