The Cookbook Club by Beth Harbison

Author:Beth Harbison
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks

Chapter Twelve

Max

Nothing about living in the country was a surprise per se. Country life had not lied about itself: the farm was as quiet and verdant as he’d imagined, the air smelled of earth and greens, and the night sky was far more dark and star filled than it would appear just a few dozen miles away in the city. In a lot of ways, it had been a fantastic few weeks.

Maybe it was Max who had been falsely advertised—to himself. Because he’d pictured himself meditating in the stillness as dusk fell over the fields and filled the rooms inside the house, gaining in sound—crickets, frogs, the bark of a distant dog—what it lost in scenery. This, he’d thought, was a place where he’d put the electronics away and just soak in the peace. It would be a medicine like nothing you could ever find in a pill or potion. It was the antithesis of all the noise and negativity that filled him, day in and day out, in a crowded metropolis where no one had any patience for anyone else, and where public figures were targets for vitriol from strangers who were just looking for something to complain about.

He had been sure that being alone on a farm in the country would be the cure for all that ailed him.

He hadn’t planned on being so bored.

He’d been sitting in the musky kitchen on a wooden barstool, nursing a double Casamigos for what seemed like ages. And twilight had come exactly as expected. So had the accompanying quiet. Realistically, it had been quiet all day except for the damn rooster he couldn’t locate or block out. Who knew that roosters crowed all day long without regard to the sunrise? Charlotte’s Web and Babe had clearly indicated that there would be one or two cheerful cock-a-doodle-doos at sunrise and that was all until tomorrow.

He hadn’t anticipated that the strangled avian screeches would repeat ad nauseam, often sounding like a guttural cat in heat, driving him through all the stages of grief right to his form of acceptance, which was that it was better than the utter silence that surrounded it.

He looked at his phone, having removed it from its sequester within two hours of putting it away, and saw that it was 9:17 P.M. He had felt sure it was closer to midnight. In fact, he’d been sitting there, waiting for the sweet relief of exhaustion to take over after an entire day of fresh air and hard physical work, scrubbing the sinks with Ajax until his hands were red and pruned, and moving the dusty, creaky furniture around to make at least one room feel comfortable and homey.

It wasn’t easy.

But he wasn’t giving up, he knew that. So he’d gotten his phone out for the singular task of ordering a bed—some things could be cleaned and some things had to be started fresh—and then he’d allowed himself a quick foray into the news headlines, and the next thing he knew

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