Chapter Eight
After Agnes left, Helen went back inside to work on the stew, the shadows of earlier pushed back a bit by the warmth of her
friend’s visit.
As she sliced vegetables, first the carrots, then potatoes and winter squash, she tried to fill her head with happy thoughts
of living in the forest with Wade. Two months ago, after dark, they had moved the rocking chairs from the front porch down
to the yard so they could gaze at the Perseids meteor shower. It was her second year seeing it from the clear skies of this
remote land, and it didn’t amaze her any less than the first time. Growing up in Seattle under the city lights, she’d barely
been able to even see stars, let alone the trails of gold shooting across the galaxy.
Everything wasn’t bad out here.
She could do this.
After a while, she heard the rumble of Wade’s old Ford pickup truck. The sun was still above the trees, so Helen was surprised
he was back already.
She went to the front door and opened it, leaned against the doorframe, and watched him climb out of the truck in his dirty work clothes.
Even when Wade looked tired, as he did now, he still looked so solid.
Not long after they met, Helen had taken him to Gas Works Park in Seattle.
She’d been there several times before, but Wade had moved from his farm in central Oregon only a month earlier, and there were so many things he didn’t know about the city.
While he’d marveled at the rust red remains and the gray towers of the former coal gasification plant, she had marveled at the size of his shoulders, and it was the first time since Tyler’s murder she’d felt anything close to safety.
Every now and then, she still felt like that woman in Gas Works Park when she looked at him.
At the farmhouse’s front door, Wade greeted her with a little kiss, careful not to get her dirty.
Helen asked, “How was everything today?”
“I finished marking the trees.”
“Good. I’ll run you a bath.”
“Actually, no,” he said. “I need to head into town. I missed out on a good deer today. There’s some kind of issue with my
firing pin.”
Wade kept a rifle on the mounted rack in his truck, and sometimes when he was working in the trees, he lucked out and got
a deer or elk or wild turkey.
Helen’s eyebrows rose. “You’re going to town?”
“Yeah. I’ll drop the rifle off at the gun shop and pick up a part for the truck. It’ll take me a couple hours.”
“Maybe I should go with you.” She wouldn’t say a word about pizza this time. She would stay quiet, roll down the truck window,
and look out at the storefronts. She’d simply make eye contact with people on the street, and if she saw a dog, she’d pet
it. That’s all. Then she’d use the phone in the corner market to call her mother, and she’d buy herself a small box of strawberries,
because they were her favorite fruit and her crop was done for the season.
Wade asked, “Is that stew you were making ready?”
“Not yet. I got a little sidetracked . . .”
“With what?”
Tyler and a revolver and a raven and a poem and Agnes. “Just chores.”
“I’ll be starving by the time I get back.”
Helen swallowed her disappointment and nodded.
“Great,” Wade said. “I just need to grab a few things from the shed.”
He started across the yard. He was halfway to the shed when Helen spoke again. “I hate cooking.”
Wade stopped and turned back. “What?”
Helen said, “What?”
He looked at her strangely, and she could tell that his What hadn’t been a challenge. He really hadn’t heard her. “What did you say?” he repeated.
“Nothing. Just . . . I hate the shed.”
“Yeah, I need to organize it.”
Wade disappeared into the shed. She stayed there, leaning against the doorframe, arms folded across her chest, as he clanged
and banged around for a couple of minutes. It seemed ironic that he was the one going into town alone these days while she
stayed behind. He wasn’t antisocial exactly, but he didn’t crave interactions with people the way she used to in her past
life. He was content as a loner, and from the little bits he’d been willing to share about his life in Oregon, she’d come
to understand that he’d been frustrated when the ma and pop stores on main street started closing and the housing developments
started creeping onto the surrounding farmland. The shuttering of the local feed store had been the final blow. The closest
big box store had told Wade to place orders on their app, but he’d only had a flip phone and no interest in upgrading to a
smartphone. Helen wondered, if they hadn’t met in Seattle, would this plan have ever come to fruition? Would he have done
it alone, or had it required the perfect storm of two restless souls? One soul weary of the modern world and one soul aching
for an escape and willing to try almost anything as long as it was different.
When Wade emerged again from the shed, he looked surprised to find Helen still there at the door, just staring. He held up a tool as if it was some kind of explanation.
“Be back soon!” he said as he climbed into his truck.
She stayed in the doorway until the truck rounded the bend in the dirt driveway. Then she returned to the kitchen and stared
at her pile of partially chopped vegetables.
Every once in a while there were meteor showers, but most days there were just potatoes.