“Is that supposed to be an apology?”
“That’s a compliment about your squash.”
May laughed even while she was annoyed — I’d learn that’s her tell. I paid her double what the plants were worth. She fought me on it, lost, and that evening showed up at my door with a paper bag of surviving squash.
“Didn’t want you thinking your cow has better taste than you do,” she said. And smiled — not the polite store-smile, the real one. The one that hit me somewhere I didn’t have a name for yet.
After that, my excuses got thinner and thinner. Returning pliers she “forgot” on my fence post. Asking about farmers market hours that were literally posted on a sign at the end of her driveway. Showing up uninvited to stake her tomatoes before a storm.