Chapter 6 #2
After dinner – cheese, leeks, and carbs, like most late-spring meals on the farm – I went to check the soap moulds.
They were setting well, and the honey and vanilla scent was strong enough to make me want to eat one.
Tomorrow, I would remove them from the moulds, each bar perfect, ready for their sleek new labels.
Before we could sell them, I had to send a couple dozen bars off to a lab that would certify that they wouldn’t melt someone’s skin off or some such disaster.
Then we could add them to our website and our stall line-up, and maybe have another income stream.
I was determined not to let my own projects drop just because Chloe was in the picture.
I still wasn’t convinced she was capable of doing what she’d been tasked with, based on the carelessness she’d shown when we’d met at the Ren Faire.
Sure, I wasn’t blameless. But she’d been careless and inconsiderate, and I didn’t trust her not to treat her work at Gwenynen the same.
I eventually made it up to my room, stripped off my filthy clothes, and collapsed onto the bed in my underwear.
Willow jumped up and curled herself into the curve of my legs, her breath warm against my calves, her fur sticking to the sweat that glistened on my skin.
I could see through the window that the sky outside had turned black and glossy, one star shining through in the clear patch above the hill.
I patted myself on the back for a job well done on my first day back.
Mentally, of course; after said first day back, I could barely move.
I closed my eyes, willing myself to sleep, but, of course, I couldn’t be so lucky. The moment my eyelids flickered closed, my vision was filled with flowing auburn hair, sparkling hazel eyes, and a slight smirk that wound me up so tightly I might explode.
It was going to be a long summer.
* * *
Maggie came to dinner the following night, but she scarpered so quickly afterward that I was sure there was some sort of emergency.
It was only when I’d caught her and Jen whispering in the front doorway that I suspected it was out of awkwardness.
I wondered, not for the first time, what their time together had looked like whilst I’d been away.
Jen finally broke our semi-standoff, presumably to avoid addressing Maggie’s sudden departure, broaching the subject of our new hire instead.
“I hope you’ll give Chloe a chance,” she said, as I cleared the plates from the table.
I shrugged, but I could feel her watching me, waiting for more.
She moved to stand next to me and started washing the dishes. “You did the cooking. I’ll do the clean-up. House rules.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “But you’re not getting out of the after-dinner talk.”
“Since when is that a rule?”
“Since I decided,” she said, and there was an edge to it. Not unkind, but not optional either.
We passed plates and cutlery back and forth as I dried what she washed. We didn’t speak for a couple of minutes, the silence broken only by the clatter of dishes and the slosh of dishwater.
“You’ve been in a mood since you got here,” she said, handing me a plate.
“Just tired,” I replied, which was true, but not the whole truth, of course.
She let that sit, then tried another angle as she scrubbed at the baking dish I’d used. “I know you, Teddy. You’re mad I hired someone without your sign-off.”
“Doesn’t matter,” I lied. “Your farm, your rules.”
She shook her head. “It’s ours. You know that.”
I looked at my hands, at the little crescent of dirt under one thumbnail, and tried to find a neutral response. I failed.
“She’s not going to last,” I said. “We’ll be worse off for having hired her.”
Jen kept scrubbing, unfazed. “Because?”
I hesitated, then decided to just let it out. Jen deserved to know what she was getting into. “She’s flaky. She doesn’t take things seriously. We … we actually met before. She was the one who got me fired from the Ren Faire a few months back.”
Jen set the baking dish down in the soapy water and turned to gape at me. “The keg of mead?”
I nodded.
“That’s what this is about? Seriously?”
“She cost me a job, Jen,” I said, a slight exasperated whine in my voice. I didn’t like how childish I sounded. “She’s careless. Self-centred. I don’t trust her.”
Jen leaned forward, bracing herself on the edge of the Belfast-style sink, thinking.
“People mess up, Teddy. Accidents happen to everyone.” She paused, her eyes squinting slightly in concentration, as if picking the next words with tweezers.
“She’s smart, Teddy. She’s got ideas. Really good ones, if you’d bother to ask. ”
I stared, blinking, parsing through my thoughts in real time. “Then why didn’t you discuss them with me, if they were so good?”
