By night, we crossed the overgrown lawn, went past the weed-dotted tennis court, and hid in the small annex where the open fireplace crackled and popped, and I raided the terribly untended veggie garden by the old kitchen, pulling up long overdue broccoli and kale, leaving Della to use her internet trawling to turn them into a feast.
We’d become more adaptable—not just to outdoor living but to city living, too. When it was on our terms, neither of us felt trapped or ridiculed or afraid.
The town was nice enough with a couple of supermarkets, cheaper restaurants, and plenty of houses that looked like they kept their doors unlocked—if it came down to needing to ‘borrow’ a few things if our money ran out.
Mrs Collins was true to her word, and a week after moving in, she had three trucks deliver timber, paint, and fixings. The materials were stored in the old garage at the back, and that was one of the last interactions we had all winter.
She trusted us in her home and we trusted her to leave us alone.
Our bargain meant I had no intention of letting her down.
Her late husband’s tools, stored in the workshop behind the four-car garage, were a candy box of ancient cranks and rusty hammers—a history lesson in gadget evolution, but they did the job.
Six weeks flew by, and I tackled the roof first.
Before the weather turned entirely disgusting, I ripped off the broken tiles, removed the rotten joists and bearers, and began rebuilding the ancient girl to survive another century.
Those were some of my favourite days—working in the attic with Della perched on old trunks, reading me stories from ancient diaries and dusting off porcelain-faced dolls and patching up bug-chewed teddy bears.
It did something to me watching her cradle the toys so lovingly, almost as if imagining the kids who had once played with them before time turned them to adult, then to dust.
I didn’t have the guts to ask her how she felt about pregnancy after the pain she’d endured. Then again, I knew Della was a fighter and determined, and despite what had happened, she’d still want a kid…eventually.
And although I was still well acquainted with the terror of losing her, I couldn’t deny I already loved her for the mother she would become. The way she’d hold our son or daughter. The way she’d kiss them and read to them and introduce them to the world that we viewed as harsh but would be so fantastical to them as we’d ensure they’d forever be protected and cherished.
That winter was just as good as the previous one in our cottage.
As we grew familiar with the manor house, we’d run the halls, have paint fights that turned into tickle wars, chase up the rambling stairs and indulge in still-dressed sex, rutting against a wall or over the arm of a hundred-year-old chaise.
Della was my other half, and the magic that existed between us meant the sad old house slowly shed off her cobwebs and stood from her ruins, prouder, prettier, braver than she ever had before.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
DELLA
* * * * * *
2020
CHRISTMAS.
New Years.
Another year.
I wasn’t exactly sad to say goodbye to 2019, thanks to the still sharp memories of an ectopic pregnancy, but there was so much good about the year, too.
Ren skirted the topic of what happened in a way that made me suspect he took it a lot harder than I had. Respecting his fears of losing me, I never truly described the pain to him. Never told him that as he carried me from the forest, I felt as if my ovary was trying to claw its way free, determined to drag my entire uterus with it.
Thanks to him, I was still alive.
Thanks to him, we had a chance at a family in the future.
And that was another reason I never told him what I went through when Doctor Strand said the words ‘You’re pregnant.’
How could something so good be so excruciating?
How could something I wanted be so utterly terrifying?
And how could I admit to Ren, that even though I knew the termination had to happen, I felt as if I’d killed our child in cold blood? What sort of life did we end? Was it a girl like me or a boy like Ren?
Sometimes, in those first few weeks, I’d stroke my phone with the urge to message Cassie. She was the one who’d helped me during my first period, and the only girl who I’d confided in. I wanted to share my feelings. I wanted someone to understand that, even though I knew it had to be terminated, it still didn’t stop the occasional nightmares of some ghost-child condemning me for choosing my life over theirs.
But I couldn’t message Cassie because I hadn’t told her about me and Ren.
Sure, I’d spoken to her since we’d gotten together but I always directed the conversation away from her questions of my love life and if David was still in the picture.
What I really wanted to talk about was the shadow slowly building inside me about Ren.
A shadow full of worry.
He’d put on weight since we’d been back together. He laughed and joked and ran and played and worked.
But he still coughed.
Not often.
Not all the time.
Just occasionally.
But my ears hated the sound and my heart twitched like a frightened rabbit every time he did.
Just like I never told him what I went through with the ectopic pain, I didn’t confide my growing concerns over his own health.
To look at him, he glowed with vitality and hardiness…but when that cough appeared?
The shadow inside me grew bigger.
I was used to not having a sounding board to share my concerns, so our separation from society was nothing new, but sometimes I did wish I had someone to assure me that from here on out, life would be kind to us and grant long healthy days and never ending happy nights.
Despite the fact I kept a few things from Ren, and my worries chewed like tiny mice inside me, winter was great fun in that rambling, ramshackle mansion.
Ren had always been a hard worker, and that part of him came out loud and proud as he took it upon himself to renovate the entire property and not just the long list Mrs Collins had provided.
