Chapter 32
THIRTY-TWO
ISLA
I’m alone with only my ugly little thoughts to keep me company.
After they drove away, Evelyn took her neat, reassuring sentences with her. Dr. Levin and Aaron took their clipboards. And Roland took his rancid cologne and watchful eyes. The gravel settled, and then everything went very still.
Jack went out to check a drip in the irrigation line. I told him I needed to log a few notes while they were fresh. That was over an hour ago.
Now, I’m at the kitchen table with my laptop open, staring at an empty spreadsheet and listening to the clock tick above the stove.
I should be entering numbers. Pruning dates. Spray schedules. Normal orchard things that don’t involve donors or clubs or men who think they can do anything they want just because they have money.
My email tab pings with a new message from Evelyn: Forward from Stein—Subject line: “Informal follow up, Mirabelle Orchard.”
My stomach tightens. I click.
Evelyn’s short note sits at the top.
Thought you both should see this. Don’t respond. I’ll call in the morning and we can strategize.
Below it, Roland’s email.
Ms. Winslow,
I wanted to extend my thanks again for hosting the assessment team today. It’s always a pleasure to see committed stewards of heritage agriculture in person.
As we proceed, it will be increasingly important to maintain a clear narrative for external stakeholders. Our donors are generous, but they’re also keenly aware of optics. Public perception around grant recipients and donor responsibility has never mattered more.
I trust that the discretion you’ve shown regarding your previous performances at Luxe will continue as we move forward. I’m sure we’d both hate to see unrelated recordings, photographs, or anecdotes distract from the compelling story of Mirabelle’s preservation.
I look forward to many years of collaboration.
Warm regards,
R. Stein
I read it twice. The words blur at the edges, but the shape of them is clear.
Roland was there at Luxe most shifts, ordering top-shelf and watching me. If he doesn’t personally have footage, he knows exactly how to get it. Security cameras. Drunk customers’ phones. It wouldn’t be too hard for a guy like him.
Heat crawls up my throat, shame and anger wrestling for space.
The back door opens and closes. Jack finally fixed the swelling problem, which means there’s less of an announcement. His boots thump once against the mat.
“Isla?” he calls. “Pump’s fine. One of the valves was just sulking.”
“In here,” I say.
He steps into the doorway, hair damp with sweat, shoulders loose from work. He looks tired. Happy-tired, the way he gets after he wrestles something into working order. Then he sees my face, and the ease drains out of him.
“What happened?”
I angle the laptop toward him without trusting myself to speak.
He crosses the kitchen in three strides. His hand comes down on the back of my chair as he leans in to read. I watch his eyes move left to right, his jaw tighten, the muscle jump near his temple.
When he gets to the end, his fingers flex against the wood.
“Son of a bitch,” he says softly. “He’s threatening to leak footage if you don’t do what he wants. That’s harassment, at minimum. Revenge porn, more likely, or the threat of it. That’s definitely grounds to get him yanked off the committee.”
My pulse spikes. “Get him yanked how?”
“We ask what formal complaint channels exist. It’s illegal to use explicit material as leverage. If the initiative has any sense of ethics, they won’t want a donor who’s willing to risk something like this.”
“You want to report him,” I say slowly.
“Yes,” Jack says. “I absolutely do.”
I push the laptop back. “Young grant recipient strips her way to a six-figure award. You don’t think that becomes gossip before it ever becomes justice?”
His eyes flash. “So, we let him what, blackmail you with it? That’s the other option?”
“I don’t want you to use my body as the case study you build your moral stand on.”
“I’m not trying to use your body as anything,” he says, voice rising. “I’m trying to stop him from doing it. If he has naked pictures or videos of you, that’s more than just your privacy that’s been violated. Grant be damned.”
“Do you know how fast a woman can become a spectacle?”
He stares at me for a second, anger and hurt warring across his face.
“No, but I know what it feels like to watch you get cornered and have nothing in my hands to throw but paperwork,” he says.
“What Roland has done here, threatening you, that’s not a gray area.
If we don’t report him, then he’ll carry on believing his tactics will work. I’m trying to give us a weapon.”
“I’m not a weapon,” I say. “Luxe isn’t a weapon. It was a job I did so I could keep this place alive. That’s it.”
He takes a breath like he’s counting to five. It doesn’t help much.
“So what, Isla?” he asks. “We just let him hang this over you forever? We pretend we never saw this email? We hope he stays polite?”
“If we poke the bear now, we risk blowing up the grant entirely.”
