Chapter 12
Hope
The second morning on the ranch, there aren’t as many mature leaves as there were yesterday.
“Some days are a lighter pick than others,” Luna says when I express surprise at how quickly we get through our harvest. “Once we get this packed up, we can go check for eggs in the chicken coop.”
Magic words for Bellamy. Her eyes light up. “Chickens?”
They terrify her, but she’s captivated nonetheless. And Luna knows it.
I really like working with Luna. She’s quiet, efficient, and very funny—today’s t-shirt is a chubby caterpillar with a speech bubble that says eat the rich. Plus she doesn’t mind that I have to always keep one eye on Bellamy. Not only that, but she does the same.
And she’s figured out that Bellamy has a rhythm that is easier to work with than against. Hence the chicken talk.
“And then after we collect eggs, I might take some time in my studio to paint,” she adds. “You’re free to do whatever you want around the ranch.”
That sounds lovely but… “If there is any other work for me to do, I’d be grateful for the extra hours.”
“Oh. Right, I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking about that.
” She taps her finger against her chin. “In that case, if you wouldn’t mind harvesting the rest of the spring onions in the octagon.
Those are for us to eat over the next week or so.
Then turn over that bed and plant the tomato seedlings that are at least five inches tall. ”
Grateful, I nod. “Can do.”
“But first…chickens!”
Bellamy takes off like a shot, already knowing the way.
As we follow her, I catch sight of Zane on the far side of the horse paddock. He’s loading something into the back of his truck. He’s wearing work gloves and a cowboy hat pulled down low over his eyes so all I can see is the hard line of his jaw and the edge of his neat moustache.
He grabs another bundle—old wire, I realize—and slings it into his truck, his shoulders bunching and flexing with easy strength.
His t-shirt today is black, so I don’t know if it’s damp, but it’s clinging to him all the same.
I know I shouldn’t notice that, shouldn’t be thinking about him like that. But I’m drawn to him all the same. Like last night in the library. And he’s…easy. Safe, in a way Derek never was.
Zane Kincaid promises my nightmares can’t get me here, and I want to believe him.
If that’s true, then looking at him isn’t hurting anyone. And there’s a little piece of my soul that desperately wants to look, to covet, to desire.
Like it’s an act of rebellion, a fuck you to Derek and all of his rules.
I shouldn’t have touched Zane last night, though.
That was a mistake. The warmth of his body will be hard to forget.
The way desire swarmed through me as soon as I curled my fingers over his skin…
that was potent. And I think he felt it, too.
My gaze slides from his snug t-shirt to his muscular arms.
"He's a good man," Luna says softly.
I startle. I didn't realize she'd come to stand next to me. “Yes, I—” I swallow hard. I know he is. And I know it’s wrong to covet him. “I would never take advantage of your kindness and hospitality.”
She snorts. “My son is twice your size and probably ten years older than you. If you can take advantage of him, more power to you.”
I flush.
She presses her hand to her face. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
I wince. “I think I started it.”
She glances sideways at me. “Shall we get the eggs and pretend that I didn’t put my foot in my mouth?”
A gracious rescue from an awkward moment. My cheeks burn the whole way to the coop, and I don’t look back at Zane again.
Luna grabs a cardboard egg carton from the outbuilding, and it’s good that she did, because there’s a full dozen this morning.
I hold the carton as she finds all the freshly laid eggs. Bellamy races around my legs, running away from the chickens, hiding, but then also peeking through between my knees, secretly wanting to make friends with the mini dinosaurs.
“Bye bye,” she says tremulously when we leave the pen.
And then, grateful that she’s not surrounded by sharp beaks anymore, she takes off running, racing ahead of us.
Zane’s truck is gone now, so she has free rein over the space between the barns and the greenhouses and all the way up to the house.
It’s forty or fifty yards, maybe more. Farther than I've let her be from me in her entire life.
Luna follows my eyes. "She's fine."
"I know." My voice comes out tighter than I mean it to. "I'm not… I know. I'm just not used to it."
“I remember when my kids were that little. It gets easier as they get older. And then they join the rodeo and it gets more terrifying again.”
I laugh weakly. “Noted.”
We walk the eggs up to the house, where Luna disappears to put them in the kitchen, and I stay on the porch to be a vigilant mother. I can’t help it, and anything could happen in an instant.
