The Beautiful Daughters by Nicole Baart

wrinkled her nose. “People don’t even know what that means anymore.”
    â€œI never pegged you as such a romantic.”
    Harper laughed. “You know I’m not. But this is deliciously shocking. Your little life isn’t at all what I expected it to be, Adri-Girl. You live a fine balance, my friend. You walk the very edge of two worlds.”
    Adri snorted, but didn’t respond.
    They wove between the barns without another word, though Adri could practically hear the enthusiastic patter of Harper’s thoughts. A cat! An old wagon! A tangle of spent wild rose! Life and love and the aching beauty of our very existence contained in the droop of a wilted flower! It was mildly patronizing, andAdri wished that there was something that would lend validity, weight to her upbringing. She already battled Harper’s blithe assumption that she was innocent, sheltered, untried. Apparently a weekend visit to the family farm wasn’t helping matters at all.
    At the end of the alley between buildings, Adri climbed over the wide, metal gate at the entrance to the pasture, and leaped deftly over the nearly invisible wire of the electric fence that cackled just on the far side. She stood, arms crossed, and waited for her best friend to navigate the unfamiliar obstacle. It wasn’t often that she had the upper hand in their relationship, and it was hard not to take a certain satisfied pleasure in watching Harper flounder out of her element.
    But Harper hesitated only for a moment. Then in one fluid motion she raced up the rungs of the fence as if it were a ladder, paused with one hand and both feet on the very top, and launched herself, a free-form dancer sailing over the side and into the tall grass. She nicked the electric fence on her way down.
    There was a spark, a sound a little like a whip being cracked, and Harper jerked as if she were being electrocuted.
    â€œHot damn!” Her legs went out from under her and she landed on her ass in the grass.
    Adri couldn’t help but laugh.
    â€œYour fence almost killed me!” Harper pouted, rubbing the back of her calf where the fence had slapped her skin.
    â€œIt’s three thousand volts. On a pulse. My fence did not almost kill you.”
    â€œWhatever. I’m suing.”
    Adri offered Harper her hands and hoisted her to a standing position. “Knock yourself out. You won’t get much. You’ve seen the extent of our fortune and I’m going to let you in on a little secret: we’re mortgaged to the hilt.”
    Harper put her hands on her hips and did a slow survey of the land. The pasture was by far the prettiest corner of the farm. It was sparsely wooded and sloped toward the river, flooded bya waving sea of prairie grasses that bowed to the breeze and sent pollen-like diamond dust to float in the warm autumn air. There was a certain magic here, in the dappled shade of the gnarled trees, their arthritic branches angling low to mingle with the creamy tufts that still clung to slender stalks of switchgrass.
    Adri could see that Harper was enchanted by all of it, and she grabbed her friend by the elbow before she could fall too deeply in love. “Watch out for the cow pie.”
    â€œShit!”
    â€œNo pun intended,” Adri laughed.
    â€œOh, pun absolutely intended.”
    They made their way past the few grazing cows—Jerseys, all caramel brown with eyes as wide and damp as a fawn’s—and climbed carefully over a second fence, this one barbed wire, at the very edge of the Vogt property. The river was on the other side, and beyond that, the bluffs above Blackhawk. Because the river was serpentine, they couldn’t see the long, white bridge that led into town, even though it was less than a mile away as the crow flies. But they could see the peak of the Galloway mansion poking through the treetops in the hills above the river. And as soon as Adri caught sight of the square turret of the tower, she