1. Teddy
S pring had been wet and miserable, and my best pair of work boots were giving up the ghost. The squelch of my socks inside them made me grimace in disgust as I crossed the farmyard heading back for my morning break.
Break, and break. It was coffee and cramming random food down my throat while I sorted through emails and made a few notes in my messy diary with some misguided hope of being organised for next week.
I was usually organised. I wouldn't be running this farm if I wasn't. But things were stupidly busy, and setting aside time to order a new pair of boots hadn't been on my agenda. It was now, though, since there was a visible gap between the soles and supposedly waterproof uppers of both boots. No surprise my socks were soaked. Kicking off my sad excuse for footwear, I hung the socks over the porch railing and stood there, shivering, in my bare feet.
This place. Home. I'd been born here, in the front room, too impatient to meet the world. Mum was too far gone to wait for the ambulance, nor had there been any time for Dad to take her to the hospital. That was me all summed up from the moment I was born. Apparently, I was a handful as a child, then I morphed into a lazy teen, only to emerge in my twenties as someone my dad had been immensely proud of. He'd always told me .
My mum? I didn't remember much. Not from before. I remembered too much from after—all things I didn't want to remember. I'd only been small, and my dad being who he was…
I shrugged off the darkness and smiled at the flock entering the farmyard and Flora, right on time, driving the bleating critters toward the back pen—she had another load in her truck, ready to move into the field at the back of the bogland. She raised her hand and waved; I mimicked her movement.
We didn't need words out here. Modern communication was a fabulous invention, and anything important was sent over WhatsApp, email, or the local online landowner forum.
I went inside, shutting the door behind me. Peace and quiet at last. It was what people usually associated with farms in the middle of nowhere, but the reality still hit most of them square in the face when they rocked up here. This was a working farm, but I didn't have cattle of my own. I grew Christmas trees, pine to be precise, and tendered large paddocks of farmland to sheep, cattle, and all things that paid their way.
We'd once been on the brink of disaster because a tree farm was no longer a viable business. Timber was a long-term investment, and we'd needed cash faster, as the bills were mounting. Never one to give up, my dad dug in his heels, we both had, and spent months trying to figure out solutions, find good stable investments that meant we could keep our home.
Now we hosted the local farming college full time, with their huge sheds and classrooms, gleaming tractors whizzing up dust outside my kitchen window. The college focused mainly on crops here, with several large greenhouses further down the road, and solar panels along the treeline. Beyond those the never-ending lines of green pine, my view as far as I could see.
I'd been so proud of my dad. I was proud of myself too, even if that wasn't a very Swedish thing to feel. It was definitely something you didn't boast about, but I knew my dad would have been equally proud. I could almost feel him sitting next to me as I poured myself a mug of coffee and watched Flora stomp across the yard, waving her arms and shouting loudly. Bloody sheep .
"I know, Dad," I said, smiling, like he was still here. "And nope. No."
He'd always teased me about Flora. We'd spent all our time together as kids on neighbouring farms, been the best of friends at primary school. Then we'd grown up and she was still here. So was I. It was…complicated.
I sighed, my attention drifting to my overflowing inbox. Invoices. Sales pitches. Equipment we'd never be able to afford. Did I want to purchase some prefab holiday homes? Nope. This was a noisy place full of flies and mosquitoes, and the local lake was pure bogland. No one in their right mind would choose to holiday here. Also, I wasn't sociable. I didn't do well with humans. Well, non-farm folk. We sometimes got city folk, who wanted to shake hands and talk about the weather, but they soon got with the programme and would just nod and grunt the next time our paths crossed or, better still, send an email and not cross paths at all.
At least the students here were mostly local kids destined to go down the same path I had. They already had the knowledge and manners and understood the life out here. It was a good life, simple, honest, their family farms a warm, comfortable noose around their necks…just like this place had been. Now I had settled in, I was happy here. Content.
Living.
