11. Bree
— ? —
Bree
The crates were heavy, but the conversation was heavier.
“She just asked you outright?” Molly stopped loading tomatoes long enough to stare at me. “Just like that?”
“Just like that.” I grabbed another crate from the truck bed, feeling the familiar strain in my shoulders. “Where is my daddy. Why doesn’t he come to my soccer games. You know, light topics.”
“Lord have mercy.” Dot shook her head. She’d closed the diner early to help with the Saturday market setup, which she did most weeks because she said the gossip was better out here than behind the counter. “What did you tell her?”
“That he’s working far away. That it’s complicated.”
“The grown-up cop-out,” Martha observed. “Kids see right through that.”
“She did. Told me to my face that’s what grown-ups say when they don’t want to tell the truth.”
The women exchanged glances. I pretended not to notice.
We were setting up at my usual spot in the town square, the space between the gazebo and the old oak tree that I’d claimed four years ago and defended ever since.
The Saturday market was Marigold’s social center, the place where everyone came to buy produce and trade gossip and catch up on the week’s events.
The gazebo was white, freshly painted every spring by volunteers from the garden club.
The oak tree was ancient, its branches spreading wide enough to shade half the square.
Someone had hung a tire swing from one of the lower limbs, and kids were already gathering around it, arguing over whose turn it was.
My stall had the best tomatoes in three counties. Also the best eggs, the best lettuce, and the best sweet peppers, all grown on ten acres that I’d pulled back from the dead with my own two hands.
Pulled back from the dead. That wasn’t a figure of speech.
The first summer, I lost an entire planting to a heat wave I never saw coming.
Two months of work, a whole field of seedlings, cooked in their rows in a single week while I stood at the fence and watched it happen, unable to afford to run the irrigation long enough to save them.
That night I sat on the rotted porch step with a bank balance I couldn’t stand to look at, and I let myself imagine calling my mother and asking for a ticket home.
Then Rosie kicked for the first time, a small insistent flutter under my ribs, and I was done feeling sorry for myself.
The next morning, I got up and started over.
I read every library book Marigold owned on dryland farming, dug the irrigation trenches by hand because I couldn’t afford to rent the trencher, wrapped my blistered hands and kept digging.
I learned which of Ruth’s warnings to heed and which to wave off.
Most of all, I came to know this land the way I’d once learned to read a boardroom full of men who wanted to underestimate me, and somewhere in the middle of it I stopped being the woman who had waited by a Manhattan window for a husband who never came.
I never noticed the exact day it happened. But somewhere in that first brutal year I became a woman who could look at a dead field and see next season. Someone Rosie would never have to apologize for.
That was who stood behind the tomato table now. And she wasn’t going to let anyone, least of all a man in a rented truck, make her small again.
“What are you going to do?” Molly asked. She handed me a stack of paper bags, brown and crisp, stamped with the farm’s name. Salazar Farm, est. by a girl who left. I’d made that stamp myself, carved it from a block of rubber during Rosie’s first winter.
“I don’t know.”
“You’ve got to give her a real answer eventually. She’s getting older. The questions are only going to get harder.”
“I know.”
“What if she needs to meet him someday?” This from Ruth, who was eighty-two and had opinions about everything.
She was wearing her usual outfit: overalls, a flannel shirt, and boots that had seen more decades than most people.
“What if she grows up wondering, and the wondering turns into resentment, and she spends her whole adult life in therapy trying to figure out why her mama lied to her?”
“Thank you, Ruth. That’s very comforting.”
“I’m not here to comfort. I’m here to speak truth.” Ruth jabbed a finger at me. “That child has a right to know where she came from. Even if where she came from is a jackass.”
“He’s a jackass,” I confirmed. “A rich, oblivious, phone-obsessed jackass who made me feel invisible for two and a half years.”
“Tell us how you really feel,” Dot muttered.
“Plenty of kids grow up with one parent,” Dot added. “Mine did. Turned out fine.”
“Your son is forty-three and still lives in your basement,” Martha pointed out.
“He pays rent.”
“He pays thirty dollars a month, Dot.”
“Rent is rent.”
Dot folded her arms. She’d been defending that son since before I moved to town, and she wasn’t about to quit now over anything as small as facts.
“Thirty dollars doesn’t cover the electricity he uses playing video games until 3 a.m.”
“He’s between jobs.”
