I don’t remember Mrs. Boone saying much—hello, probably—
looking me over while I tried to appear obliging, capable, harmless. She had a wide forehead, and her blue eyes were wide-set also, and there was something about her eyebrows that made you think of birds, the wings of birds, although not until later when you tried to recall what in her face had struck you.

And what would anyone have seen in me? I was tall, a full head taller than Rick, which was why I got away with giving him shit. I wasn’t one bit big or muscled, but I could lift my share of loads. My hair was tied up in a knot under my canvas hat. I wore shorts and work boots and my skin was red-brown from sun and full of different half-healed scrapes and bites. At least before I started working this morning, I had been clean.

Mrs. Boone went back inside, and Rick and I unloaded the nursery stock from his truck. There were rhododendrons and hop bush and guara, some dwarf cypress, and salvia and shasta daisies. These were all meant to go in the back of the property, in the terraced beds. Rick went over the plan with me, gave me a little more grief, and drove off.

I’d been working for Rick for almost a year now. It wasn’t my dream job, though I couldn’t have said what was. After graduation I took some courses at Santa Rosa JC, but I have one of those brains that doesn’t process words on a page very well, and I hated composition classes and anything else that was reading-heavy. I was considered “intelligent” (which was something that seemed to be used against me), but also an underachiever. And although the brain wiring was beyond my control, everyone seemed exasperated with me. They believed I was not trying hard enough, not applying myself. My mom kept telling me to go into a medical field, like taking X-rays or working in a lab, but those jobs just screamed boredom. At least, working for Rick, I was outside every day, seeing actual results, things growing. I didn’t have to dress up or put anything on my face except sunscreen.

I lived with my boyfriend, Aaron. On weekends, we went out to listen to music, or maybe we’d take his dog, Batman, to the beaches or go camping. We were good together. I figured that one of these days we’d get married, and life would fall into place for us without a lot of special effort, the way it happened when you loved each other. We were lucky to have found each other and we knew it.