Brent sat down.
Right there on the gravel driveway. In his expensive blue bathrobe. He just sat down, hard, like his knees gave out. He put his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands.
June stood over him. She reached down. Hesitated. Then she put her hand on his head, on his good haircut, the way you’d touch a little boy’s head.
“Honey,” she said. “It’s okay.”
“It’s not okay,” Brent said into his hands. “It’s not okay at all.”
The people in the garden had noticed now. They’d stopped picking. They were standing in the rows in the fog, holding their buckets, watching.
Nobody said anything.
Brent lifted his head. His eyes were red.
“When I was a kid,” he said. He wasn’t talking to anybody in particular. Maybe he was talking to all of us. “We lived out on County Road 9. In a trailer. My dad drove a delivery truck until he hurt his back, and then he didn’t drive anything. And my mom grew a garden. Not because she wanted to. Because we had to. Because otherwise, we didn’t eat.”
