“Knock-knock!” a voice called, and I jumped. Penny opened the sliding door and stepped into the studio. “I saw the light on and thought I’d pop over.” She had her thick hair pulled up into a messy bun and was in her usual paint-stained and battered overalls—what she slipped on each day when she got home from work. She reached into the front pocket and pulled out a bag of her own homegrown pot—a strain she’d lovingly named Electric Sheep. “I thought you could use this,” Penny said. “Having survived Decorating Day and all.” She gave me a smile, her warm hazel eyes locked onto mine.
“You have no idea,” I said, giving her a hug. She smelled faintly of pot and sandalwood oil.
I’d met Penny the week Mark and I moved into the farmhouse. She and Louise had dropped by with a coffee cake and a bottle of wine to welcome us to the hill. When Penny and I started to talk, it was as if we’d known each other for years, were old friends already. We talked about what color I should paint each room, about the ways colors can evokefeelings and memories. Right from the start, part of me thought,Here she is at last, the best friend I’ve always been hoping for.
Penny and Louise had what they called a hobby farm. In addition to the carefully cultivated marijuana they grew and sold to a select group of friends, they raised sheep and chickens and kept bees. Penny was a therapist and fiber artist. Louise had been a massage therapist before her stroke, but had given it up, devoting herself instead to the farm.
While Penny was definitely the driver behind my pot habit, I blamed Louise for my bee obsession. She had learned how to infuse her own honey (my favorite was the habanero) and invited me out to the hives with her. I had spent countless hours with her this past spring, summer, and early fall studying the bees, photographing and sketching them. Louise had been very patient with me. She’d put me in a white beekeeper’s suit and taken me out to the hives again and again.
I released Penny from my tight hug and she looked at me with concern—I swore this woman knew me better than I knew myself. “Tell me everything,” she said, hoisting herself up to take a seat on the worktable beside me. She reached for my half-empty glass of wine and took a sip.
And I told her. I could sometimes be even more open with Penny than with Mark, because she never judged. And she was no stranger to tragedy and pain. Years ago, before I met her, she and Louise had had a son, Daniel, who died of leukemia when he was five. Many would have been destroyed by the death of their only child, but Penny let it shape her life in a positive way. She went back to school and became a therapist who specialized in treatment for grief and trauma.
Once I started telling her about the events of the past two days, the story poured out. She just sat listening, giving me her full and complete attention. At last I finished with Ben telling me it was all a mistake.
“Wow,” Penny said. “That’s an emotional tsunami.” This was one of the things I loved about Penny—she never responded with vague therapist nonsense like,How did that make you feel?
“And on top of it all, it’s Decorating Day!” I said. “It was supposed to be yesterday, but Mark waited until I was home. He didn’t want to do it without me.”
Penny smiled. “I bet the tree looks pretty.”
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, the whole house is a winter wonderland. And I’m supposed to be inside right now, putting happy little faces on gingerbread men.”
“I don’t suppose you have to make them all happy, do you?” She gave me a mischievous look. “Can’t you do one having an existential crisis?”
I smiled. “Izzy and Theo are in there turning them into zombies with bleeding wounds and leaking brains.”
“Poor Mark.” Penny laughed. “No wonder you sought refuge out here.”
“It’s the only place I can think. But I know I should be out here working on Moxie, and I don’t know how I’ll get the new book done now that I’ve agreed to let my mother move in with us.”
Penny turned to scan the drawings of bee after bee. “So no progress with Moxie, huh?”
“Nope.” Penny was the only one who knew. “Sarah’s begging me to send her something, anything to show them, just to prove that I’m working on it.”
Penny nodded. “Can’t you just whip up some sketches? Something to keep them happy for now?”
I sighed. “My heart’s just not in it.”
“I know,” she said, setting down the drawing she held on a pile of the others and looking at me again, smiling. “Your heart is with the bees.”
I smiled back at her. “But the bees don’t pay the bills.”
Penny nodded sagely. “Moxie’s your bread and butter. The bees are your habanero honey.”
I laughed. “Couldn’t have put it better myself.” I reached for the glass of wine, took a sip.
“I should go,” Penny said, giving my arm a pat and jumping down from the table. “Let you get back to Decorating Day.” She gave me a mischievous grin.
I sighed. I knew Mark was waiting for me inside.
I looked at her. “Do you think I’m making a mistake? Letting my mother come stay with us.”
Penny looked at me in silence for so long that I was beginning to wonder if she was even going to answer.
“I think it’ll be hard. Maybe the hardest thing you’ve ever done.”
I felt all the air being sucked out of my lungs.