One month turned to two, then three; snow fell, ice formed, and we stayed warm thanks to physical labour. Some days, we’d focus on the bedrooms, lugging timber up the stairs to rebuild rotten walls, both of us learning how to plaster so it didn’t look like Play-Doh slopped on the wall, and figuring out that paint didn’t dry in the cold and caused ugly streaks that meant we had to sand and try again.
Other days, we cleared the overly cluttered living rooms of old magazine boxes and discarded dresses from a century ago, ready to rip up threadbare carpets and buff ancient floorboards beneath.
I loved every second because it meant Ren and I were together, like always.
Life couldn’t get any more perfect.
Until spring arrived, of course.
And then it just got better.
We stayed far longer than usual, but whenever I brought up the subject of returning to the forest, Ren refused.
What he’d said at the Bed and Breakfast still governed him, and he was determined to provide more than just a tent even though that was all I really wanted.
Just him and long, hot days of freedom.
Summer came knocking with a vengeance, giving us an easier job of tackling areas of the house we’d left until last. And as ramshackle slowly became regal once again, the urge to move on returned, despite not knowing where we would move on to.
That traveller’s itch and wanderlust was vicious once it arrived, and it hung a countdown clock over our heads, tick-tocking for a departure.
Almost as if she heard our growing restlessness, Mrs Collins left us a neatly penned note in the repaired letter box asking for a tour in one weeks’ time.
We’d stayed longer than any place in two years, but even though Ren didn’t want to make me homeless again, another reason we hadn’t traded walls for trees was that he felt as if he h
adn’t done enough.
The house was immaculate compared to the state it was in when we first arrived. The roof was solid and watertight. The bedrooms rodent and pigeon free with fresh paint, beautifully sanded floors, and furniture that I’d painstakingly washed, waxed, and restored.
The downstairs was just as impressive with its polished chandeliers, spotless—if not still ancient—kitchen, and the lounge had a full makeover with new walls, re-tiled fireplace, replaced chimney flu, and an emerald rug the size of a small country we’d found in the attic and spent weeks airing out.
We were officially down to almost nothing in our wallets, but I didn’t think I’d ever been so happy. Ren had even stopped coughing as often, thanks to having a proper house to protect us and regular vegetables in our diets.
Things were good.
Better than good.
But by the time Mrs Collins arrived for her tour, Ren and I grew nervous about showing her around.
It was her home, after all.
The photo album of her youth and scrapbook of her twilight years. Had we trespassed on those memories?
To start with, she’d listened as Ren explained what we’d done and nodded as we showed her room after room. Toward the end, though, her nods turned to trembles and the curt replies from a gruff woman became silent tears from a grateful widow.
We feared she hated what we’d done. That somehow, we’d overstepped.
But of course, we worried for nothing.
It took two hours and forty-three minutes to show her around, bypassing the gardens and tennis courts that we hadn’t had time to tackle, and as we all stood on the repaired front veranda with peach roses perfuming the muggy breeze, she pulled out her cheque book and wrote us a figure that, even if we could’ve cashed the cheque, we wouldn’t have felt comfortable taking.
Ten thousand dollars.
Probably her entire retirement kitty, judging by the patched-up blazer she wore.
Obviously, we insisted we couldn’t take it.
Not just because it was too much, but because we had no way to cash it. No bank would touch us, no loan office would trust us—not without identification.
But even though it was a gift we couldn’t accept, there was something special about being offered that cash.
Ren and I stared at the cheque all evening after Mrs Collins had gone, and somehow, in that moment of feeling worthy and valued, we turned to each other and said, “It’s time to go.”
The next day, we called to let her know the annex was free, and it wouldn’t take a gardener much to tidy up the outside in order to sell the old girl for a tidy sum.
We left with freshly packed backpacks and aired out sleeping bags, leaving the cheque on her kitchen bench with a simple note saying thank you.
We were penniless and homeless, but our happiness made us richer than we’d ever been.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
DELLA
* * * * * *
2020
“ARE YOU SURE, Della?”
I leapt into Ren’s arms right there in the tiny office of Lo and Ro’s Fruit Picking. “I’m sure. But only if you’re sure.”
He chuckled into my hair, holding me close, making my legs dangle off the ground. “Well, we just spent our last dollar, so unless you want to be in love with a thief, I suppose we don’t have a choice.” Letting me go, he smiled at Lo—a middle-aged woman with a baby boy tugging at her skirt and a sun-burned button nose. “We’ll take the job. How long was it for again?”
Lo—short for Loraine—pushed a clipboard toward us with a pen. She, along with her husband, Ro—short for Ronald—owned a farm that grew apples, pears, and berries.
“Five to six weeks, depending on how quickly we strip the orchards before working on the greenhouse berries. We like to pick later in the season because we can charge more as fruit gets scarce with colder weather.”
“Makes sense,” Ren said as I grabbed the clipboard and began hastily filling in the boxes. Names? They were easy. Phone number? We had one of those. Date of births? Fine, we could fudge that. Most details were easy apart from three things.
“Eh, Lo?” I looked up, tapping the pen against the form. “We don’t have a bank account or an address, and recently we were robbed, and they took our driver’s licenses, so we don’t have any I.D. Is that going to be a problem?”
