I watched her. Ah, she felt useless and without value. And I had certainly contributed to that. Hell, at the time, I’d believed it. But I didn’t believe it anymore. Emily was brave when she needed to be. She had gumption and nerve, and she was quick on her feet. She had the charm I didn’t and enjoyed putting it to use. Little Showboat. “I guess we’ll see when we get there,” I said.

“Yeah, I guess we will.”

chapter thirty-two

Emily

We enjoyed an incredible dinner of vegetable stew and bread baked over the firepit, and for a brief few hours, the world felt almost normal, if a bit primitive. I’d spoken to Tuck earlier about appreciating the quiet. And the simple but delicious dinner with Tom and Jane and their boys made me realize too how little time I’d made to slow down and enjoy what was now so precious: good food, kind people, a feeling of safety, and later, a warm bed and walls surrounding me.

I’d had all those things, and never really paused to appreciate any of them, so focused on attaining goals that were somewhere beyond where I was in that moment. I would have done anything to snap my fingers and fix the current state of the country, but even if I could, I would take lessons from this experience. It’d only been a week, and I already felt changed in ways I was sure I’d be discovering for a long time to come.

Jane opened a bottle of wine, and we shared it as Tuck and Tom talked, Tom pointing things out here and there around the property. I sighed, the alcohol and the fire making me feel warm and woozy. I looked to my right where I could see their garden off to the side of the house. “Is anything still growing?” I asked.

Jane followed my gaze. “A few things. I brought them inside earlier like Tuck suggested. We also have a cellar of preserved food. If we’re very careful, we can make it until spring.”

Spring. That word opened a small window of hope inside of me. Although…even when the weather turned, how would farms plant and harvest without trucks delivering the supplies they needed to do so? I’d grown up on a farm and knew that as much as the earth provided, we depended on gas to run our equipment, and a hundred other things that came from sources outside our operation.

“Is this farm how you make a living, or did…do you and Tom do other work?”

“Nope, this is our business. We’re considered a specialty farm. We grow pumpkins and horseradish, primarily.”

“Did you grow up on a farm?” I asked.