Jen’s face flickered with guilt, and she sighed affectionately. “I didn’t want to upset you. You always want to do things yourself. You always think you’re the only one who cares enough to get it right.”
“That’s not fair,” I said, heat rising in my chest. Besides, that wasn’t the point. It wasn’t about the way things were done; it was about the money. What hiring someone else meant for me. Why wouldn’t Jen acknowledge that?
“It’s true, though.” She softened. “I know you want to be here. I know you want this place to succeed. But you can’t build it alone. Neither can I. We need help if we’re going to grow. If we want to make a difference.”
There was a long silence. Willow could sense my emotion and came to curl up at my feet, her chin pressed to my shin.
Jen reached over and laid her hand on mine. “Let her help. If she screws up, we’ll handle it, you and me. But I really don’t think she will, Ted.”
I wanted to argue – to say that a single mistake could ruin a whole season; a whole business – to tell Jen that, if Chloe screwed up, I wouldn’t be here to handle it, because we’d spent all the money on hiring her – but, instead, what came out was, “You didn’t even ask.”
Jen’s eyes glistened, just a little. “You’re right. And I should have. I’m sorry. Do you think you can find it in your honey-glazed heart to forgive me?”
It was what Mom had always said – that I had a honey-glazed heart. Tough to crack, but sweet. I smiled despite myself; despite the fact that it didn’t feel like we’d actually acknowledged the problem.
“Nothing to forgive,” I muttered. On some level, I meant it; I didn’t want to be fighting with Jen. She was a big part of what made Gwenynen feel like home.
“And you’ll give Chloe a chance?”
I exhaled slowly – that one was harder. But, if Jen was right, and Chloe had ideas that could actually grow the farm, then I supposed I owed her the chance to prove that she could tough it out. And maybe – just maybe – that growth would help me stick around, eventually.
“Fine,” I conceded, then picked the dish back up out of the water and handed it to Jen. “Now, scrub, will ya?”
* * *
But later, when the house was quiet and I lay in bed, the question buzzed on, louder than any hive.
I reached for my phone to comb through the information yet again.
I opened the folder labelled “VISAS” and scrolled through the PDFs the solicitor had sent last year: requirements for a Skilled Worker visa, a cost breakdown of sponsorship and fees, the laughable estimate of what an “entry-level agricultural manager” was supposed to earn in the UK.
I knew it all by heart. Unless we tripled production, or Jen won the lottery, there was no way to swing it before next season now that Chloe had been hired.
To other businesses, it might have been a drop in the ocean.
But to a small, sustainable honey farm, it was the ocean entire.
I’d promised myself it would be different this year.
Less spending, more products, more events.
The soap line, maybe some seasonal gift boxes, increasing the number of workshops – each was a desperate hope; a maybe.
Every time I ran the numbers now, it ended the same: I’d have to leave at the end of the season like I always did.
I’d have at least one more year of my current reality, bouncing between a six-month stint in Wales and the rest of the year back in California.
So far, I’d spent that time living out of my van and dodging calls from my dad, but my van had been on its last legs, so I’d offloaded it before flying over for the season, hoping the measly three and a half grand I got for it would help with visa costs.
So, would I even be able to return to the way I’d been living?
Would I have to move back in with my dad? The thought made my chest ache.
Speaking of whom, I had a voicemail notification I’d been ignoring since I’d woken up.
I looked down at it, nearly pressed play, and then chickened out and dropped the phone onto my stomach.
I reached up absentmindedly and pinched my coin between my fingers, running my thumb around its circumference.
Mom had given me the necklace on our last trip here before she’d died, the summer before my nineteenth birthday, her face paler and thinner than I’d ever known it, but still managing that sly half-smile every time she told a joke.
She’d had the coin pressed at another honey farm we’d visited in the English Midlands when I was six, then turned it into a pendant and wore it around her own neck every day since then.
That visit had been what inspired Jen to take a crack at beekeeping herself, too; though it would take her a visa marriage, a gay awakening, and a year of being basically homeless before Gwenynen itself could exist.