“He’s been between jobs since 2015.”
The argument devolved from there, everyone talking over everyone else, opinions flying about fathers and daughters and the psychological damage of secrets. I let them argue. It was easier than joining in.
I arranged tomatoes on the display table. Big ones in the back, small ones in the front. The colors ranged from deep red to orange to the pale yellow of the heirlooms I’d started growing last year. They smelled like summer, like dirt, like everything I’d built from nothing.
“What about you?” Molly’s voice was quieter, meant just for me. She’d moved closer, her shoulder brushing mine. “Forget Rosie for a second. What about Bree?”
“What about me?”
“When are you going to move on?”
I laughed. “I’ve moved on. I have a farm and a daughter and a self-defense class and a Saturday market stall and a pig who thinks he’s a dog. That’s moving on.”
“That’s building a life. It’s not the same as moving on emotionally.” Molly leaned closer. “When’s the last time you went on a date?”
“I don’t have time to date.”
It came out flip and automatic, the answer I gave everyone who asked. Molly wasn’t everyone, and she didn’t blink.
“You have time to teach a roomful of women how to flip attackers, but you don’t have time for coffee with a nice man?”
“Coffee leads to expectations.” I counted it off on my fingers. “Expectations lead to disappointment. Disappointment leads to me eating ice cream alone in my kitchen at 2 a.m. I’m cutting out the middleman.”
“Bree.”
“I’m not ready, Molly. I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready.”
The other women had stopped arguing. They were all looking at me now, with expressions ranging from sympathy to exasperation.
“What about Peter?” Martha asked.
I felt my face heat. “What about him?”
“Don’t play dumb. He’s been sweet on you since you got here. Everyone knows it.”
“Peter is the sheriff. He’s nice to everyone.”
“He’s handsome,” Martha said. “Tall, steady, good job. And those blue eyes.”
I flinched.
The blue eyes were exactly the problem. Peter had blue eyes, pale and clear, and every time I looked at them I saw someone else’s face looking back.
“His eyes remind me of someone,” I said quietly.
The women fell silent. They knew who. They’d never met Rafael, never knew the full story, but they knew enough. They knew I’d come here broken, and that Rosie’s father was absent, and that some wounds took longer to heal than others.
“Maybe that’s the point,” Molly said gently. “Maybe seeing those eyes in a different face is how you learn to stop flinching.”
I didn’t have an answer for that.
The wind picked up, rustling the leaves of the oak tree. A cloud passed over the sun, dimming the square for a moment before the light returned.
“Fine,” I said instead. “One date. Maybe. If Peter asks again. One coffee, in a public place, with clear expectations of nothing else.”
The women erupted in cheers loud enough to startle the birds from the oak tree. A flock of sparrows took flight, swirling into the sky in a pattern that looked almost choreographed.
“It’s just coffee,” I protested.
“It’s a start,” Ruth declared. “And starts are how things begin.”
“That is literally what the word means, Ruth.”
“Don’t sass your elders.”
The market opened. People started filtering through, examining produce, making small talk, dropping dollars into the cash box. I fell into the rhythm of it, the familiar dance of selling and chatting and being a part of a whole larger than myself.
“Morning, Bree.” Mr. Henderson picked up a tomato, turned it over in his hands. “These look good.”
“Best of the season. The rain last week did them a favor.”
“I’ll take a dozen. And some of those peppers.”
“Coming right up.”
I bagged his produce, made change, wished him well.
The next customer was already stepping up.
Mrs. Nakamura, looking for eggs. Then the Wilsons, buying lettuce for a party.
Then a young couple I didn’t recognize, tourists probably, exclaiming over the “authentic small-town charm” in voices loud enough to carry.
The morning passed. Rosie arrived around noon, dropped off by her babysitter, and immediately began “helping” by rearranging tomatoes into what she called “rainbow order.”
“They’re all red, baby.”
“But different reds, Mommy. Can’t you see?” She held up two tomatoes, one deep crimson and one more orange. “This one’s happy red. This one’s sunset red. They’re completely different.”
“I stand corrected.”
“You’re sitting,” Rosie said, unimpressed.
“It’s an expression.”
“Expressions are weird.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
I let her arrange the tomatoes while I helped customers, keeping one eye on her small form as she worked with intense concentration.
Her tongue poked out of the corner of her mouth when she focused.