I had no idea how to live outside the fences that penned me in. I just did what I always had. I got up in the morning, these days with an alarm on my phone instead of my dad bringing me a cup of strong black coffee in bed. I took my clothes out of the tumble drier, stuffed my limbs into my dark green overalls, and stuck a piece of buttered bread in my mouth before I donned my work boots.
Boots. Damn, I needed to shake myself out of this, whatever it was, and get the jobs done.
Sometimes I'd catch myself sitting in the kitchen like this. In the winter, it would be dark, and sometimes I would pick up the matches and light the candle that stood on the table, like I had the night Dad passed. I'd sat here in numb shock as his body lay cold in the over-complicated bed in the living room .
That bed was gone now, but most things were just the same, including me. I still sat here with a cup of coffee, the soft whirring of my laptop joining the symphony of sounds outside. Tractors trundling back and forth. People calling out to each other. Students milling around. Sheep bleating. A fly buzzing in the window.
Okay. Boots. I had an email somewhere. Discount codes of some sort.
Most of the new emails I deleted right away, but there was one that caught my eye, my breath hitching and a mouthful of coffee totally missing its mark. Fuck. I clumsily wiped my face with the back of my hand and felt the hot liquid soak through my overalls. Whatever. It wasn't like they weren't dusty and covered in dirt to start with.
I couldn't stop staring at the name on the screen.
It was a group email, but his name was the first. I dry-swallowed, instantly getting whooshed back in time. Senior school. Graduation.
School Reunion! the subject line shouted, filling me with unease. I'd liked school, been rather good at it too, but…that was in the past. I really had no interest in seeing any of my former classmates again. Half of them had stayed local, but I only really knew them by their email addresses or WhatsApp handles. The names of their farms. Old farmer Johanson's place was still called Johanson's, but his son ran it now, same as me with this place. Dad may not be here anymore, but his name still carried clout. I was just the caretaker, the one people needed to speak to because he was no longer here. I didn't mind. I wished my dad was still here, of course I did, but it would take decades for me to grow into who I'd become, until my own child would take my place.
I smiled, shook my head. I would never have a child. Never have someone else here again. There was too little oxygen for me to breathe as it was. There would never be enough for anyone else.
That was the grieving idiot inside me talking, I knew that. I could go out and find myself a partner. What the hell would I do with a partner, some stranger messing around in my house? It gave me anxiety even thinking about it. Nope, not happening .
I didn't watch TV, but I'd heard people talking about some show called Farmer Seeks Wife or something like that. Someone had laughed and suggested I should apply. I'd grunted and walked off. I bet there was no Farmer Seeks Husband show I could go on. That wasn't the done thing. Or maybe it was, and I'd just not paid attention. The world was constantly evolving, right?
I wasn't going to go to any damn school reunion, spending an evening with a bunch of people I had nothing in common with. Those who were like me would be about as interested as I was in partaking in the ‘sumptuous buffet' or ‘toasting with the local beer' down at the community hall.
They could have tried harder, maybe hired a nice restaurant in town, and not just gone with the tired hall that still smelled of the Scout meetings of my youth and badly executed birthday parties. That place carried no fond memories, and neither did school. Not really.
Liar! that name on the email screamed at me.
Ned Anderson. An American exchange student who'd rocked up in our last year and stayed long enough to graduate with us. A strange, lanky bloke with weird hair, who spoke bad Swedish with a questionable accent. He had family here. Lived with his Aunt Violet.
The things I remembered.
He'd been different from any boy I'd ever met, not that we'd been friends, Ned and me. We'd barely spoken, but after Ned had gone back to America, I acknowledged Violet Anderson when I saw her in the supermarket, waved if I passed her standing on the forecourt to her farm. She was in the WhatsApp group, and she was doing well, despite her old age. She had a team of workers who ran her large cattle farm, and she still chaired the community council and was active on the landowner forums.
Anyway. Work. I wasn't going to go to that reunion. With a sigh, I deleted the email, closed my laptop, and sipped my now stone-cold coffee.
My place was here. And the work wasn't going to get itself done, was it?