Page 36 of The Strawberry Field
I glance over my shoulder to see Hattie trotting toward us. “And Hattie too, of course,” she says. Hattie creeps up on the porch and wags her tail at Sawyer, dropping to a sit and waiting to have her head rubbed. Sawyer does so, almost reluctantly, as if it’s been a long time since she let herself show affection for anyone or anything.
She turns then quickly, as if the connection is too much, and slips away through the foyer and into the kitchen. The house is as I remember it, the same furnishings, the same curtains. The kitchen looks a bit outdated. It’s clean though, and obviously, someone has been taking care of it on a semi-regular basis at least.
Sawyer pulls a cup from the cabinet, pours coffee from the pot on the counter and says, “Do you take anything in it?”
“No. Just black.” She hands me the cup, and we stand, both sipping our coffee while Hattie flops down on the linoleum floor, panting from her exuberant exploring.
“Why are you here, Jake?” Sawyer asks then, her gaze fixed on me.
“I guess I’d just like to help you out. You seem like you might be in a place where help would be a good thing.”
“I appreciate that,” she says, “but your day is full with your own obligations.”
I lift my shoulders in a shrug. “Yeah, I can’t deny that. I believe friends are important, and that we have very few in our lives that end up being the real thing. But what I remember having with you, Sawyer, was real. The timing wasn’t the best, but it was real.”
I watch as she processes what I’ve just said. Her eyes widen as the words surprise her. They aren’t what she expected.
“We were so young,” she says.
“We were, I agree. But that doesn’t mean that friendship isn’t a real thing, even at that age.”
“I remember what I felt for you was more than friendship,” she says, looking uncomfortable. “And I remember wishing we were at a point in life I could act on that. Did you stay that honorable?”
And I can see she wants to know. She’s not being sarcastic.
“I think by my definition, I’ve tried. It was never my intention to do anything other than that, but maybe other people haven’t seen it that way.”
“What do you mean?” she asks.
“Just that sometimes people can have other motivations from what you might have assumed.”
She wants to ask more, but this isn’t a road I can take with Sawyer. I couldn’t stand seeing the disappointment in her eyes if she knew how my life had gone.
“Where do you think we should pile up the branches?” I ask in a deliberate attempt to change the conversation.
“We could do a controlled burn at some point, so it would be nice if they were all within a spot far from the house. Is that what people typically do?”
“Yeah, it’s what I did when I was cleaning up my place.”
“Okay,” she says. “That sounds like a plan.”
I set my cup on the counter. “Thanks for the coffee.”
“You’re welcome.” She puts her cup next to mine, and my gaze snags there. I let myself consider what it would have been like to spend my life with her, what might have happened if we’d met two years later. If we could have found a way to be together. I wonder how many mornings there would have been where we would have set our coffee cups next to each other as we headed out for our individual days.I lift my gaze abruptly back to hers and say, “Better get started.”
We head for the yard on the driveway side of the house. Hattie follows, her head up high, tail wagging. She’s excited to have something new to do today, and I reach down and rub under her chin.
“She’s beautiful,” Sawyer says.
“Thanks,” I say. “I’ve always loved Labs. Her absolute joy for life each day is a reminder to me not to be grumpy about things I shouldn’t be grumpy about. She’s happy just to get up every morning and walk across the dew-soaked grass, sniffing flowers.”
“People should take notes from that,” Sawyer says. “Including me.”
We’re at the back of the truck now. I pop the tailgate, pulling out my chainsaw and the limb clippers for the smaller branches. “Why don’t you tell me, tree by tree, what you would like done, and I’ll cut what we need to cut, and then we can carry the limbs to whatever spot you choose for piling them up.”
“I think there’s a wheelbarrow in the garage,” she says.
“That would be helpful,” I say. “I should have thought about that.”
