After saying goodbye to Angelo, who couldn’t stay for lunch, the women went inside, leaving Jude and I alone. I headed toward the outbuilding where we needed to stash his things, and he followed me. “The bunkhouse is pretty comfortable for what it is,” I said. “It’s been here a hundred years. My great-grandfather built it with the rocks he cleared from the meadow.”

Jude studied the stone building as we approached. “Pretty cool,” he said. “You must not use it in the winter. Too expensive to heat.”

“Not true. It has a hundred-year-old masonry heater. Every two days we build a fire in there, then seal that sucker up. It heats the place into the low sixties even on a sub-zero day. There’s electric baseboard heat to fill in around the edges. We make all our own electricity, too.”

Sustainable architecture was one of my numerous causes. I wanted this farm to be around for a long time. The solar panels had cost a lot, though. I invested right after dad died, before I realized how tight cash really was. Then I invested in my first round of cider equipment, and now I was out on a proverbial limb all the time. One lost harvest and we’d be looking at bankruptcy.

Holding open the front door, I let Jude enter first. “That room on the right is mine. Bathroom’s on the left.” I kicked off my boots and pointedly set them on the rubber shoe mat by the door. “After you’ve been working in the dairy barn, you’ll want to leave your shoes at the door.”

“Makes sense,” Jude said, toeing out of his Chuck T’s. I was happy to see him following instructions. That boded well for both of us. “You sleep out here in the bunkhouse all the time?” he asked. “To keep an eye on the help, I guess.”

“No.” Studying this very jaded young man, I shook my head. “That’s not why. I gave up my bedroom in the farmhouse because Mom is trying to convince my grandpa to move in. He’s about a half mile down the road, all alone since my grandmother died. Every day she asks him if he’ll move today, and each time he says, ‘Not today!’”

Jude laughed, and it made him look five years younger.

“Anyway, I moved out here a couple months ago, because we thought maybe it would motivate him to give in. But no luck. And anyway—I don’t mind it out here with Zach. He’s easy company. You’ll see. Head straight back. End of the hall.”

I followed Jude into the wide bunkroom with high, beamed ceilings. I watched him take in the two sets of bunk beds—one on each side—and a single bed under the back windows. “That’s Zachariah’s,” I said, pointing at the center bed with the Star Wars pillowcase—a gag gift from me. “He gets the best spot, because he lives in here year round. During the harvest my cousins will sleep in here, too.”