Chapter 3
Teddy
Three months later
The gravel crunched under the tyres of my leased Subaru as I pulled into the familiar driveway, and for the first time in seven months I could properly breathe. The California air had felt thin and artificial in my lungs, but here in the Welsh countryside, everything settled back into place.
My favourite thing about arriving in the UK in springtime was always the colour.
I made a point to book a window seat on every flight here so I could get as early a glimpse as possible of the rolling green hills, the damp woodlands already bristling with wild garlic and stinging nettle, the stone walls and hedgerows threading through the landscape like ancient stitches, and the rain-cleared steel-blue of a sky that threatened, at any moment, to pitch you back into fog.
California always felt like a filter to me: too golden; too sure of itself.
Here, though, the light hit everything with a softness that didn’t exist anywhere else in the world, the air pressing right up into your face, cold and wet and wild, and I couldn’t wait to sink my fingers into the black dirt.
Despite the chill, I drove with the windows down, desperate to replace every molecule of California air with that of my home as quickly as I could.
My rental car lurched up the gravel track toward the old farmhouse, and my heart started its annual migration from my throat down into my gut.
I pulled in between the farm manager, Maggie’s, four-by-four and my aunt Jen’s van, which she’d had for nearly two decades – as long as I’d been coming here.
I killed the engine, taking in the silence for a moment before rolling the windows up.
Gwenynen Hollow was home. Not the cramped van I’d lived in the other half of the year until now; not the endless highways I drove from temporary gig to temporary gig; and certainly not my dad’s house, where I spent as little time as possible.
That hadn’t felt like home for a long time; before Dad’s downturn, before Mom passed, maybe even before she and I had started coming to Wales each summer.
No, my home was this little honey farm tucked into a valley that most people couldn’t even find on a map.
It was deceptively full given its tiny footprint; Jen and Mom and I had designed it that way, wanting it to be as efficient as possible.
The main workings of the farm lay off to my right, but I knew I’d be spending plenty of my time down there this summer, so I focused instead on the farmhouse to my left.
It was a classic Welsh longhouse: a two-storey home with an attached barn that Jen had converted a few years ago into her painting studio.
Today, despite the misty air, the accordion-style doors were flung wide, through which I glimpsed a vaguely Jen-shaped blur: salt-and-pepper curls and whatever brightly coloured boilersuit had been at the top of the pile.
Today, it was magenta. She was facing mostly away from me, and I could just about see the landscape she was painting – it looked from here to be Gwenynen itself in the summertime.
She turned mid-brushstroke, caught sight of me, and brought her hands to her face. “You’re here!” she shouted as she ran toward me, dropping the brush on a table. I climbed out of the car and shut the door, just in time to be pressed back against it as she tackled me into a bear hug.
“Missed you, too,” I said into the mess of hair piled in front of my face. She pulled back, taking me in.
“Flight okay?”
“Hell is other people,” I said, reaching into the back seat for my bag, “but they let me in the country, so I can’t complain.”
I caught sight of something barrelling toward me out of the corner of my eye and turned just in time for a golden ball of fluff to launch itself into my arms.
“There you are, girl,” I said, nuzzling into Willow as she practically vibrated in my arms. I let her down, and her whole body wagged as I crouched to pet her. “I missed you so much.”
I’d rescued Willow six Marches ago and trained her that whole summer, and it killed me to be away from her for half the year.
It had been an extra month this time, too; I was desperate to save Jen a bit of money so we could save for a permanent work visa for me.
It had meant spending more time away from Willow and from my home, but I told myself I wouldn’t have to do that for much longer.
“She’s been pining,” Jen said, smiling down at us. “Barely ate for the first week after you left last time.”
I frowned. “I’m glad you didn’t tell me that at the time.
I hate leaving her.” I’d thought about taking her with me, but I hated the idea of putting her in a cargo hold for eleven hours; and plus, van life wasn’t always very dog friendly.
At least here she had a farm to run around on, and I knew Jen looked after her as well as I would have – maybe even better.
