Utterly in tune and bonded.
Even with long hours and early wake-ups, Ren and I smiled often, laughed regularly, and fell into a pattern that only comes from being with someone for so long. We’d always been able to finish each other’s sentences, but now, we barely needed to talk.
I knew with just one look if he needed a drink or quick massage to loosen the knot in his back. He knew with just a glance if I needed a kiss in the shade or more sun cream on my skin.
The long days equalled blissful dead-to-the-world sleep. I even grew accustomed to the delightful ache of hard work in my lower back and moaned in gratitude when Ren massaged the cramp in my hands from twisting apples off branches all day.
Our tiny cabin was perfect in its basicness with its whirring mini fridge, lumpy queen bed, and small discoloured sink.
Lo didn’t just give us a job; she gave us something incredibly raw and pure, teaching us the ease of working the land and cultivating. Eating straight off the trees, sharing our skills to help each other, working our muscles until sleep was no longer a luxury but a necessity.
Not that Ren wasn’t a master of that already with his past, or me, thanks to my chores of helping on a farm in my childhood, but this was something else.
This was Ren and me in Utopia.
It was how humans were supposed to exist.
I could’ve lived in fruit-picking paradise forever, but unfortunately, our life had a few bumps up ahead.
If I had known what was about to happen, I would’ve prepared myself.
But that was the thing about life.
You didn’t know what to expect until it happened.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
REN
2020
THE PHONE CALL came on a Sunday.
I knew it was a Sunday—unlike most of my life when I had no idea what day or even month it was—because we’d just been paid for our fifth week of fruit picking, and I’d agreed to take Della out to a diner down the road to celebrate having some cash saved up again. Plus, we hadn’t enjoyed our shared birthday yet, and that tradition was one we did our best not to break—especially as she was no longer a teenager, and I was officially thirty.
I was old.
And some days, I felt it.
Especially when I recalled a TV show we’d watched a few years ago with men who claimed their first million before they were thirty. The show interviewed entrepreneurs and successful business owners, making me doubt I had what it took to be anything more than what I was.
I’d never been number savvy or have any desire to be rich.
I was rich.
I had Della.
But just because I had everything I ever needed, didn’t mean Della did, and that put pressure on me to find a way to be more.
At least we had some cash again—not much, but enough to fill our backpacks with food, and travel in the final patches of warmth before winter arrived all over again.
We were late hitting the road, and we still didn’t have a clue where we were going. I’d tentatively thought of finding another farmhand job or a milking foreman position—something I knew I was good at and paid fairly well—but I didn’t know how to go about finding those.
Of course, those worries became obsolete the moment the phone rang, diverting our journey onto a totally different path.
I had a razor in my right hand and a face cloth in my left, staring into the grainy mirror in our fruit-picking cabin, combating terrible lighting to shave the couple-of-month-old beard that I hadn’t trimmed in far too long.
Poor Della earned red lips instantly from kissing me these days, and I was sick of itchy cheeks when I got too hot from working.
Della looked up from where she sprawled on the bed, already to go in a black flower print dress with her gorgeous hair loose and curly.
The phone rang again and again in her hand, all while she continued to stare at it rather than answer.
“You going to get that?” I asked, swishing my blade in the sink, ridding the hair it had already shaved from my throat.
“It’s Cassie.”
I spun to face her. “Why would she be calling?”
She shrugged. “We messaged last week. She said everything was fine. Just shot the breeze about unimportant stuff.” She bit her lip, nerves dancing over her face as if she didn’t trust Cassie even now.
The phone seemed to ring louder. “Maybe you better get it.”
Swallowing, she shot me a look and pressed accept. “Hello?”
Instantly, her skin eradicated all colour, leaving her white. A hand plastered over her mouth. “Oh, God, Cas. I’m so, so sorry.”
Abandoning my razor, I rubbed off the soap from my cheeks and crossed the room to her side. The tinny voice of Cassie drifted from the phone. She was crying, but I couldn’t understand what she said.
Della’s eyes welled with tears, spilling over and hurting my heart. Clutching her hand, I sat heavily on the mattress as she sniffed and nodded. “Yes, of course. We’ll be there.” Shaking her head at whatever Cassie had mentioned, she said firmly with a little wobble of tears, “No, not at all. We’re family. We want to be there.”
Another few seconds ticked past before Della sniffed again and straightened her back. “Okay, let me talk to Ren. I don’t know where we are exactly or how long it will take to get back to you. Just…let me talk to him, and I’ll let you know, okay?” Her eyes shot to mine, then more tears fell onto our joined fingers. “Okay, sure. Here he is.”
With a shaking hand, Della passed me the phone. “She wants to talk to you.”
I wanted to ask what had happened, but I had no time as I took the heavy cell and held it to my ear. “Cassie?”
Instantly, her cries became sobs, and the part of me that cared deeply for her sprang into an all-out blaze. “What is it? You okay? What can I do to help?”
I winced, glancing at Della, afraid she’d be jealous or hurt that I’d leap to Cassie’s aid if she needed me. It wasn’t romantic entanglement; it was purely friendship, and the knowledge that I owed her family not just my life, but Della’s, too.
Only, Della just looked at me with adoration and trust, nodding for me to continue.
Cassie swallowed back her sobs, long enough to splutter, “Please come home, Ren. Please.”
Before I could assure her that we would do whatever she needed—regardless if I knew why, she told me.
And broke my damn heart.
“It’s Mom. She died this morning.”
And nothing else mattered.
Not how we’d get there or how long it would take. Standing, I looked for the backpacks, but Della was already ahead of me, flinging open the single wardrobe and shoving our clothes into each bag.
“We’re coming, Cassie. We’re coming home.”
CHAPTER FORTY
REN
2020
IT TOOK US six days to cross the miles we’d travelled since leaving the Wilsons.
Between paying for bus tickets and hitchhiking, we managed to trade the still sunny skies of whatever small town we’d been picking fruit in for the cooler clouds of the Wilson’s territory.
Della and I barely slept, and when we did, it was in a hastily erected tent with a muesli bar for dinner or something just as quick and easy.
Cassie had called twice since we hit the road. First, checking in to see where we were, and second to let us know the funeral had been arranged and we better hurry if we wanted to attend.
We travelled as fast as we could, even though I still felt bad about ditching Lo and her fruit-picking job after she’d helped us out. I’d broken my honour, and I hated that I’d do it all over again because Patricia Wilson had died.
Gone.
She was the only mother I knew.
The woman who’d shown me that not all mothers wanted to sell their children.
I couldn’t think of her as…dead. It just didn’t compute. It hurt too much.
“She’s been keeping things from me,” Della murmured, her head on my shoulder as the overnight bus trundled us the final distance.