REN

* * * * * *

2015

 

 

FOR TWO YEARS, things were back to normal.

It was just me and Della against the world, but I wouldn’t lie and say I didn’t think about what had happened between us.

Della had shown me two sides of herself in those few days that I hadn’t seen before or since. Sure, there’d been a few incidents in the forest: a few heated looks, an early morning embrace that had been instinct and not thought, and even a couple of fierce arguments.

But we’d ironed out the kinks and found a new acceptable.

As time went on, problems were few and far between.

And that worried me.

Della had revealed she wasn’t just the simple blonde angel I’d raised and adored, but a girl with evolving needs; a trickster who could hide behind a mask and successfully keep her secrets.

Lately, she’d been too amenable—none of her usual fire or willingness to get into trouble for speaking her mind. But no matter how many times I caught myself studying her and no matter how often I tensed in her embraces, there was never anything more to her affection. No tension or undercurrent.

Just natural, sinless love.

It was the same as it had always been: given freely, kindly, wholeheartedly, but most of all, purely with no underlying contraband.

Her smiles were innocently genuine.

Her touches appropriately platonic.

I did my best to relax, but no matter how normal things became between us, I couldn’t let it go. A niggle was always there, searching her actions and tones, knowingly putting a barrier between us that I didn’t want.

She knew the wall was there, just like I did.

But we never addressed it, never tried to bulldoze it, and as time marched on, we learned to live with it. We accepted that the wariness would never fully dissolve and had become a fracture in our otherwise perfect relationship.

I hated it.

I hated that I’d lost the child I loved with all my heart and been traded a girl who had the terrifying capacity to destroy me.

Maybe it was all in my mind.

Perhaps the late-night dreams of phantom kisses with a woman I couldn’t claim was turning me mad. Maybe I’d been ruined all along and that was why I could never give myself to Cassie.

Whatever caused my vigilance, I never found any reason to be suspicious.

Guilt drowned me because how could I pretend to trust Della, when night after night, I was waiting to catch her? And catch her in what, exactly? A confession that she actually loved me in a completely different way to what was allowed? A hint that she felt just as scrambled and confused as I did and couldn’t find her way back to innocence?

At least, we still had each other.

That was all that mattered.

We fought against winter for as long as we could, but eventually, the icy winds and snowy chill drove us from our sanctuary and back into the cities we despised.

It took us a few weeks to adjust being around people again. And another few to figure out the rules as we navigated our way into well-oiled society where finding somewhere to stay meant paying rent and paying rent meant finding work and getting work meant providing references.

I had cash for a down payment on a rental, and I learned on the job how to walk into letting agencies, ask to view a place, and tolerate being chauffeured around, guided through the home in question, and sold on every benefit.

Even though Della and I had lived with the Wilsons, gone into town, and been around public before, this was on an entirely different level.

We couldn’t hide behind the Wilsons anymore. We couldn’t rely on them to find us a place to stay or talk to the smarmy salespeople on our behalf. I couldn’t work my ass off and ask someone I trusted to buy everything we’d need. I had to pre-empt Della’s requirements with school uniforms and stationery. I had to plan groceries and living locations so she could get to school safely without a long commute.

There were no empty farmhouses for us to borrow. No perfect villages where we could happily live off the scraps unseen.

It suffocated me, seeking places to live where no trees grew or rivers ran. My brain battled daily with my heart, forcing me to give up house hunting and focusing on why we were there.

School.

Della had to go to the best school possible.

That was the reason.

And I clutched it hard even when finding a good school proved to be as much as a challenge as finding a home.

Della helped and researched online. She narrowed her results to two, and together, we walked from our hidden shack we’d commandeered as our winter abode on the edge of a campground, and did our best to hide the fact that we were still homeless.

The cracked weatherboards and grimy windows hadn’t been maintained, but it had a small stove for the extra blizzard-filled nights and it kept us from freezing to death.

It didn’t help with our bathing arrangements—having to melt snow and scrub down with the other person shivering outside to grant privacy, but at least the clothes I’d bought were fresh and new and Della’s hair shone gold and her eyes glowed with intelligence.

Any school would be lucky to have her.

And thanks to her skills, she managed to enrol into an all girl’s high school by acing the entrance exam and telling the headmaster to call her last school for her file.

I hadn’t thought to do that and used the trick when we finally found a cheap one-bedroom place three blocks away, asking the listing agent to call Cherry River Farm and ask John Wilson for a reference.

They did.

And whatever he told them ensured within the week Della attended a new school and I’d moved our meagre backpacks into a bare essential, unfurnished apartment and chewed through a chunk of my savings paying bond, first month’s rent, and Della’s tuition fees.

Della and I transformed its empty spaces into a semi-liveable home, thanks to flea market bargains and the odd furniture found on street corners.

I’d achieved more than I had in my life.

I’d dealt with people and hadn’t been recognised for being a runaway slave or for being the man who stole Della Mclary. My fears of being taken and sold were still strong, even though I was no longer a boy, and I preferred not to be too close or talk too long to anyone.

All winter, Della caught the local bus to school, bundled up in the thickest jacket, mittens, and hats I could afford, and returned straight after class ended.

I didn’t mind she didn’t make friends straight away. In fact, I was glad because it meant I had her company when I returned from work after toiling away at a local building site, and we spent the evenings together with our second-hand TV, street-salvaged couch, and snuggled under a shared blanket watching whatever was on.

The job I scored wasn’t perfect and didn’t pay well, but it meant I could keep a roof over our heads and dinner on our table without having to hunt and gut it first.

I never grumbled as I lugged timber and dug holes.