“I know you do,” Jen said as I stood, looping her arm around me and guiding me back toward the house. “Now, let’s get you settled in. We’ve got a lot to catch up on.”
“Isn’t Maggie around? I want to say hi.” I glanced over the gardens and beyond toward the orchard, hoping to catch a glint of silvery hair in a tight braid, but she was nowhere to be found.
Maggie had worked part time for Jen every spring and summer since Mom died, doing the heavy lifting – literally, despite being in her fifties – and helping with the supply chain side of the mead-making operation.
I’d always wondered if there was something between her and Jen, but neither had ever let on to anything of the sort.
“She headed home before the rain kicks off,” Jen said, throwing an arm around me and leading me inside. “But she’s just as excited to see you as you are to see her, I’m sure.”
Jen got me situated with a cup of tea, and I made my way up the narrow, carpeted stairs, each step creaking the same way it had for decades. Halfway up, my phone buzzed in my pocket, and I paused to take it out, even as Willow waited for me at the top. Who would be texting me now that I was here?
Sure enough, it was the only person it could be: my dad.
It was about four a.m. for him, which didn’t bode well; even in his soberest stretches, he’d never been an early bird. I liked the message – a meme about alpine climbing, even though I’d never been, and he knew that – then I re-pocketed my phone and continued up the stairs.
My room was exactly as I’d left it last September: mismatched bedding, stacks of gardening books and seed packets …
Jen had even left my old boots by the radiator.
She really hadn’t touched it in my time away.
In fact, it had been largely untouched for the last ten years, when all we’d done was clear out Mom’s stuff.
A single poster still adorned the wall above the bed, curling at the edges – Kate Bosworth in Blue Crush, back when I’d thought I wanted to be her, before I realised I had a blue crush of my own.
Before Mom had died, we’d shared the room on our visits, Mom on the bed and me on the pull-out trundle, even when I was longer and lankier than she was. It had taken me two years after she’d died to start sleeping in the bed myself.
Unpacking was easy when my only bag – the largest possible carry-on I could get away with – had been packed with military precision.
It was mostly day-to-day clothing I could wear to work on the farm – overalls, hole-pocked T?shirts, thick socks for under my steel-toe boots – but at the bottom of my bag was my festival outfit: the black tunic and black jeans I’d worn to every Medieval and Renaissance Faire I’d worked or attended.
I ran my finger over the seam beneath the tunic’s lacing at the neckline.
It was frayed slightly from how many times I’d had to wash it since the last time I’d worn it three months ago; the time I’d ended up soaked in mead.
I’d thought a lot since then about the girl who had run into me.
She’d been so beautiful and so apologetic, and I’d been such a dick.
I’d replayed the words I’d said to her over and over.
I’d meant them in the moment; she’d had a flippant air about her that rubbed me the wrong way.
But it hadn’t been fair to lash out at her like that.
I hadn’t even given her a chance to make things right.
I’d known I’d messed up as soon as I’d walked away.
My mistake had hit home even further when I’d found her number in my tote bag, and I’d gone as far as to pull out my phone and open WhatsApp, but I’d just stashed the paper away in my wallet instead.
I’d taken it out so many times since then that it was fabric soft, but each time, I’d stopped myself from reaching out.
I told myself that either she was nothing like what I’d said, and the whole thing had run off her back like the mead off my clothing because she knew I was full of shit, or she was exactly like what I’d said, and she’d needed to hear it. Needed a wake-up call.
Was I the one to give it to her? Maybe not. But she had gotten me fired, after all, and I had very little patience for people who didn’t think about the way their actions impacted others. It wasn’t actually that hard to think things through before doing them. I did it all the time.
But her face had stuck with me, covered in those temporary tattoo glitter freckles that every other person was wearing at the Ren Faire, her eyes wet and wide.
There had been something compelling about her.
Like if I’d shut up long enough to let her get a word in edgewise, she would have put me under some sort of spell.