Chapter 4
Hope
I make it through dinner service and the breakfast rush washing dishes at The Friendly Table, but Bellamy is hard to contain to Mercy’s little office.
At the start of lunch—really mid-morning, but ranchers wake up early—she sneaks into the restaurant and starts talking to an obnoxious woman who asks her where her Daddy is.
And then when I scoop my daughter up, my shirt pulls up and that woman’s snakelike eyes zoom in on the ugly purple and yellow bruise on my side.
I immediately have a panic attack.
“Jessika is a you-know-what who needs to mind her own business more,” Mercy says quietly when she’s scooped Bellamy up and herded me into the back office. “It’s fine.”
I shake my head between hiccupping sobs. It’s not. I know it’s not.
“There are shelters in the city. They have programs—”
I can’t tell her that I know about shelters. Tried one in Vancouver and didn’t last long. I need to get thousands of kilometres between me and my past. That’s the only thing that will help me breathe.
“I need my car,” I manage to whisper.
“Okay. You’re okay. We’ll figure something out.” She pushes a tissue into my hand. “Let’s find out how much it’ll cost to fix your car first, yeah? And how long.”
“I can’t afford it.” My voice cracks.
“One thing at a time. I know the guy who owns the garage. He can work on a payment system, or an IOU. Let me worry about him.”
I don’t deserve this kindness. But I’ve been on the run for five days, with almost no sleep, and I’m at my limit. I will greedily take whatever help Mercy can offer.
“Why don’t you take Bellamy back to my house for a nap?”
We stayed in the little carriage house behind the diner last night. I slept fitfully, the shadows closing in around us, every distant vehicle sound waking me up. I’m not sure if I can actually sleep during the day, but lying down still sounds shockingly good.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper again.
“I’m not. Go. I’ll come check on you after lunch.”
When we wake up, Mercy has brought us some soup, and a cookie for Bellamy as well.
“I talked to the mechanic,” she says. “He’ll tow your car over to the garage this afternoon, and he’ll do what he can for the least amount of money to get it driving again. In the meantime, he mentioned something else that I think you might want to consider.”
“What’s that?” I ask as I try to re-direct Bellamy to eat some soup before the cookie.
I give up pretty quickly.
“His mother is a vegetable farmer who needs some help with her spring kale harvest. She would have room for you and Bellamy in her house. It would be a quiet place to wait until your car is repaired—and the work you do for her could offset that cost.”
“Picking…kale?” I try not to sound skeptical, but it’s hard.
She nods vigorously. “You’ll understand when you see her gardens. And it’s not hard work, really. Not as hard as washing dishes.”
“I don’t mind hard work.” I swallow hard, fighting back against a visceral shudder at the thought of working in a garden.
I don’t have a green thumb, and kale is my nemesis.
I hated Derek’s high tunnel on the island.
It stank of mouse pee and rotting vegetation.
But I can see Mercy’s logic that a day or two of picking greens is probably going to be easier, mentally, than a restaurant full of strangers. “If Bellamy can be close by me?”
“Of course.” Mercy holds up her phone. “I thought we could do a quick video call with Luna, first? So you could get an idea for what this would entail.”
Nodding jerkily, I hold my breath as she pulls up a contact card on her phone and taps the video button.
The farmer answers on the third ring. The video takes a few seconds to clear up its signal, and when it does, I realize she’s in a greenhouse, kneeling in a row between raised beds.
She’s petite, dwarfed by huge, dark green leaves, and she has a bright, radiating energy. Wispy strands of dark brown hair have escaped a ponytail. She waves at the screen. “Hi Mercy.”
“Did Cash call you?”
“I might have missed a call, let me check.” She reaches for the phone, bringing it closer to her face. Up close, I can see slight lines around her eyes and mouth. She’s probably my mother’s age.
“He says your spring kale harvest is bonkers.” Mercy nudges the phone to the side to reveal me. “This is Hope. She’s been helping me in the kitchen, but she has a little girl and it’s hard to keep an eye on her at the same time. She’s only here for a few days, but she’s looking for some work.”
“Ah, yes, he texted me.” Luna refocuses on us. “Nice to meet you.”
