“I guess. But it was still a shock when they sold. One day, my dad said he’d give up the farm over his dead body and they’d have to plow right over him. The next day, we were moving to town and building a big new house.” Dexter paced the ground, stepping from row to row with a sure foot, even in the dark. “He doesn’t like to talk about it. Whenever I bring it up, he gets really annoyed and just keeps repeating ‘It’s all for the best, and we should be grateful’ over and over like a broken record. I think he feels guilty, so I try not to give him a hard time about it. . . .”

“But . . .” I turned in a slow circle to follow the path he was cutting around me.

“But I miss it. I miss the wide-open space, I miss the smells—”

“Of manure? Agree to disagree.”

We laughed, and it seemed neither of us was trying to hold it back now.

“I come at night when no one can see me, since it’s technically trespassing, but it doesn’t feel like that. It just feels like . . .”

“Home,” I finished.

He stopped circling and looked me in the eye. “Yeah.”

I fidgeted with my scarf, tying and untying the knot at my neck. “I know something about being ripped out of your home, not welcome to return.”

“New York.”

Close enough.

“So, you know how it feels,” he said.

“Kind of like all these cornstalks after the harvest.” I gestured to the nothingness around us. “Cut down and disposed of, like so much garbage.”

“Actually, most farmers till the fields, using the remains of the crop to prepare the land for next year’s harvest.”

“Whatever,” I said. “It was a metaphor.”

“In some places, they burn the—”

“Okay, future farmer of America.” I laughed. “You got me. I don’t know what happens to corn after it . . .”

I started to say dies, but the word stuck in my throat.

Dexter mistook my shiver for a chill.

“It’s getting cold,” he said.

“Is this the part where you offer me your jacket?”

“Nah, this is the part where I suggest we go somewhere to warm up.”

“What’s even open this late?” I asked.

He spread his hands. “All Hours, of course.”

Twenty-One

Awake at All Hours

I paused outside All Hours, its lacquered door a sunny yellow, even in the dark. “This is a little embarrassing. We were just here a few hours ago.”

“Yeah, it’s almost like there’s nowhere else to go around here.” Dexter winked and opened the door, stepping aside to let me through first. So, he hadn’t offered me his coat, but apparently chivalry wasn’t entirely dead.

“It’s not the first time I’ve hit up All Hours twice in one day,” he said. “And Lina likes the company. She doesn’t get many nighttime guests.”