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You’ve seen it with your own two eyes now, Tenleigh. Can you finally accept it and truly move on? Well, you better, because you have no other choice.

That Monday, Marlo and I had plans to visit Mama. I was ready early and decided to go say hello to Buster. I hadn’t seen him since I’d returned. I knocked on his door and when he opened it, he let out a whoop and took me in a bear hug, lifting me off my feet. I laughed out loud. “Hi, Buster! Good to see you too.”

“Well, let me look at you, Tenleigh girl.” He said after he’d set me down. “Well, damn if you don’t look like a city girl. You a city girl now, Miss Tenleigh?” We entered his house, still filled with handmade wood furniture. Just like in the old days, every square inch of surface held a whittled couple engaging in various explicit sexual acts. If I hadn’t known Buster all my life, this house would have made me seriously uncomfortable.

“Me a city girl? You know better than that, Buster. I’m hill folk through and through.”

He chuckled. “Well okay, just makin’ sure. You sure do look fancy.”

I sat down on a chair that was the carved, sanded, urethane-d face of an upside-down naked man. Another woman was carved behind him, her mouth full with his private parts. I created the à trois in the ménage. This was the most action I’d gotten in quite some time. Lucky me.

“Tell me what you’ve been doing all this time. How’d you like college?” Buster asked.

I told Buster about the school I’d gone to, about California, a little about what it’d been like to be away, the few friends I’d met and would keep in touch with, and about the school I was building. After I’d finished with a brief summary, I said, “What about you, Buster, how have you been?”

“Good, better than ever. You know about the business us hill folk have, right?”

“No. Business?”

“Sure. We’re regular entrepreneurs up here. Some of the folks even take a real pride in it. Got their yards cleaned up.”

“Yes,” I said. “I noticed that. What exactly is it you’re doing?”

“Growing lavender. We have a few products too. We go to the craft fairs in the area. I even sell my figures. They go over real well.” He winked.

Lavender. Lavender?

In my mind, a crescent moon hung suspended above me as a beautiful boy worshipped my body, the fragrant scent of lavender in the air. “I bet they do,” I said distractedly. “This lavender business…whose idea was that?”

“Oh, Kyland Barrett’s. He looked into it. Found out lavender’s one of the most profitable cash crops for individual growers—even just a backyard garden. Made an information pamphlet up and everything. Plus, it’s the only flower that you can dry and use for other products. We’ve been making sachets, soaps, oil, the tea you used to give—”

“So you all are making real money from this?” I asked, shocked. I had never even considered something like that…

“Sure are,” he said with pride. “Unlike other crops, the profits are year-round. Nothing ever goes to waste. It’s pretty simple really.”

“Well, you sound very knowledgeable, Buster,” I said. I sat silently shaking my head for a second. “So why isn’t everyone doing it?” I asked, thinking of the homes I’d seen that were just as trashed as ever.

Buster scratched the thin hair at the top of his head. “Ah, well, you know, you can lead a hillbilly to lavender, but you can’t make him grow it.” He laughed and slapped his knee.

I let out a small, wondering laugh as well. “Well, I’ll be,” I said. A knock at Buster’s door made me startle. It was Marlo come to fetch me. She greeted Buster and we both said a quick goodbye and I told him I’d be back before too long. We hugged and then Marlo and I walked to my car, my mind swimming with what Buster had told me.

“Mar, did you know about the whole lavender thing?” I asked, when we’d started down the mountain.

She glanced at me. “Yeah. It’s really pretty cool. I was gonna tell you. You just seemed really torn up about Kyland. I didn’t think you necessarily needed to hear about all that your first week back.”

I nodded. “It’s actually…cool though, right? I mean, those people are making money from something that didn’t require any kind of start-up…” I bit my lip. “I wonder why he’s not doing it himself.”

“Yeah, I don’t know.”

What’s going on with you, Kyland? Although it shouldn’t surprise me. He was always entrepreneurial and industrious. Just look at how he had survived on his own for all those years.

We were almost to his house, and this time, I turned my head, taking in the white pickup truck parked out front. I sucked in a quick breath as his door suddenly opened and Kyland stepped out wearing jeans and a flannel shirt, a baseball cap on his head, holding a metal lunch box. I turned my head, leaning forward as we passed by and he halted, our eyes met and tangled, even from the distance of my moving car. I saw his head turn to follow right before I focused back on the road. I’d caught the bumper sticker on his truck, the image of a coal miner wearing a miner’s hat, crawling through a dark tunnel with the message “Friends in low places.”