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Thankfully, I was pulled out of the line of attention when Dad brought up something else, and I released a sigh of relief. Icould feel Trevor looking at me, though, as if he were trying to figure out exactly why I was so distracted at work.
He wouldn’t be caught dead not thinking about work. He was perfect in the office and always focused. When I’d met him, I’d wanted to be like him. Now, I wasn’t so sure.
When the meeting was over, I made a beeline for my cubicle to get my head on straight.
But a hand on my arm stopped me.
“Mollie,” Trevor started. “What was that? You’ve never agreed to let Todd do anything of that nature before.”
“I’m sorry, I just ... Something else is on my mind.”
“What could possibly be on your mind?”
I screwed my eyes shut. He wasn’t going to understand what I was about to say.
But he was my fiancé, and I knew he wanted me to say something.
“It’s late summer, and I feel like I haven’t been outside at all.”
His eyebrows creased. “We have a balcony.”
“It faces another apartment. I wanna seenature.”
“Why?”
“It’s pretty? It’s nice? I’m feeling so burnt out lately that I think it might help.”
“Okay, then. Find a park.”
“I want real nature. Like Papa Bennie’s farm. I wanna go there.”
Trevor scoffed. “Why would you want to go there?”
“I miss it.”
“You misshim.And he’s dead.”
“Thank you for reminding me,” I said flatly, “but it’s not that I wanna see him. I wanna see what he left behind. The farm is still around. Or it should be. Someone bought it.”
“Or it ended up like a lot of farmland. Abandoned.”
“You do realize that farmland is responsible for all of the things you put in your smoothies every morning, right?”
“Of course. And I have nothing but respect for the profession. But it’s ... not for people like you and me.”
My shoulders sagged. “You don’t get it. I just need to visit. Nothing else. I don’t know what happened to the farm, but someone has to.”
“I don’t understand why you’re even thinking about this.”
“I just want a reset.”
He rubbed his forehead, his typical response whenever I talked about anything he didn’t have an interest in. “You need to focus so we can deal with the can of worms you just opened.”
“Can of worms?”
“The meeting, Mollie. In case you’ve forgotten, you’re at work and just let Todd get away with something you probably shouldn’t have.”
I let out a long sigh, still unable to care about anything within the bland four walls.