Chapter 10 #3
“Girls love scars because they show how badass we are,” Luke said. “Who was that actor with that scar running down his face?” Luke snapped his fingers twice. “Michael K. Williams. Now, that’s a cool-ass scar.”
“Real men don’t need scars to impress women.” Tibb stood and lifted his shirt, revealing a sculpted chest, a six-pack of abs, and four small circular scars. “Some of us just have what it takes.”
We all laughed, even me, though I couldn’t stop thinking about the scars. “How did you get those scars?” I asked.
“Our foster care father liked to discipline us by putting his cigarettes out on us.”
I gasped and shot a hand to my mouth. “I’m so sorry.”
Tibb smiled weakly. “It was a long time ago. Plus, these are nothing compared to the one I gave him,” he said, looking at Jackson.
I had absorbed bits of Jackson’s story, Luke’s, and now Tibb’s.
Each revelation was like a drop of ink spreading across a piece of paper, darkening the space with the weight of their troubled pasts.
The patterns were disquieting: Jackson’s grief over his mother, Luke’s escape from an abusive home, and now Tibb’s years in foster care.
It was as if I was piecing together a somber mosaic of their lives, one I wasn’t sure how to comprehend.
I hadn’t anticipated this convergence of hardship.
I didn’t know what I had expected, just… not this.
I followed Tibb’s eyes. “Do you have them too?” I asked Jackson.
Jackson raised his shirt, revealing two similar scars I hadn’t noticed, in almost the same place, his face expressionless.
“That’s horrible,” I said.
“They healed a long time ago,” Jackson said.
“They can either be a reminder of what happened or proof that you survived,” Tibb said.
I had never thought of my scar in such a way. But looking around at each of their faces, I saw they all did—the well-earned scars and the bad ones. That it could be that easy.
“I have a scar,” I said, surprising myself, my voice small.
Tibb set down his mug; Luke rested the spatula beside the pan.
Taking a deep breath, I stood and lifted my shirt to just below my breasts, cupping them to reveal my scar.
Tibb stood, taking his plate to the sink. Jackson sipped his coffee. Luke covered his eyes with his hand.
A chill ran through me. I wanted to drop my hands and run and keep running. I was trying—trying to be part of the community. I inhaled deeply again and managed to say, “What? I can’t show you my scar?”
Luke turned his head back to me, his hand covering his eyes. “It’s not the scar; it’s”—he wagged his finger around—“you know.”
“Y’all act like you’ve never seen breasts before,” I said.
“Not yours,” Tibb and Luke said in unison.
“I’m not shy.”
They still didn’t turn around.
“So no one is going to look?” I asked.
Jackson set his mug down, scooted his chair closer, and leaned in. His breath brushed my skin and his eyes traveled the length of my ribs before finding my scar. “How did you get that?” His voice was so soft.
I swallowed hard as I lowered my shirt. “Jumping out of a window.”
Jackson stared at me. I tensed against the inevitable questions I assumed he would ask. But Jackson turned to Luke and said, “I think this one is better than your surgery scar, Luke.”
“What? Let me see.”
I raised my shirt again. Luke leaned in, studying it.
“Whoa… That is a cool scar, Leigh.” He slung his leg across the table and pulled his pants leg up to the knee.
A jagged, bubbled scar traveled up his leg.
“And I love you for trying, but ain’t nuthin’ beating this beauty.
Sorry. Broken in three places, and a steel rod to hold it together.
Doc said he ain’t never seen anything like it. ”
Tibb pushed Luke’s leg off the table. “Nobody wants to see that ugly thing.”
“Calandra did after you dumped her.”
We spent the rest of the breakfast laughing, and by the end, I couldn’t help but appreciate why they did this.
I could see why Jackson insisted on these meals, and I felt a strange sense of gratitude for the piece of incredible luck that had landed me here with them.
It felt right, perfect in a world that was anything but.
There would be many more conversations over meals with them, but I would come to favor this first one the most. Here, with them, I found myself equal.
Not because of our shared past but because it was the first moment I felt that I had come to live in the world again.
“Now, get out so I can clean,” Luke said eventually, a playful edge in his voice as he waved the dish towel at us.
“I’ll clean,” I said as Tibb left the room. “I don’t mind.”
Luke threw the towel at me with a flick of his wrist and darted away, laughing. “The soap is under the sink. Thanks, Leigh!”
Jackson remained, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, his eyes moving from the floor to the ceiling as if searching for the right words. His hands moved in and out of his pockets.
“Thank you,” he said finally, his fingers tapping the table twice as if to punctuate his gratitude.
This time I didn’t demand he spell out his meaning. “You said breakfast and dinner, right?”
“Yeah…”
“Okay. I’ll be here,” I said, weaving the dish towel around my fingers.
Jackson moved toward the door. But as I watched his retreating form, words came together and bubbled up inside me, ready to burst out. “I don’t know how to do this,” I said, the confession floating out with a surprising lightness even though I thought I was letting go of something heavy.
He turned back to me. “Do what?”
“This,” I said, my hand gesturing over the now-empty table.
I didn’t know if I was making sense; I hadn’t said the right words. But Jackson seemed to understand, his gaze settling on the floor before meeting mine again. He sighed deeply. “I think you did pretty good today.”
“How did you learn?” There was a thread of desperation in my voice now, one I had not expected.
He looked at me with a somberness that deepened the shadows in his eyes. “We did the work.”
“I don’t know if I can,” I said, picking at the dish towel in my hand. It seemed like an impossible task.