“You too.” My voice sounds rough.
“Do you have any experience in a garden?”
I nod as Bellamy climbs onto my back. She waves at the screen. “Hi.”
Luna’s expression immediately softens, and for a moment, there’s something oddly familiar about the way she smiles at my daughter. “Hi, sweetheart. How old are you?”
“I’m three.”
“I understand you’re going to come and see my farm. Your Mommy is going to help me with my vegetables.”
“Mommy hates dirt,” Bellamy says dramatically. And not untruthfully.
I wince. “Not now, Bella.” I refocus on my potential employer. “I’m fine with dirt. And gardens, and kale. I’m happy to work hard, I promise.”
Luna nods and shrugs at the same time. “All right. I could use a spare set of hands, and I have lots of flowers for a three-year-old to investigate.”
“Flowers?” Bellamy gasps in an exaggerated way. “Mommy, let’s go see flowers!”
Mercy gives me another look, a wordless question. Yes? Is this okay?
I don’t know if anything is ever going to be okay again, but this does sound better than another shift washing dishes. I nod.
It doesn’t take long to gather our few belongings, then grab Bellamy’s car seat.
“Cash will tow your car over to the garage later,” Mercy promises me. “You don’t need to worry about it for a few days. Just focus on resting and working with Luna, and everything will sort itself out.”
I’m not sure how I’ll just focus on resting and working, but I do like the relief that I feel when we leave town, driving back the way I came in.
The vegetable farm isn’t far from where we pulled over the first time, in a gorgeous valley with mountains rising in the background.
We pass a few ranches on the way down the dusty side road, then at the very end, where the gravel road turns into a private late, we drive under a backlit gate made of large black beams.
Ponds and trees dot either side, and Bellamy sees horses in the pasture—that gets a shriek of delight.
After a terrifying week of flight and stress and pain, literal and emotional, that glee at seeing horses makes me want to cry.
My eyes burn as we pass a sprawling ranch house and pull to a stop in front of an octagonal greenhouse.
Maybe Mercy is right. Maybe I just need to take a few days here to rest with Bellamy, pick some kale for Luna, and gather the courage to keep running from the mistakes of my lust as soon as my car is fixed.
The door to the greenhouse opens and a small woman steps out. She’s shorter than me, and in person, her warm brown hair is streaked with grey.
Her dirt-smudged t-shirt says Hex the Patriarchy, which is unexpected enough that it eases the panic that makes it hard to breathe.
Just enough.
Mercy introduces us again.
“I’m thrilled to have some help,” Luna says.
“I’m not sure how much help I can be with a three-year-old,” I say, trying to set that clear expectation. “But as long as I can take frequent breaks to look at bugs that she finds, I’ll do my best.”
Luna beams at Bellamy. “Do you want to come see my worms?”
“Worms?” My daughter’s eyes light up. “Froggie loves worms.”
For a little girl who has been isolated for most of her life, she’s sure being social as heck here.
I can’t make her stay in the car any longer.
“We want to be careful in the greenhouse,” I warn as I unbuckle her from her carseat. “There are rules.”
We follow Luna into the first of three indoor growing structures. In the middle is a wide raised bed filled with fruit trees, and around the outside are narrower stepped gardens with lettuce greens and flowers.
I push my sunglasses onto my head as I gaze around in wonder.
“This is my experiment zone,” Luna explains. “We have a little wood burning stove in here, so we can keep it almost tropical in the winter. And if Bellamy doesn’t mind spending time with me, it’s a safe place for her to play as well. Lots of worms. Lots of bugs. And it’s not a crop space.”
My breath rushes out of me, like I’d been holding it. Because I hadn’t known what to expect, and this is so much better than I’d feared. “This is so nice.”
“Doesn’t look like much from outside, I know.”
“I—” I clear my throat and start again. “It’s not what I expected.”
And then I can’t continue because tears are threatening, and I’ve cried in front of Mercy already, I don’t need to cry in front of any more strangers. Especially not someone this kind, on such a nice farm.
Luna squats next to Bellamy and digs in the dirt with her bare fingers. “Let’s find a worm, shall we?”