“Because that worked out so well for my mom,” I said.

“I mean, marry me,” he said. He must have gotten warmer because now I could see his breath flowing from his mouth.

I didn’t like the direction we were going in. I didn’t like the happiness I suddenly felt—how my heart beat, how I smiled, covering my face with my hands so he wouldn’t see.

“Berie,” he said, into my ear. “She forgives you. She wanted me to tell you that.”

But she was disappointment, layered and layered, like polar ice, where one arm’s length is a thousand years of snowfall. She didn’t know how to forgive. “But the necklace,” I said, sitting up. “Can she forgive me for making her sell the necklace?”

He smiled for the first time. “She put the money in the bank for when you want it. If you come home, we’ll all go on a trip together. We talked for a long time. We could go to Morocco. She’d love the markets.”

She’d never left North Carolina before. I hadn’t thought she was capable of leaving. I lay back, whomp, into the spiny hay.

“She still has the earrings, you know.” He touched my cheek gently and withdrew. No one on the farm—not Dice, not Bay—was this gentle. And then he said something that surprised me. “Can you forgive us?” he said. “Forgive me.”

I felt Isaac was promising something more than a return to the old ways—something new and better. I’d left impetuously, proud and uncertain. Suddenly I was overcome with doubt.

He spoke very softly. “I’m thinking about how I’d love to kiss you. I’ve been waiting to say it all day.”