Chapter 11
We walked the trail through the trees with Wendell out front, his tail sweeping back and forth like a metronome. He'd materialized at the treeline the way he always did, nose first, body wriggling, falling into formation as though he'd been waiting all morning for exactly this assignment.
Grace was telling one of her stories.
"Okay so there was this guy in my class, Kevin. Absolute nerd. Like, thick glasses, braces, didn't talk to anyone, sat in the back of every class reading manga or anime or whatever. The type of dude who got picked last for everything, you know? Completely invisible."
Scout walked beside her, stepping over roots with the easy balance of someone who'd spent her whole life in woods like these. Both Grace and I had tripped several times already in the early morning light.
"He was an outcast?" Scout asked.
"More like a non-entity."
"What happened to him?"
"What happened to him? What happened to him is that Kevin graduated, disappeared for like two years, and then showed up on the internet with perfect teeth, shoulders like a linebacker, and a career in gay porn."
Scout's eyes went wide. I suppressed a grin.
"Everyone from school lost their minds," Grace continued. "Like, apparently Kevin never showered in the locker room. Not once in four years. And now everyone knew why, because the camera does not lie, and Kevin was..."
Grace held her hands apart at a distance that seemed medically improbable.
"Hung like a show horse."
Scout let out a laugh that was half gasp. Her hand came up over her mouth.
"But that's not all. So I ran into him at a club like a couple years later.
He'd moved on to promoting, had an OnlyFans and was making real money.
Totally confident, totally comfortable. And when he was leaving he put his hand on my shoulder and said something beautiful about caterpillars becoming butterflies.
Like actually profound. Motivational. Life-changing, probably. "
"What did he say exactly?"
"I have absolutely no idea. I could not retain a single word because my mind was just looping with the knowledge of what was in those pants. I went full dick-brain, for real."
Scout laughed the laugh of someone who had never heard a story like this and was delighted that such stories existed.
I walked behind them and took it all in.
These two young women could not have been more different.
They had nothing in common, but they genuinely liked each other.
I could see it in the way they walked shoulder to shoulder, the way Grace matched Scout's pace without being asked, the way Scout leaned into Grace's stories rather than away from them.
Scout had never had a friend like Grace.
That was obvious. She'd grown up isolated, educated by her father and the Port Chasten library, surrounded by trees and literature and birdsong.
Grace was urban noise and color and profanity, a window into a world Scout had only read about.
And Grace, for her part, was fascinated by Scout.
The competence, the directness, the utter absence of pretense.
I remembered the night the three of us ate raccoon in my cabin.
Grace cross-legged on the floor, Scout explaining how she'd trapped and dressed the animal, Grace staring at her like she'd just watched someone perform a magic trick.
That was the night it started. Whatever this friendship was, it had roots now.
The treeline opened up before us.
Claire's farm spread below us, the rows of Camellia sinensis laid out in neat green lines, the weathered farmhouse anchoring the far end, the barn and chicken coop beyond it. Morning sun caught the dew on the tea plants and made the green rows shimmer.
Grace stopped.
"Holy shit."
She stood there taking it in, one hand absently finding Wendell's head. She scratched behind his ears and he leaned into her leg.
"Wendell, my man. You are one lucky dog. This is the nicest tea farm I've ever seen." She looked at me. "I mean, it's like the only tea farm I've ever seen, but still."
We walked down the slope toward the farmhouse. Claire stood near the first row of tea plants with a pair of hedge shears in one hand and a canvas bag slung over her shoulder. Her red hair was tied back and she wore a tank top under an open canvas jacket, work gloves tucked into her back pocket.
She watched us come down the hill with an expression that started as curiosity and settled into something warmer.
"Good morning," she greeted us. "I wasn't expecting a whole crew."
"Second harvest," I said. "We came to help."
"All of you?"
"All of us."
"Okay, but..." Grace raised her hand. "Full disclosure, I have killed a cactus before. Like, a store-bought cactus that came with instructions. So temper your expectations."
Claire looked at her, then at Scout, then at me. A flash of emotion moved across her face, quick and private, before she tucked it away.
"Well. I won't turn down extra hands."