I hated lying. I also hated how not having a piece of paper with our name on it had become a hazard in day-to-day living. But I wanted this job, and Ren needed some cash in his pocket in order to feel as if he was taking adequate care of me, so I fibbed and hoped for the best.
Lo looked us up and down, judging our tale.
I’d never been the best liar and hated to do it to a woman who’d caught us counting our last coins on the dusty highway where she had a small wooden stall selling freshly picked apples and pears. She’d taken pity on us when we’d settled on buying three instead of four, mentioning if things were tight, she had a few fruit-picking jobs open.
We’d only been on the road a couple of days since leaving the manor house, and we’d yet to embrace the thicker forest as we didn’t have the cash to fill up our backpacks with supermarket food. As comforting as it was to know Ren could hunt enough to keep us alive, I wanted more to my diet than just meat and the occasional wild vegetable.
When I’d seen the fruit stand, my mouth had watered, and I couldn’t stop myself tugging Ren across the road and drooling over a gorgeous pear.
“Ah, gotcha. You’re one of those.” Lo finally nodded.
“One of what?” Ren asked, his hackles rising, a slight cough falling from his lips.
My heart instantly froze, and I studied him.
Searching.
Seeking.
Desperate to know why he coughed, so I could stop it once and for all.
Perhaps it was just allergies.
Maybe it was from living in storms and traipsing through snow for so many years.
“Backpackers.” Lo pointed at our well-used bags. “I’ve had a fair few from overseas come through and want to be paid in cash as it violates their visa.”
Sighing, she picked up her baby son from the floor and plonked him on the small desk amongst the boxes of pears, blueberries, and apples. “Okay, I can do cash. And your hourly rate will be a dollar more, seeing as I don’t have to pay tax. I’ll pay you every Sunday, cash in hand. Got it?”
Ren cleared his throat, hiding any remnants of his tension. “Wow, thanks. We appreciate it.”
“Meh, don’t mention it. Government takes too much these days and doesn’t do anything worthwhile with it. Rather help out people who need it.” Taking my unfinished clipboard, she scanned it. “Married, huh? So you want a co-cabin with no one else?”
Ren stiffened. “You mean, you offer accommodation, too?”
Lo smiled. “’Course. We’re expecting dawn wake-ups and out in the orchard plucking by seven a.m., lot of transient folk don’t want to pay for motels seeing as fruit-picking isn’t exactly a long-term thing or pays the big bucks.” Bending down, she rustled below the desk before pulling up a key with a carved apple keychain. “Cabin six. It’s the only double free. Some people don’t like it as it’s the farthest from the communal showers and kind of on the forest edge. Heard it gives some tender-hearted folk the heebie-jeebies, but me? I love wildlife, and there’s nothing to be scared of.” Dangling the key, she raised a dark eyebrow. “So, you want it?”
Ren looked at me, and I looked at him.
This was entirely his choice.
I would happily live in the tent farther in the treeline if that was his preference, so he surprised me when he held out his hand and waited until Lo dropped the key. “We’ll take it. Happen to like wildlife too, so think it’s the perfect fit.”
And it was.
For the final weeks of summer, we tackled yet another kind of job, and Ren—who seemed to glow with the dawn—relaxed back into the wild, serious, incredible man I knew and loved.
&nb
sp; Together, we’d pluck ripe, plump produce and sneak one or two on our way to the weighing and packing station. By day, we’d work with other staff—some young, some old—and by night, we’d walk the rows between the orchard trees, inhaling the scent of life, lying on our backs in the grass and watching the stars with the songs of cicadas serenading us.
Occasionally, if we stayed out late and crept back through a sleeping, silent farm, Ren would snag my hand and pull me into the massive greenhouse. There, surrounded by strawberries and raspberries and every other berry imaginable, he would push me into the shadows, press me against a wall, and hoist up my skirt to slip inside me.
For a man who loved waking with the sun, his nocturnal activities never failed to steal my heart and make me melt. His kisses were as hot as the greenhouse, his fingers coarse from picking fruit, his harsh breath as sweet as the sugary berries around us.
Together, we’d rock in the dark in perfect harmony, faster and harder as bodies demanded more, and fingers bruised, and teeth nipped, and hands clamped on mouths to silence our moans.
We were completely untamed and unashamed.
Utterly in tune and bonded.
Even with long hours and early wake-ups, Ren and I smiled often, laughed regularly, and fell into a pattern that only comes from being with someone for so long. We’d always been able to finish each other’s sentences, but now, we barely needed to talk.
I knew with just one look if he needed a drink or quick massage to loosen the knot in his back. He knew with just a glance if I needed a kiss in the shade or more sun cream on my skin.
The long days equalled blissful dead-to-the-world sleep. I even grew accustomed to the delightful ache of hard work in my lower back and moaned in gratitude when Ren massaged the cramp in my hands from twisting apples off branches all day.
Our tiny cabin was perfect in its basicness with its whirring mini fridge, lumpy queen bed, and small discoloured sink.
Lo didn’t just give us a job; she gave us something incredibly raw and pure, teaching us the ease of working the land and cultivating. Eating straight off the trees, sharing our skills to help each other, working our muscles until sleep was no longer a luxury but a necessity.