Lisbeth was quiet. How much longer could we do this, anyway, sit around in lawn chairs in her folks’ backyard? People our age were signing leases. If I didn’t have the farm to manage, the crop to sell, maybe she and I could do that, get an apartment together in a city, Chillicothe or Marietta. We could take sandwiches to the river where the barges battened kayaks, and fishing lines, threaded with lead weights, hung from the trees, dangling in the water like a girl’s long hair.

Instead, here we were, watching the neighbors’ thermal underwear stiffen on a clothesline. More than ever, I felt trapped. By my family, by the plants, by Ohio.

“Should’a brought that in,” Lisbeth’s daddy said about the laundry, taking a pull on a cold lemonade.

In August, people in town, when I shopped for groceries and fertilizer and diatomaceous earth, had finally stopped saying, What a ridiculous year. What an unusual year. This is one for the record books. By August, it wasn’t funny anymore. The buds never unfolded. The flowers never came.

A letter came to everyone in the county. I opened it at the mailbox and trudged up the quarter-mile driveway back to the lower field. By the time I reached my tiny house, I had read the letter a few times.

In response to the unprecedented cold weather our nation is experiencing, and under the advisement of a committee of parents, educators, and administrators, the school board has voted to suspend school until October 1, at which time this situation may be reassessed. We will contact you with further updates.

The letter wasn’t a huge surprise. I remembered the high school didn’t turn on the heat until the end of October, and I doubted they could afford two extra months of heating, especially not knowing how cold it would get. The part of the letter that concerned me was the last line.

We encourage you to spend this time with your families.

My pocket shook. Lisbeth was calling.

I didn’t have reception in the driveway—most of the farm didn’t—but my tiny house sat on its own hill, which caught some weak signals from the tower in town. She didn’t bother with hello. “Did you get the letter?” she asked.

I set the rest of the mail on the shelf inside the door. “Yes.”

“Thoughts?”

I paused. “I don’t think you have to worry about those altos this year.”

Lisbeth fell silent.

“Come on,” I said. “It’ll be like a long vacation for you. We can hang out together so you won’t get bored. Why don’t you come over right now?”

“You know I can’t do that. I can’t come out there.”

“Come to Crossroads at least. Get your grease fix.”