A screen door banged. DJ came around the side of the farmhouse at a half-run, blonde hair catching the light. He slowed when he saw the group, assessing. His eyes moved from Grace to Scout to me. He walked straight to where I stood and stopped about two feet away.
"Hey, DJ."
"Hey. You guys want gloves? Mom's got extra pairs in the barn."
"I'd take a pair, yeah."
He turned and jogged toward the barn. He came back with gloves for everyone. He handed mine to me first, then distributed the rest with the seriousness of a quartermaster issuing field equipment.
Claire led Scout and Grace to the nearest row of tea plants and pulled down the contraption from her bag. It looked like a hedge trimmer mated with a vacuum cleaner.
As Claire explained how to use the specialized trimmer, I turned my attention to DJ.
"You see the game last night?" I asked with a raised eyebrow.
"Blown save," DJ nodded. "Should have used Garcia."
"I agree. Manager blew that call. He's too fixated on the lefty matchups."
Claire was demonstrating how to use the trimmer. The trimmer hummed to life and swept across the top of the bush, and a shower of tender leaf tips funneled through the baffle and down the chute into the collection basket. Scout and Grace watched intently.
"So, any new dinosaurs you're reading about?"
"I'm reading about birds now," DJ said brightly. "Birds came from dinosaurs."
"Really? Dang, that's interesting. I got something to show you later. Remind me, will you?"
"Okay," he grinned.
Claire unstrapped the battery pack and handed the picker to Scout. DJ rushed to get trimmers for me and Grace.
Scout was already starting down the row. Her first pass was cautious, feeling the resistance of the stems, reading how the plant gave way.
Claire stood at the other end of the row watching her. Scout stopped and held up a handful of cuttings.
"These? Or am I taking too much stem?"
Claire examined them. "Those are perfect."
By her third pass, Scout found the rhythm. Within twenty minutes she was working at Claire's pace, her row shrinking behind her in clean, even cuts.
DJ appeared beside Scout's basket and inspected its contents. He picked through the cuttings, discarding one stem that had too much wood on it.
"You're almost as good as my mom."
Grace, meanwhile, was at war.
She stood in the next row over, trimmer in hand, staring at the bush in front of her like it owed her money.
Her first cut went too deep. Her second took a chunk of mature growth that had no business being harvested.
Her third mangled a section so badly that she stepped back and looked at it with genuine horror.
"Claire, I need you to know that I am performing a hate crime on these plants."
Claire walked over and looked at the damage. To her credit, her expression remained steady.
"You're angling the blades down. Keep them flat."
Grace tried again. Better, but only marginally.
"Claire, I am so, so sorry for what I'm doing to your livelihood. I swear I'm not this useless at everything."
Claire studied her for a moment, then took the trimmer from her hands with gentle authority.
"Come with me."
She led Grace to the harvest station. A long table was set up under a canvas awning near the barn, stacked with empty wooden crates alongside a hanging scale.
"This is where we need speed. Every basket that comes in gets weighed, sorted, and packed into these crates. The buyer wants twenty-pound crates, packed firm but not crushed. Think of the leaves like they're sleeping. You want them snug, not suffocated."
"Snug, not suffocated. Got it."
"DJ." Claire turned to her son. "Show Grace how we pack."
DJ walked Grace through the process. Where to set the scale, how to read the weight. How to layer the leaves in the crate so they wouldn't bruise on the drive to Seattle.
Grace listened. Then she started working.
Within fifteen minutes, the table was transformed.
Grace reorganized the layout, moved the scale to eliminate a reaching motion, and stacked empty crates in a cascade that put the next one always within arm's length.
She packed with speed and consistency, her hands moving with the efficiency of someone who understood workflow at a bone-deep level.
Everything in reach. No wasted motion. No hesitation.
Like she was working in the kitchen of her parents' restaurant.
Grace didn't notice what she was doing, but I did. Claire noticed too. We glanced at each other across the yard and shared a look that said the same thing. Wherever Grace had learned to work like that, it wasn't from cleaning motel rooms.
The morning wore on. The baskets kept coming. Me and Scout and Claire worked the rows while Grace carried full baskets to the packing station and carried empty ones back. DJ floated between all of us, helping where he could.