Rafael used to do the same thing. I’d noticed it once, watching him read contracts, and I’d thought it was endearing.
Now I just thought about genetics. About the ways our children carry pieces of us we never meant to give them.
Around two o’clock, Molly nudged my arm.
“Who’s that?”
I looked where she was pointing. A man was standing near the edge of the market, well-dressed in a way that didn’t fit Marigold, holding up his phone to take pictures.
Not pictures of the market in general. Pictures of my stall.
He was wearing a button-down shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbows. Pressed khakis. Shoes that were definitely not made for walking on dirt. His hair was neat, his face clean-shaven, his whole appearance screaming corporate in a town that didn’t know the meaning of the word.
“I don’t know.”
“He’s been circling for twenty minutes. Third time he’s passed by you.”
I felt the familiar prickle at the back of my neck. The instinct I’d developed in four years of looking over my shoulder, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“Watch Rosie,” I said.
I walked toward him, casual but purposeful. He saw me coming and lowered his phone. His smile appeared quickly, practiced. He made his living being pleasant to strangers.
“Hi there.” His smile was polite. Professional. “Beautiful produce. This your operation?”
“It is. Can I help you?”
“Actually, yes.” He reached into his jacket pocket. “I’m doing some research on small farms in the area. Our company is developing a new sourcing program, trying to connect with local producers for sustainable supply chains.”
He handed me a business card.
The card was heavy stock. Expensive. A business card that cost more than most people spend on groceries.
I looked down at it.
The logo and the name were both familiar. The words printed in crisp black font were the same words I’d seen on every document, every contract, every piece of my former life.
Grant Foods.
The world tilted, and the noise of the market faded. Everything narrowed to the card in my hand, to those two words, to the company that had swallowed my husband and spit out a stranger.
“Interesting operation you’ve got here.” The man was still talking, oblivious to the way my blood had turned to ice. “How many acres? What’s your annual yield? We’re looking for partners who can scale up while maintaining quality.”
I couldn’t speak.
Grant Foods.
They’d found me. Not Rafael himself, maybe, but the company. The machine. The thing that had consumed every dinner, every birthday, every moment I’d tried to matter.
The thing that was now standing in my town square, taking pictures of my tomatoes.
“Ma’am? Are you all right?”
I looked up at him. This corporate scout in his pressed shirt and his shiny shoes, holding a phone full of pictures of my farm, my stall, my daughter who was right there, twenty feet away, rearranging tomatoes.
My daughter with Rafael’s eyes.
“I’m fine,” I heard myself say. “Just surprised. We don’t get many corporate types out here.”
“We’re expanding our reach. Trying to find the gems that slip under the radar.” He smiled again. “I’d love to set up a meeting with whoever handles your accounts. Talk numbers. See if there’s a fit.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“Great.” He pulled out another card. “Here’s my direct line. The name’s Harrison. Call anytime.”
He walked away. I watched him go, watched his pressed khakis disappear into the crowd, watched until I couldn’t see him anymore.
I stood there in the middle of the market, holding a business card with the name of the company my ex-husband ran, feeling the cold spread from my boots to my spine.
Four years.
Four years of building. Four years of hiding. Four years of convincing myself that I was safe here, that he’d never find me, that the life I’d made was mine and mine alone.
And now Grant Foods was taking pictures of my tomatoes.
“Mommy?” Rosie’s voice, behind me. “Mommy, who was that man?”
I turned. My daughter was looking up at me with those blue eyes, so much her father’s eyes, and my chest cracked.
“Nobody, baby.” My voice came out steady. A miracle. “Just someone asking about the farm.”
“Are we going to be on TV?”
“No, sweetheart. We’re not going to be on TV.”
“Oh.” She sounded disappointed. “Emma’s daddy was on TV once. He won a hot dog eating contest.”
“That’s very impressive.”
“He ate forty-seven hot dogs. That’s a lot of hot dogs.”
“It certainly is.”
I walked back to the stall. Molly took one look at my face and stepped closer.
“What happened?”
I handed her the card.
She read it. Her face went pale.
“Bree.”
“I know.”
“What are you going to do?”
I looked at my stall. My tomatoes. My daughter, back to rearranging produce with the focus of a tiny artist. She was humming a song from a cartoon she liked, her small hands moving with careful precision.
Four years of running.
It wasn’t enough.
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I need to figure it out fast.”