She pulled her phone from her hip pocket.
Twenty message notifications begging for tarot readings filled the screen.
Sarah was known as encouraging and positive in her readings, and everyone needed some hope in their lives, even if it was from a fraudulent mystic.
She swiped them out and tapped the screen to dial a contact. “Abigail?”
“Yes, sweetie. How are you? Is your back doing okay?”
“Yeah, I’m feeling fine.” Jesus and Mary, she was never going to live that down. “Has anyone seen any weirdos around today?”
“I would’ve called. Let me just check the group chat.” The one that Sarah dared not open, lest her falling icon show she’d checked in. “Nope. Lots of chatter about seeing nothing strange at all.”
“Okay, good. Just checking.”
“What’s really going on, Sarah? You seem jumpy, like you’re expecting someone to attack you.”
“No, I’m fine, but let me know immediately if anyone is skulking around, okay?”
“Of course.”
Blaze returned just as she was scraping the crisped potatoes onto plates. He said, “Lots of strawberries out there.”
She nodded. “About half of my bushes are June-bearing, so they crop heavily during the early summer. The rest of them are ever-bearing and produce all season long.”
He huffed a chuckle. “That’s a lot of berries for one person.”
“I usually can preserves to last through the winter. The kitchen setup in your Chicago house looks like it would be amazing for canning. It gets a little crowded in here.” She flipped her hand, gesturing to the meager counterspace in her L-shaped kitchen.
Blaze started washing the strawberries in the sink. “The farm is a lot of work, isn’t it?”
Sarah handed him a clean dish towel. “You haveno idea.Unless someone grows up on a farm, they don’t know how much work it takes. They think we’re just sitting on the porch in rocking chairs, whittling and watching the corn grow.”
“And you’ve been out here by yourself for a while.”
“Three years since my mom passed away.”
It seemed longer.
Blaze tipped the strawberries into a bowl. “And you haven’t had anyone out here to help?”
She shook her head. “There’sno wayI could afford hired hands. I scramble just to keep myself afloat. I should get a part-time job at the auction barn or one of the quilt shops to bring in some extra cash. The tarot-card reading thing doesn’t pay enough since SnipSnap cut the creators’ fund.”
But it did paysomething,especially when she hustled for readings.
He glanced over his shoulder at her, his blue eyes squinted with concern. “I thought farming was a job that earned money. Seems like all those senators have farms as tax dodges.”
Sarah plucked the toast from the slots and picked up her butter dish. “Those are the emu or llama ranches. I can barely grow enough corn to keep Bow-Daniels-MidWest buying my crops. If my yields drop any, they’re going to cancel their contract, and then the farm will fail.”
Blaze picked up one of the plates and carried the bowl of strawberries over to the kitchen table. Sarah followed with her own plate. He said, “And with you running the operation alone, you said there’s no way you could take the garden produce or dairy products down to the Kalona or Iowa City farmers markets.”
At least he’d listened to her. “I cannot imagine dropping everything and leaving for six hours twice a week to sell my little bit of milk and butter and a few extra vegetables for pin money.”
He forked into the potatoes and shoved them into his mouth, and then his eyebrows shot up and he loaded his fork for a second mouthful. “These are amazing.”
“My homemade butter has less water in it than commercial butter. Ireallysqueeze it out. It’s more like Irish butter, like Kerrygold. Everything comes out crisper, and it bakes better, too.”
Blaze twirled his fork at the raw beams of the farmhouse’s ceiling. “Let’s try a thought experiment. Let’s say you had five hired hands working here with you. What would you do to maximize the revenue on the farm?”
