Chapter Twenty-One
Lewis
A year later
Amazing how we’d ever managed to have our businesses without a website.
With the baby in our life, we were busier than we’d ever been, and the flexibility of being able to work online made it possible for us to work at all.
Wilder hired another salesperson to help in the store, and I brought two hands on board to help me with the farm.
I still got out with the bees, but having people to take care of the chickens and growing things, prune the trees and do all the other tasks made all the difference.
The biggest change was acting on Wilder’s suggestion of renting out the fields to a local organic farmer.
I had specific things I was looking to have grown for the bees, like buckwheat and sunflowers, and they met his plan as well.
He got the crops; I got the honey and the rent.
We’d gone back and forth over the winter, but by the time planting season came around, we’d reached an agreement, meaning that now, in the height of summer, there were so many beautiful and useful things growing all over our property.
“Alpha, we need to go, or the sun will set without us.”
It would have sounded odd to anyone else, but we’d been planning this for a while. With the sunflowers towering over the soil, our little family was going out to walk among them and see if they really all did face the same direction. Toward, in this case, the sunset.
Wilder wore the baby wrap like a second skin, and he came out the back door and took my hand. “There you are. I searched the whole house.”
“I’m sorry. I thought we were meeting out here. We have time.”
Together, we walked down the path toward the orchard where we’d had our first picnic and on past other locations where we’d run together.
The fields were fallow then, but the crops were thriving now.
Grain and of course the sunflowers. They were magnificent, at least twelve feet tall according to our farmer, and gorgeous.
Facing the fun as it lowered in the west. The baby cooed, the sweet sound melting into the cries of birds flying home for the night and the constant hum of the hives.
Our land held all the magic I could have dreamed of if I had dared to dream.
Young me hoped for some hives and honey, but I’d learned how it could all come together and needed to.
Every bit of life on the land contributed to the others to reach this beauty.
We paused at the edge of the field, standing with the sunflowers to watch the sky turn shades of gold and orange and deep red before darkening into night.
Then we turned together toward where the lights of our home glowed in the distance.
I liked to think my fathers would have been happy to be wrong about me.
Or maybe they were right. The grumpy kid was not the one who captured the heart of the perfect omega.
I’d had to grow and change a lot, but it was worth it.
In every way.