I was the bitch on the site, gathering tools and doing the chores no one else wanted to do. The foreman who gave me the cash job said I got the dregs because I wasn’t a skilled builder, but I knew it was because I refused to drink with the guys or let them get to know me.

I didn’t want people to know me.

That was where danger lay.

Every day, I hated trudging to work and enduring yet more snide comments and rolled eyes at my reserved silence.

I missed the fields.

I missed the smell of manure and sunshine and tractor diesel.

Now, the dirt on my hands was from concrete and lime, not earth and grass. The dust in my lungs was from cutting bricks and shovelling gravel, not from fluffing hay and hauling bales.

Sometimes, even though the guys hated me, they’d offer me the odd after-work gig. The rules were: always do it late at night and always be unseen by anyone.

I didn’t understand the secrecy for tasks like removing old roof sheets or cracking apart ancient walls, but I followed their stupid rules and cleared away debris. No one else seemed to want to do it, and the money was double that of day labouring.

No matter that I was grateful I had a job, some mornings, when I left for work and Della left for school, I’d struggle to continue walking to the site. Ice would crack beneath my boots and breath would curl from my lips, and I’d physically stop, look at the snow-capped trees in the distance, and have to lock my knees to stop from bolting toward them.

Days were long and hard and taxed me of everything I had.

But the nights—when I wasn’t working on secret demolition—made up for the struggle.

The emptiness inside from living in a concrete jungle amongst wretches and sinners faded whenever I was near her. Her comforting voice, familiar kindness, and almost intuitive knowing when I just needed to sit quiet and have her tell me stories for a change, repaired the tears inside me.

Watching her animate tales of school and teachers allowed me to forget about everything but her. It reminded me why I’d cursed her for overstepping a boundary. And why I could never lose her. No way could I ever survive without her, and that terrified me because with every day, the remainder of her childhood slipped off like a cocoon, leaving behind new wings dying to fly.

She was evolving, and I couldn’t do a damn thing but watch her morph into something I could never keep.

For two years, I held that job and paid for Della’s every need. For every whisper from the wind to leave, I was held in place by the knowledge I needed to stay for her. For every tug to run, I focused on the person Della was becoming, and it was completely worth it.

A month or so after we’d moved into our apartment and I’d decorated the bedroom with purple curtains and a foam mattress covered in lilac bedding for Della—while I slept on the pop-out couch in the living room—we received our first letter.

Because we’d used John Wilson as a landlord reference, he knew where we were and wrote to us.

The letter was short and to the point, making sure we were safe and doing well and that if we ever needed anything, their door was always open. I tucked his phone number and address safely in my memory just in case.

I missed them, but I didn’t know how to say such things or to convey how grateful I was for their hand in our lives—I’d fail in person, and I’d definitely fail in writing.

So Della was the one who got in touch and thanked them.

She let them know I’d found her and apologised for any embarrassment she might’ve caused. I approved the letter she sent, making sure it held the correct tone and gave no room for imagination that we might be doing anything wrong.

But she didn’t let me read the note she sent to Cassie.

She scribbled something, folded it tight, and placed it in the envelope, licking it before I had a chance to spy.

I wanted to know what she said, but at the same time, I respected their privacy and relationship. She had every reason to stay in touch while I had a lot to stay away.

I didn’t send any letters. I didn’t find her online. I didn’t get in touch in anyway.

What was the point?

Cassie and I were friends out of convenience. She had used me just as much as I had used her, and she no longer needed me to cause any more stress than I already had.

But with one letter came more, and Della and Cassie stayed in touch with the occasional note from Liam. Eventually, their snail mail became emails and quickly evolved to Facebook messages.

Occasionally, once Della had dragged herself to sleep and left the cheap phone I’d bought her on the coffee table, I’d swipe on the screen and scroll through pictures of Cassie at horse shows or sunsets over the fields sent by Liam.

Those moments hurt my heart for the simplicity of the world we’d all shared.

The perfection of long summer evenings and cosy winter nights. The innocence of growing up without fences and traffic lights.

I missed sharing a bedroom with Della.

I missed birthday picnics and cherished handmade gifts.

I missed holding her close on a freshly harvested meadow and hearing the birds roost in the willows.

I would’ve given anything to be a farmhand again.

And I knew, over the course of the two years while we lived in a city I didn’t care about, and life maintained a steady stream of work, school, and evenings together, that something had to give.

Something had to change.

Otherwise, I was going to go insane.

I wasn’t cut out for a job where I hated the crew and the labour.

I wasn’t cut out to live in a tiny claustrophobic basement apartment.

But each spring, when the ground thawed and Della murmured that we should go back to the forest, I forbid it. She had to finish school. That was my commitment to her to pay for her education and her commitment to me to learn it.

Despite our constant desire to leave, I was eternally grateful when a letter arrived for me this time, not for Della.

A letter from John Wilson.

There was no fluff or word wastage, just a short message letting me know a friend who owned a farm not far from where we lived had recently lost his head milking harvester. His dairy herd numbered in the hundreds, and he needed someone trustworthy to start immediately.

Della wasn’t home from school yet, but I caught a bus as close to the city limit as I could and walked the rest of the way to his sprawling acreage.

The farmer, an elderly gentleman with yellowing teeth and balding head called Nick March, offered me a job on the spot if I could start at four a.m. every day.

The pay was double what I was earning, and I’d get to be around animals and open spaces again.

I didn’t even think.

I shook his hand and celebrated with Della that night with an expensive tub of ice cream that I couldn’t really afford.

And that was how two years bled into three, and slowly, our newfound routine faded in favour of upcoming complications.

And our lives got a lot more difficult.