“Cold out here,” he said. “Let’s go in.”
She stood. They went inside.
In the kitchen he poured them both tea and said nothing more about Laura. And Sarah didn’t ask. But something changed after that night. Something got a little easier. Not gone, not forgotten, just a little easier, the way it does when you’ve carried something heavy alone for a long time and suddenly somebody stands beside you. They don’t take the load. They just stand there, and somehow it’s not as lonely.
They bought chickens in early March. Drove together to a farm in the next town over. Sophie stayed with Ellen, who had taken to the girl from day one and was always trying to slip her a cookie or something. The woman selling the chickens ran a small solid farm, the kind Mike used to have.
She was selling young hens, nearly laying age. Sarah bargained in a businesslike way, not shy about it. Mike stood beside her and let her handle it. She knew what she was doing: checked the birds, felt them over, asked about feed, illness, egg production.
The woman respected her for it. You could see that. They bought twelve hens and a rooster. On the drive home Mike said suddenly:
“I’ll clean out the coop. Needs fresh bedding.”
“I’ll help,” Sarah said.
“No, I got it.”
She didn’t argue.
He cleaned the coop himself that same evening, quietly and thoroughly, the way he used to do when the whole farm rested on him. His hands remembered. His hands remembered everything. That was almost the strangest part—how easily they recalled what his mind had seemed to forget.
When the chickens settled on the roosts and went still, he stepped out of the coop and stopped in the middle of the yard. The yard smelled like manure and hay. For the first time in a year and a half. He stood there a little while, then went inside.
The seeds were in the cellar. Sarah had been right. Several packets, neatly labeled in Laura’s handwriting: tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, carrots, onions, and separately wrapped in paper, cherry tomatoes. On that packet Laura had written: “Pretty, but they taste good too.”
Mike picked up that packet and held it for a long time. Looked at the handwriting. Sarah stood beside him and stayed quiet.
“She always planted these,” he said. “Said they looked nice on the vine.”
“I bought cherry tomatoes too,” Sarah said. “In town last week. We’ll plant them side by side.”
Simple. No drama. Just side by side. That was all.
“We will,” Mike said. He put the packet back with the others.
That same day he pulled the tractor out from under the shed and tried to start it. It didn’t turn over the first time. The battery was dead, so he had to jump it from the truck. But it started. Rattled, coughed out a puff of blue smoke, then settled into a steadier sound, almost like it was glad to be remembered.
Walt was walking by, heard it, and looked in through the gate.
“Mike,” he said, “you alive over there?”
Mike looked up from under the hood.
“Looks that way.”
“Well, I’ll be.” Walt scratched his head. “We were starting to wonder…”
Wonder all they wanted. Walt stood there a little longer, nodded a few times, and moved on. Mike watched him go and thought how long it had been since he’d talked to somebody like that—brief, normal, man to man.
Sarah changed slowly, and maybe that was why it was so noticeable—because real change usually happens gradually. At first she flinched at sudden noises: dropped something and froze for a second, shoulders up. A door slammed and she’d turn fast, and for a moment there’d be something in her eyes that had no business being in the eyes of a young woman in a safe house.
Then it faded. Mike saw it every time and looked away because he didn’t know what to do with it, and it made him angry. Not at her. At whoever had put that look there. Later she stopped flinching. It happened so gradually Mike couldn’t say when it changed. One day he simply realized he hadn’t seen that movement in a while—the raised shoulders, the quick turn of the head.
She started eating properly. At first she ate very little, either from habit or embarrassment; Mike didn’t know which. Now she ate like somebody who enjoyed food and allowed herself to. It was good to see. Plainly, humanly good…
