Page 38 of The Strawberry Field
“You don’t have to do that, Jake. It’s a lot to ask of you.”
“I don’t mind. I would stay and do more this afternoon, but I need to do a few things to my berries.”
“When will they be ripe?”
“In a couple of weeks,” I say.
“That must be rewarding. Planting and seeing them grow to something beautiful and edible.”
“It is,” I say. “It’s not something I ever imagined myself doing, but after I bought the property, and the field was there, I thought it might be nice to see what I could do with it. It’s kind of addictive once you have success growing something like that. I want each year to be better than the one before it.”
“What do you do with all of them?”
“I have families who come every year to pick their own berries. Most freeze them to use for pies and smoothies, or at least that’s what they tell me. I don’t use any chemical sprays, so everything falls under the category of organic. It doesn’t make sense to me to do it any other way. Conventional farming uses chemical sprays on strawberries.”
“That’s never made much sense to me,” she says. “Especially not as a doctor. I don’t understand putting things on our food that are poisonous to anything. If it’s poisonous to insects, it’s poisonous to us to some degree as well.”
“Yeah, that’s how I see it.”
“Would you like to come over this afternoon and see the field?” I ask, the invitation out before I can rethink it.
She doesn’t answer me right away, struggling with the answer. Maybe she wants to, maybe she doesn’t, but she says, “I should stay here and work on some of my To-Do list.”
“Okay,” I say. I set my glass on the counter. “Well, I guess I better get going.”
“I can’t thank you enough,” she says. “Really, it was so nice of you.”
“Don’t think a thing about it, Sawyer. I was happy to do it. Come on, Hattie girl.” I pat my leg, and she gets up from the floor, throwing a glance at Sawyer as if she wonders whether she’s coming with us or not.
“Bye, Hattie,” Sawyer says.
Hattie’s tail wags, and she follows me from the house to the truck. It’s not until I’m backing out of the driveway that I glance up to see Sawyer watching us from the living room window. She looks like she is sad to see us go.
“What’s past is prologue.”
—William Shakespeare
Chapter Fourteen
Sawyer
I SPEND THE next morning cleaning out the dock house.
For some reason, I need to be outside. Focusing my energy here gives me something to do, somewhere to put all the restless weight still sitting on my chest.
The dock house is worse than I expected. Cobwebs cling to every corner. I start with the broom, knocking them down even as I feel a twinge of guilt for undoing the intricate worlds the spiders have spun.
My thoughts drift back to Jake. I keep sweeping, harder now, as if I can drive him out of my head. I try to steer the thoughts away, but they keep circling. I know I shouldn’t have let him stay yesterday. Letting him help created something between us, a thread I’m not sure I can, or should, pull tighter.
Two hours in, my palms ache from gripping the broom, and my arms are sore from scrubbing the dock floor with a bucket of soapy water and a rag.
I sit on the edge of the dock, dipping my feet into the lake. It’s still cold—spring hasn’t fully settled in yet, but the sun is warm on my shoulders, filtered through the just-emerging canopy of leaves overhead.
A soft wind moves across the water, rippling the surface. It’s the first time I’ve noticed a breeze since I got here.
The lake looks different in the light, no longer lifeless, but quietly awake. Like it’s remembering how to breathe.
I let my eyes close, just for a moment, and listen to the rhythm of it—the wind, the water, the birdsong returning after winter. And something inside me… loosens.
