Chapter 6
Hope
Of course this was too good to be true. Luna’s farm isn’t a safe refuge, it’s a complicated mess just like the rest of the world, because it’s not just her here, it’s her and her breathtakingly handsome son who clearly doesn’t want me and my daughter here.
I can still feel his glare on my skin, even after his truck peels out and heads down the lane.
But when Mercy asks me if I’m having second thoughts—because she can read the problem with Zane, too—I shake my head.
I can survive this. I’ve survived much, much worse.
And Luna…her soft, quiet warmth makes up for a lot.
The way she gets down to Bellamy’s level and talks to her…
It’s hard, because it reminds me that my parents didn’t want anything to do with my pregnancy.
But my daughter deserves a few days of that kind of attention, and I will work doubly hard to make it worth Luna’s time.
And I’ll ignore the way her son’s heavy gaze makes me feel, because that’s a shameful secret. I know all about burying shameful secrets. I’m a pro at that.
After Mercy leaves, Luna takes us up to the house, which is beautiful in a way that makes my chest ache.
Log walls, high ceilings with exposed beams, and windows that look out over pastures that seem to roll right to the foot of the mountains.
Everything is clean and tidy, simple but quality, and it smells like lemons and soap and just enough leather that feels right for a ranch.
Bellamy’s booster seat is in the foyer, under a family portrait of Luna surrounded by four strapping men in cowboy hats. I recognize Zane with a speed that alarms me, and force myself to focus on his three brothers. Two of them are bigger than him, and one is covered in tattoos.
I’m relieved when Luna pulls us deeper into the house. “We have a guest room upstairs.” She leads the way to the second floor, which has a wide central corridor, and at one end, another staircase going up to a third level. “That’s my space,” she gestures. “I have a studio upstairs.”
Turning around, she leads us to the other end of the hall, where there’s a bathroom and two bedrooms. “This is all yours. One of these rooms is my son Dax’s, but he’s travelling on the rodeo circuit right now.
The other was Cash’s before he moved to town, but now it’s a guest room.
Zane has a room on the lower level, and Ridge lives in a cabin beyond those trees, so you’ll have lots of privacy up here. ”
The guest room is made up, and my small bag of clothing is sitting on the pretty quilt. The other bed across the hall has been stripped of its sheets.
“I can get you fresh linens,” she says.
“Bellamy will sleep with me." I worry I say it too abruptly, but Luna just smiles.
“I miss those days. There’s a closet full of towels in the bathroom. Help yourself to anything you need—shampoo, soap, whatever." Then she pauses at the door. “We’re grazers when it comes to food, but the kitchen is well stocked. You can have anything in the fridge or pantry, too.”
“Thank you. We don’t need much.”
“I’ll leave you here to get settled in, then. Come find me in the greenhouse once you’ve unpacked.”
That won’t take long, but I nod anyway.
After she leaves, I sink onto the bed and pull Bellamy close. She squirms immediately, already bored with sitting still.
“Gimme a minute, I need a snuggle, okay?” A moment to process, to breathe. To convince myself that accepting this help isn't the worst mistake I could make. It doesn’t matter if it is, though…I didn’t have any other viable options in front of me.
When Mercy left, she hugged me and whispered that I could call the diner anytime if I need anything.
But I don't have a phone. I was terrified of spending money on even a burner one, because I don’t know what Derek is capable of tracking and finding me if I get online in any way.
My skin crawls at the reminder of feeling watched all the time, even when he wasn’t on the compound.
"Mommy?" Bellamy taps my cheeks with her little hands. “Let’s go play.”
I smooth her hair back, study her face. The bruise on her chin from yesterday's fall is already yellowing at the edges. "Do you like it here?"
Her head bobs with delight. "There are worms!"
A laugh bubbles up, unexpected and slightly hysterical. Of course that’s the selling point.
I take a deep breath, then pat her back. "Okay. Let's go see those worms."
The greenhouse work is actually soothing once I get into the rhythm of it. Luna shows me how to harvest the kale—a gentle twist and pull, leaving the smaller inner leaves to continue growing. The plants are massive, easily three feet tall, their leaves a deep, almost purple-tinged green.
"We do succession harvesting," Luna explains, moving down the row with practiced efficiency. "Take the outer leaves, let the centre keep producing. These plants will give us kale for months."
