I stop in the middle of the muddy field I’m walking through and look up at the rolling hills lined with trees. I can just make out the sounds of a rumbling tractor in the distance, the figures of people working in the field. I wonder if Barney is needling Beckett. If Prancer is on her throne at the back of the tractor.
I don’t feel ready to leave this place yet. For the first time in a long time, I’m content standing still.
“I don’t know,” I reply faintly. “I still don’t know.”
“That’s alright,” Josie assures me. “I’m actually glad you called. I wanted to talk to you about something I saw in your inbox.”
I start walking again. “Yeah?”
“Remember how I told you Sway was screening your messages?”
Not exactly unexpected, as that was a big reason why I signed up for their services. I wanted someone else to sort through for potential. I was also tired of the trolls and the comments and the never ending criticism. “I do.”
“I’ve been sifting through to see if there’s anything interesting and I have a few new places for you to check out, when you’re ready for that. But what really caught my attention was a guy named Theo from the U.S. Small Business Coalition. Has he reached out to you before?”
I rack my brain. “I don’t think so.”
“He’s been pretty persistent. Said he tried to call through Sway and wasn’t able to leave a message. Anyway, he thinks you’d be a good fit for a new initiative they’re launching. I think you should give him a call.”
“Like a partnership thing?”
“Not exactly. I think it’s a position within their organization.”
That would be a new direction. I never went back to exploring traditional jobs after my string of horrible interviews right out of school. I always liked being my own boss too much.
“I’ll think about it. Send me his contact information.”
“Sure. As soon as you send me a picture of your hot landlord.”
I snort a laugh and continue carefully wandering my way across the muddy field. “He’s not my landlord.”
“Interesting part of the sentence to contradict,” Josie replies. “I gotta go. I’m meeting my mom for a run.”
I glance at my watch. It can’t be much later than six in the morning on the west coast. But Josie has always been an early riser. “Godspeed.”
I tuck my phone back in my pocket and continue following the map, snickering at Beckett’s doodles. I laugh at a collection of wavy lines scribbled on the paper, supposed to be a cluster of bushes right before a dip in the landscape hides everything from view. I crest another small hill and then I see it. Exactly what Beckett intended for me to find.
A field of wildflowers, rolling out from the base of the hill in a patchwork quilt of color. Blue and purple and a smattering of rich gold, the sight of it so quietly beautiful that I don’t hesitate to walk right in the middle of it all and lay flat on my back. They must have bloomed to life during the last string of warm days, still standing tall despite the cold. Resilient. Stunning.
Flower petals tickle my cheek and I close my eyes with a sigh. A quiet, perfect miracle, hidden behind the hills.
SOME HAPPY, Beckett had written.
I curl my fingers around the edge of the paper and hold it tightly to my chest.
I lay in the field until my stomach starts to grumble, a reminder that I’ve been here for most of the morning. I’m grateful for the extra sweater I slipped over my head before I left the house, the earth cold at my back and the wind brisk enough this morning for my breath to be visible in tiny puffs of white above me. Beckett tells me the weather will break soon and that winter is being a little stubborn this year.
Not the only stubborn thing, he had mumbled, a significant look cast in my direction.
I sigh and watch the stems around me dance in the breeze. Flat on the ground like this, it’s just me and the blooms, the sky a perfect, cloudless blue above me, endless in every direction. I sit up with a groan and dip my nose into a cluster of aster at my hip. They smell like moss, the grass after rain. I pass my palms over the petals as I leave and decide I’ll bring Beckett with me the next time I come. I want him to sit in the patch of foxgloves and see if they bring out the blue in his eyes.
I take a different, meandering path back to the cabin, arching back in the opposite direction from the way I came. Beckett had scribbled a half-moon shape in the top corner of his rudimentary map, and I find the pond he must have been referencing easily enough. It’s not very large, but it does have a dock extending over the water with a row boat tied at the end. The little dinghy bobs up and down gently as the water laps at the legs of the aged wood and I smile, imagining Beckett trying to cram his body in the tiny thing. The rope is frayed at the edges, the boat painted a dark, midnight blue.
Trees arch up over the water, a canopy of tangled branches and bright green leaves. Sunlight dances through where it can, painting the still water beneath in stripes of gold. I see a tire swing on the other end of the pond, barely skimming the water, a thick rope wrapped three times around the sturdy branch of an old oak. When I was a kid, I used to climb the biggest tree in my parent’s backyard, all the way to the top. I’d sit perched there with a book until the sun began to set, a chill making me shudder with the leaves. My dad had offered to build me a treehouse a million times, but I liked climbing too much. I liked the challenge, the scrapes it left on my palms. It always felt like I was keeping a piece of nature with me. Proof that I could do anything I wanted.
Feeling nostalgic, I wander over to the trunk of a thick maple, wide branches stretching out over the water, a natural ladder of misshapen knobs and divots in the bark. I reach for the branch closest and curl my hands around it, leveraging my body up and pressing my foot to the base. Muscle memory kicks in as I place my hands and feet in all the right places, the ache in my muscles disappearing as my body warms. I press and pull until I can swing my leg over a branch, holding my body steady about halfway up. From here the pond looks bigger, the still water reflecting the branches above like a mirror. I gaze down at my wiggly reflection and rest my chin against my knee.
I don’t know if it’s the sliver of my childhood, or the field of flowers, or Beckett’s hand drawn map, or my time away from everything I thought was important, but I feel the wayward pieces of myself sliding back into place. It’s not quite there yet, not the perfect fit, but isn't that what Beckett said that night on the back porch? Some of it comes, some of it goes. It’s about the trying. Settling into the happy when you find it, being okay when you don’t. Feeling all the misshapen bits and pieces and where they fit together. The delightful, ordinary blank space in between.