“Fuck the grant!” he shoots back. “This guy is a predator. He can’t force you into giving him samples just because he has some sick leverage on you.”
“News flash,” I say, the words coming sharp and fast now.
“I’m the one who climbed on that stage. I knew what it meant.
I knew someone could recognize me. I knew it could follow me home.
I’ve been living with that possibility since the first night I put on those heels.
You’re not the only one who understands risk here. ”
He flinches. “That’s not what I’m saying.”
“Either way, I get to decide which consequences I can live with.” It lands between us hard and ugly, but pride gets there before apology. “I know you’re in love with the idea of being a hero. Sorry you can’t solve that problem for me, Superman.”
He laughs once, disbelieving. “You really think I’d throw you in front of the mob for a good story?”
“You like it when there’s a villain you can punch, Jack. You always have. The roof leaks, you fix it. The valve breaks, you fix it. A donor crosses a line, and you get to drag him in front of a committee and fix it. Except this isn’t a broken pipe. This is me.”
He scrubs a hand through his hair, pacing once between the table and the counter.
“So what do you want?” he asks finally. “Tell me. If we can’t file complaints or demand he be taken off the board, what’s the plan?”
“I need a little time to think about what I want to do here. If I tell Roland to fuck off, he could retaliate. If I wait too long, he could go to the committee directly.”
“You keep talking like I’m standing outside all of this,” he says slowly. “Like I’m watching a storm hit your house and enjoying the chance to pump out the basement. I married you, Isla. I’m so far in this that I can’t tell where your life stops and mine starts.”
Something inside me lurches, equal parts hope and panic. Wanting to be chosen is one thing. Letting myself believe I already have been feels far more dangerous.
“You don’t get to throw that back at me now.”
His jaw tightens. “You really think that’s what I’m doing?”
“I think you’re angry that you’re stuck in a fight you can’t fix with a hammer. I get it, you think it’s a convenient play to expose Roland. But if you push on this, I’m the one who gets turned into gossip while everyone congratulates themselves for doing the right thing.”
Silence drops between us.
“We can find a way to protect you without blowing your whole life open.”
I huff. “That’s easy for you to say. If everything goes south, you can dip.”
“You think I’d hold it against you? Decide it isn’t worth it?”
“I think there’s a world where you wake up one day and realize you gave up jobs and time and options for a woman who can’t stop fighting with the weather and who once took her clothes off for extra cash,” I say.
“And I think in that world, it’d be very easy to blame me when you look around and see all the things you could’ve had somewhere else. ”
He looks like I’ve taken the air out of him. His hand grips the back of the chair so hard his knuckles go white. “You really believe I have ‘somewhere else’? Even now?”
“You always have,” I say, because it’s the worst, truest thing. “You have a truck and a trade and a town full of people who’d write you recommendations. You could’ve gone anywhere. You still could.”
“And you want me to?” he asks. “Is that what this is? Clear the field so you can be alone again?”
“I want you to have a life that’s not just cleaning up after mine. I want you to know that if you wake up one morning and realize you can’t breathe in this, you don’t owe me penance. You can leave.”
He shakes his head. “I’m not looking for an exit, Isla. I’m looking for a way to stand next to you without you shoving me off the porch every time I reach for the railing.”
Something in me snaps. “People leave, Jack. It’s the rule, not the exception.”
He blows out a breath. “You know what I hear when you say that?”
“I’m sure you’ll tell me.”
“I hear that no matter what I do, I lose,” he says.
“If I sit on my hands and let a man threaten you, I’m not protecting you.
If I push back, I’m exploiting you. If I stay, I’m sacrificing some imagined bright future.
If I ever did leave, which I’m not planning to do, I’d be proof that you were right about people all along. ”
I swallow hard. The room tilts a little.
“I’m frustrated,” he says, “And I’m tired of trying to prove myself to you. You’re scared, and I get that. But for God’s sake, don’t turn me into every person who ever walked out on you.”
He lets go of the chair. Steps back.
“I’m gonna go check the pump again,” he says. “And try not to say anything else we can’t unsay.”
“Go ahead.”
He grabs his jacket from the back of the other chair.
The back door opens and closes without fanfare. The sound of his boots fades on the porch. I sink into the chair Jack was holding a minute ago and press my fingertips to my eyes until sparks bloom behind them.
Jack’s right; I am scared. I’m terrified and halfway to grieving things I haven’t lost yet.
If the grant falls through, I could lose the orchard.
If Jack decides one day that he’s done fighting battles he didn’t ask for, I could lose him.
But only one of those losses is supposed to feel survivable, and I’m not sure anymore which one.