Bellamy sits nearby, poking at the soil with a real metal spade Luna gave her, her frog keeping watch from a clean patch of ground. Every few minutes she announces a new bug discovery, and Luna always stops to look, to explain what kind it is and what it does.
I harden my heart against the soft observations that want to take up residence there. We’re only here for a few days. We can’t get attached to kindness.
We work for about an hour before Luna calls for a break. She produces lemonade from a small fridge in the corner and we sit on overturned buckets while Bellamy chases a butterfly between the raised beds.
"So," Luna says casually, too casually, "Mercy mentioned you're heading to Saskatchewan?"
My shoulders tense. "Yes. Just... just trying to make a fresh start."
"Mmm." She sips her lemonade. "Bellamy's father isn't in the picture?"
“No,” I manage to say with a straight face. “It’s just the two of us.”
She’s silent for a moment, then adds, “My boys were seven to fifteen when we were suddenly on our own.”
“Four is a lot,” I say before I remember that I don’t want to talk about my private life.
“I leaned on helpers a lot. Especially when we came here.” She finishes her drink. “You know, we stumbled across Dragonfly Creek by accident, too.”
“Oh?”
“There’s a waterfall walk in the mountains.
It’s not far from here, if you want to go see it.
You can borrow my truck. We were—well, truthfully, we were homeless, although I didn’t want to admit it.
I was pretending that we were just waiting for an apartment to become available to us.
Can you imagine me and four teenage boys in an apartment?
But it was all I could afford in the city.
And I couldn’t quite afford it yet, so we were camping for a month.
Moving around so it felt more like actual camping and less like…
” She shudders. “Well, I found the waterfall walk on a map, and decided that was our next destination. But I couldn’t find the entrance to it, because the sign is regularly taken down.
Twenty years later, that’s still true, by the way.
The locals don’t want tourists to find it.
And once you do find it, you understand why.
It’s the most magical little hike you’ll ever go on.
My fighting children settled down, and they helped each other look for all the dragonflies on the canyon walls. ”
“Dragonflies?” Bellamy perks up. “I want to see them!”
Luna presses her lips together, her eyes sparkling. “That’s so lovely and innocent. My boys were more interested in how the dragonflies were, um… mating.”
I laugh out loud, surprised. “Mating?”
“Mating,” Luna confirms. “It’s called Lover’s Canyon, in fact. Thousands of dragonflies getting busy on marble slabs, surrounded by a lush river setting, leading up to falls. That’s the water source for the creek that runs through town, in fact.”
“Hence the name?”
“Exactly. And it was a magical afternoon that made me want to stick around. Eventually, I found people I could trust. People like Mercy, who offer help without wanting anything in return."
It’s a stark contrast to Derek, who would remind me how he helped me when he didn’t need to. How he expected me to be grateful, because I didn’t have any other way of returning the favour than with my body.
And that makes me think about favours he could call in to find me, because he has online connections—people who owe him favours, people who believe in his twisted version of community and protection.
People who would help him track down his family.
"I should probably get back to work," I say, standing abruptly. "I don't want to waste your time—"
"Hope." Luna stands too, catching my elbow gently. "You're not wasting anything. But I understand. Sometimes it's easier to keep moving."
I know she means it to be kind, to invite me to share more. But as tempting as it is to lean into Luna’s warmth, I have to remember that she sees too much.
Just like her son.
After another hour, we have a complete mini wagon full of kale leaves.
“Time to put these all in the fridge,” Luna says to Bellamy.
I scoop Bella up and carry her as we follow Luna to what looks like a small outbuilding that’s like a mini barn, but when we go inside is actually a very clean space with a wall of industrial fridges.
Luna shows me how to weigh the leaves and which bags they go in, and it doesn’t take long at all to bundle up the afternoon’s harvest.
"That's more than enough for today," Luna declares, surveying our work with satisfaction. "You're a fast learner."
“Thanks.”
“No, thank you. Now go on, head back to the house. I’ll get eggs from the chickens and then meet you there.”
“I want to see the chickens,” Bellamy whines.
And I hear that little note in her voice, the one that says she’s been good all day, better than I can expect a three-year-old to be, and now she’s suddenly on the edge of an inexplicable tantrum.
I take a breath and hold it, suddenly afraid that this could crumble like everything else has.