“Like you,” Jess said. “Is Vera driving you crazy about dresses and bridesmaids? Are you two gonna do it before or after Kelly and Paul?”

Adam just smiled in answer.

“When I got married,” Tom said, “we argued about the cake. I wanted chocolate and she wanted lemon.”

“So what did you get?” Adam asked.

“Lemon,” Tom and Jess said in unison.

“Don’t try to win over the bride,” Tom said. “Give her whatever she wants.”

“Good to remember,” Adam said.

They worked on the farm all day, moving cattle to a different pasture, repairing fences, and they fed all the animals. At the end of the day, Adam felt better than he had in quite a while. The next day, he did it all over again. Then the next and the next.

CHAPTER NINE

Vera was inside the cellar. That’s what she called it, but technically it was an old basement. In 1958, a tornado had lifted the house and dropped it a hundred yards away. Without a foundation, the house had collapsed. The basement, with its linoleum-covered floor as a roof, was intact.

The family whose house was destroyed sold the land for a pittance to Burke Hatten, and for years it just sat there. The land needed to be cleared for grazing, but no one ever got around to doing it. Grasses grew over the old foundation and people forgot about it.

When Vera was eight, she found it. As she often did, she had been searching for a place of peace, where she could read, write and think without being bothered by the chores her mother assigned or Kelly’s endless packs of animals.

Vera had managed to pull the old door up and went down the rotting stairs. There was little light, but she could see the old furniture and the books on shelves. There was a TV that an animal had built a nest in.

She told no one about her find. She knew that if she did, it would be forbidden to her. The old floor overhead was falling apart. One time she sneezed and two rotten boards fell down. Vera knew she should get out. It could collapse at any moment.

But she didn’t leave. She just made sure she didn’t sneeze anymore.

The next year, Adam broke his leg and Miguel came to spend the summer in Mason.

After a month with Miguel, Vera showed him the cellar. She held her breath. Would he be afraid? After all, it smelled bad, it was dark and the ceiling often rained down dirt and mud.

But Miguel had loved it! And he was the one who talked Burke Hatten into giving them some two-by-fours and nails. They’d lied and said they were building cages for Kelly’s animals, so he’d been generous.