Page 12 of The Strawberry Field
That’s what I tried to do—build something new. Something quieter. A life that doesn’t hinge on anyone else’s approval.
I was once social. Friends. Parties. A string of relationships that never quite fit. I kept waiting for the one that would. For the person who would match me. Mirror me. See past my flaws and name them as strengths.
Someone like Sawyer.
Because if I’m honest, she did. Long ago.
Maybe I would have found someone else like her, eventually. But I stopped looking.
You stop wanting to be known when you’re afraid of what people will see.
And maybe that’s the part of me that died, the part that wanted to be chosen for who I was before everything changed.
I reach down and run my hand across Hattie’s soft head. I’m not lonely, not really. Not in the way people think of it. I’ve made peace with solitude. I think the part of me that craved companionship, marriage, family, a life with someone by my side, burned out when I saw myself reflected in the headlines.
When I looked into the eyes of students who used to admire me—and found wariness instead.
No one looks at me that way now. And when I look in the mirror, I see what they saw.
I’ve been through every stage of grief. Anger. Denial. And now… acceptance.
This is my life. Not the one I chose, but one I’ve carved out of the ruins. And in many ways, it’s a good life. A quiet one. A stable one.
I’m grateful for my economics education and the interest I’d always had in investing. That backup plan, the one I never thought I’d need, is what let me walk away when I had to. It’s what let me buy this farm. The house. The strawberry field out back. The acres of land that don’t ask questions and don’t pass judgment.
It was a significant purchase. But I needed to put my money somewhere solid. Into something no one could take from me unless God Himself came down and took it.
Because I’m done putting my life in the hands of other people’s opinions.
Now I spend my days tending the soil. Watching something grow from nothing. The strawberries are stubborn but beautiful. They’ll ripen mid-May to early June—bright red, messy. For a few brief weeks, they’ll become something that feels like art.
And then they’ll be gone. But certain to appear again next year. Reliable as only nature can be.
Maybe that’s all we can hope for in this life. That something we create, something we love, leaves a mark. Even if it doesn’t last forever.
I think of Sawyer again. How many times I’ve imagined seeing her. How often I’ve played out the possibility.
Always knowing it would never happen.
And then yesterday, there she was. At a country store. On the heels of something I never imagined living through.
Why now?
Why her?
Hope flickers. Something I thought I’d put away long ago. I let it breathe for half a second—then douse it with the cold water of reality. That will never happen.
Thunder rumbles somewhere in the distance. Lightning flashes briefly over the lake.
Hattie shivers and whines, as unsettled by the storm’s appearance as I am by running into the girl—now a woman—I once imagined spending my life with.
I stand, pat my leg, wanting to reassure her even if I can’t reassure myself.“Come on, Hattie. Let’s go inside. You’re safe. I’ve got you.”
*
Twenty-Five Years Ago
TOMMY AND I met the summer we both worked at Smith Mountain Dock. Our jobs there started when school let out. First weekend of June for me, second weekend of that month for Tommy. His family came to the lake from Charlottesville for the summer, and we were assigned to the gas pumps—filling tanks, tying up boats, and flirting with whoever drifted in.