Bellamy circles in a wide loop, checking that I'm watching her, because she’s unfortunately vigilant too, and then bolts off again.
All the way to the barn, where she squats and looks at a rock on the gravel drive.
On the compound, she was never allowed more than five feet away from me. I always had to be able to scoop her up, because Derek would turn on her if she got underfoot.
I can hear him now, the meanness in his voice, the way he’d take that out on me. I can hear his cruel tone ringing in my ears.
I can taste the sharp copper of regret.
"Hope?”
I startle. Luna’s back on the porch with me, and she’s holding out a glass of water. My fingers tremble as I take it.
"You all right?"
“Yep.” Too fast. I try again, softer. "Just thinking about how much space she has here. She's not used to it.”
“It’s a lot to adjust to. But it seems good for her.”
And I’m going to take her away from it.
Nausea rises, sharply, as it has a few times already. I breathe through my nose and take a sip of water, and it passes. Mostly. I set the glass down before my hand can shake.
I’m going to have to take her away, sooner than later. And the next place I stop, I’m going to have to come up with a better backstory. Something simpler and more sympathetic than the truth. I’ll be a widow.
Beside me, I can feel Luna looking at me. Wanting to ask questions about why Bellamy couldn’t run around on Derek’s homestead. I’ve told her too much already, revealed too much.
And maybe my silence is all she needs to read to know that it’s complicated for me.
“Of course, no place is universally right for everyone,” she says diplomatically.
“Dragonfly Creek felt right for me, when we stopped here. I’m not sure it was right for the boys back then, in hindsight, but then…
” She gestures at the pastures and the mountain beyond it.
“They chose to come back, so maybe it was the right place, but the wrong time for them. Right is a word best applied later, I think.”
I swallow hard. “It’s nice that they came back.”
“I feel very lucky.” There’s an odd catch in her voice.
I glance sideways. She’s staring out into the distance.
“Is it just the five of you?” I ask. “Do you have any other family?”
Luna doesn’t reply.
"I just wondered—” I swallow. "Do you ever—with your parents—do you—”
"They've been gone a long time." She pauses. Shakes her head. "That's a closed chapter for me.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
"I don't mean to — " She purses her lips, her face turning sharper than I’ve seen it before.
Her nostrils flare almost viciously as she takes a very sharp inhale.
Then her mouth turns down in a sad frown.
"I'm a better listener than I am a talker about some things. It's a failing. But it is what it is, at my age.” She sets her glass down against the railing. “I’m going to the greenhouse. Let Bellamy run until she’s ready to play in one spot again, and come join me.”
"I'm sorry if I've—”
She waves it off.
Crap.
Fuck.
My stomach seizes, heat swarming my face.
Luna sighs and reaches for my hand, her touch warm and unexpected. She squeezes, as if to say, trauma sees trauma. We’re fine. Nothing is broken.
But something has shifted, because now I know where Luna's line is.
For two days, I thought—or maybe hoped?—the Kincaids didn’t have lines, maybe this was an endlessly safe place for Hope Waterford to fall apart, but of course it’s not safe without any limits.
There are always limits.
Some are more dangerous than others.
And more than once, I’ve been tempted to spill my guts about everything. About my parents, about Derek. About the pregnancy, God help me.
I would have handed it to her, all of it, because I’m so tired, and she’s so kind, and I haven’t had a mother for four years.
But Luna isn’t my mother.
And she’s just reminded me that even if we find peace, we don’t get back everything that we’ve lost.
"Mommy!"
Bellamy is running fast toward me, something clutched in her other hand.
I meet her halfway across the lawn and I drop to my knees in the grass.
She crashes into me and I press my face into her hair.
She smells like sunshine as she starts explaining, in her very serious three-year-old voice, about the rock that she found.
It’s so pretty Mommy, I feel her say it, because my pulse is pounding so hard I can’t hear her.
And I say wow and no way and tell me again in all the right places while my hands shake against her small back.
I have to pull myself together. Need to stop thinking about this ranch like a fantasy escape from reality, and start treating it like the temporary refuge that it is—a place where I can carefully, very carefully, plan for my next steps to get Bellamy and my unborn baby a better life, somewhere very far away from here.