Jackson closed the distance between us and lifted my chin with his forefinger. “You can. I’ll help you.” His voice was low, calming, soothing.
I stared into his eyes and relaxed mine. “Like you helped Tibb and Luke?”
“Like I helped myself.”
I shrugged, the thought rebelling and wrestling within me, like a demon trapped inside, struggling to free itself. “Okay. Might as well.”
“That’s not good enough, Leigh,” Jackson said, his tone firm but not unkind.
His hands slid into his pockets. “I need to know that you really want to do this, because it’s not going to be easy.
It’s hard. Because facing our past is never easy.
It’s like peeling back layers of an onion: Each layer reveals something painful, but it also brings us closer to understanding ourselves. Are you ready for that?”
I nodded.
“I need to hear you say it. Say the words, Leigh.”
“I’m ready.”
“Good,” he said.
“What do I have to do?”
After breakfast, Jackson, Luke, and I started digging up the dahlia-tuber clumps. I heard Luke, who never missed an opportunity to express his disdain for all things dahlia, grumbling under his breath every time we shifted near each other, he in his row and Jackson and I in ours.
“I started working on myself right here.” Jackson pointed to the ground.
“In the dirt, with dahlias,” he said, kneeling, his voice softening.
“My first summer here, my uncle assigned me to the dahlia section. It was after the first frost. Everything was dead. The flowers had wilted. The leaves had turned brown. I assumed he wanted me to pull them up and weed them. But he told me just because something appears dead doesn’t mean that it is.
He said they are still alive despite what you see on the outside.
You just have to dig below the surface to reach their heart.
” He paused, meeting my gaze. “Do you remember how we cut them back?”
I kneeled next to him. “We cut back the main stem and all the foliage, leaving a stem handle sticking up out of the ground,” I said.
Jackson nodded. “Dahlias are a lot of work.”
I chuckled, remembering. “Yeah.”
“But it’s worth it. And after all that work, we still have to wait because they’re not ready yet. Do you remember why?”
“Because cutting back signals for the tubers in the ground to set sprouts.”
“Cutting back also signals to the tubers that it’s time to toughen up for the winter.
” Using his hands, he carefully loosened the soil around a tuber clump.
“But we also wait so we can see the sprouts, because we can’t see them after we cut them back.
It takes time. And they need that time to come out. ” He looked at me. “You try it.”
I stuck my hands in the dirt, carefully loosened the soil in long strokes, digging, pushing, and scooping the soil out of the way. “Where is it?”
“Keep going; it’s there. You have to dig for it.”
I continued scooping dirt until my hands touched a fat tuber clump.
“From here, we have to remove the excess soil and clip off the root hairs.” He lifted the tuber and reached for the loppers. “Now we cut off the stem handle near the base.”
After cutting off the stem handle, Jackson placed it in a bag.
“I think you’ve figured out by now that we’ve all had a past, and I know you have one too.
Life has not been easy for any of us. You are not alone in that.
You asked me what you need to do; I think the first step is understanding your journey.
” He held up the bag containing the tuber clump.
“The work we’ve done on ourselves is like these dahlias.
You have to wait for the first frost to kill dahlias in order to dig them up.
That’s surrender. That’s you giving up the fight.
Even after the frost, there’s still more to do.
You have to cut them back and strip away everything—all the hurt, all the pain, everything that’s holding you back.
It’s a hard step, and it takes a lot of work.
And even then, you’re still not finished.
Then you must dig, reaching into the dirt with your bare hands to uncover what you’ve long buried. ”
That was when I realized Jackson’s true calling.
He wasn’t just a farmer, but a creator of safe places for his friends, a man with a brimming heart and a genuine concern for his community.
Everything he did, every action he took, stemmed from a deep commitment to those around him.
None of this had been an act with him—it was the very essence of who he was.
And that realization moved something within me.
“Why do you want to help me?” I said, a defensive edge creeping into my voice. “You don’t know me.”
“I know you, Leigh. I see you. I saw it the moment I met you.”
“Saw what?” I asked. It was an opening, one I noticed too late, a crack in my armor.
“That you’re running from something, someone, or yourself.
I first saw it in Luke, then in Tibb. They were so angry, so triggered.
The smallest things would set them off, and the anger just rested underneath the surface, ready to burst. I knew what that felt like.
I knew what they were going through. You were the same way. ”
“Is that what you do? Just walk around saving people? You want to save me?”
It was supposed to be a joke, but Jackson’s face stiffened. “You walk for miles without blinking. Work in the heat like it’s nothing. You’ve had a broken wrist for a month and never mentioned it,” he said. “You’re a tough woman, Leigh. You don’t need to be saved.”
“What do I need?” I asked, leaning in. Because I didn’t know, not really, and I wanted to. I wanted Jackson to tell me. Needed him to see something I couldn’t.
His eyes locked onto mine, peeling me open without trying.
And then he said, “Rest.”
The word landed like a stone in my chest. It was true. So true that my shoulders sank with the realization. I was tired. So tired, the kind of exhaustion that creeps up on you, unnoticed, until you finally stop moving.
“Rest, Leigh.” His voice softened, as though wrapping the words in something tender. “I can give you that here and I can help you sort through whatever you’ve buried. But you have to stop. You have to cut back your foliage and dig up your tubers.”
As we continued working, a question gnawed at me: Was I ready to confront my past?
It lingered deep within, a weight that I had always carried alone, and I found myself wondering what might happen if I finally brought those secrets into the light.
There was something else too, another layer: How much of this truth was I willing to share with Jackson?