Johnny and Betsy met at a café in downtown Portland where Betsy worked as a waitress. Johnny went there after school, after sports practice, for chocolate milkshakes, then started coming each day to visit Betsy.

They started talking, light chat, then they progressed, slowly, to opening their hearts. Betsy saw in him someone like herself: Lost. They dated, they fell in love. Johnny did not want to work in his father’s company, or with his father. He hated his father. His father was part owner of a used car dealership that regularly ripped people off.

He wanted to be a farmer. He had been, every summer, to his grandma’s farm, and he loved it. It had been sold by his father when she died. Even his grandma couldn’t stand his father, who had tried to steal her money. Johnny wanted to sell fruits and vegetables, and specialty items, too, like cheeses and wine. He hoped to have a vineyard one day.

Farming sounded perfect to Betsy. She could be outside. She could have animals. She could hide from her parents and be away from people. The more people she was around, the more premonitions she had. It was fraught, it was exhausting. She wanted to help people, but it was tearing her down, wearing her down.

Betsy and Johnny had their first kiss at a picnic. Second kiss hiking. Third kiss by a waterfall. Their romance was slow, steady, awash in friendship and kindness. Betsy talked about her parents for the first time, their fanaticism, the violence of her father.

She told him about the beatings with a brush, sticks, a wooden spoon, and her father’s belt. She told him about all the times her father hit her with the Bible, all the verses she had to memorize, how her mother stood back and didn’t help her when her father berated her, told her that she was the devil. How she’d crawled out her window in the middle of the night and left home after graduating early from high school, determined to be independent even though she wasn’t yet eighteen.

Betsy told Johnny about the time, only a few weeks ago, when her parents found her at her apartment, the one she lived in now. The building was filled with students because it was near a university. She was working and going to college classes. She was still in her blue waitress uniform, splattered with ketchup and mustard, when she walked down the hallway and saw her parents by her front door. Music pounded out of a couple of the other apartments, doors open, students milling around.