Carrie crouched down and touched one of the pepper leaves. It was smooth and firm, almost waxy. "How do you learn that? To read them?"
"Time. Patience. Getting it wrong and trying again." Marge plucked a pepper—deep red, perfect—and handed it to Carrie. "You married?"
The question landed without warning. Carrie turned the pepper over in her hands. "I was. Divorced. Six months ago."
"Ah." Marge nodded like this explained something. "That's the look, then."
"What look?"
"The one where you're working out who you are now that you're not who you were." She started walking again, and Carrie fell into step beside her. "I've seen it before. People come to the farm when they're untethered. Dirt and growing things—they help."
They reached the greenhouse, and Marge pulled open the door. Inside, the air was thick and humid, carrying the green smell of things pushing toward life. Seedling trays lined metal shelving units, each one labeled in Marge's handwriting—Sunflowers, 6/10. Fall kale, 6/15. Zinnias—farmers market.
"This is where it starts," Marge said. "Everything out there began in here. Little plastic cells, handful of soil, one seed at a time."
Carrie moved between the rows, brushing her fingers over the trays. So much potential, contained in something so small. "Do they all make it?"
"No. Some don't germinate. Some get too much water or not enough sun. Some just don't take." Marge shrugged. "You plant twice what you need and hope for the best. Can't control everything."
Can't control everything. Carrie thought about the spreadsheet on her laptop, the columns of numbers that never seemed to add up no matter how many times she ran them. The house she'd shared with Richard for twenty years, the one she couldn't afford to keep on her own. The settlement negotiations that dragged on while his lawyers found new ways to minimize her contributions to a business she'd helped build from nothing. Even this vacation—they'd booked it back in January, when she still had access to the joint account and a future that looked different.
She'd spent her whole marriage trying to hold it together. Look where it got her.
"You want to help out while you're here?" Marge was watching her with that knowing look again. "We're potting up sunflower starts for the market today. Extra hands are always welcome."
"I don't know what I'm doing."
"Nobody does at first. That's the whole point of doing."
Carrie looked at her hands—clean, manicured, the nails she'd gotten done before leaving because that's what she did before vacations, before the life she used to have. She thought about getting dirt under them. The idea should have seemed beneath her—Richard's voice in her head, always Richard's voice, telling her that physical labor was for people who didn't have better options.
But Richard wasn't here. And his voice could go straight to wherever voices like that belonged.
"Show me what to do," Carrie said.
They spent the next two hours in the greenhouse. Marge demonstrated the technique first—how to ease the seedlings from their cells without damaging the roots, how to create a small depression in the soil of the pot, how to settle the plant and firm the soil around it without compressing too tightly. Carrie watched then tried it herself. Her first few attempts were clumsy, the seedlings listing to one side or the soil too loose. But Marge corrected her, adjusted her grip, showed her again.
By the fifth transplant, Carrie had found a rhythm. By the twentieth, she'd stopped thinking about Richard entirely.
The work was meditative—the repetition, the focus required, the way the world narrowed to this one small task. Lift, place, settle, firm. Move to the next. An exhaust fan droned at the far end of the greenhouse, pulling the humid air through but not doing much against the heat. Her shoulders ached from leaning over the table. Her fingers were caked with soil, and sweat dampened her hairline. And for the first time in longer than she could remember, her mind was quiet.
Frank appeared around noon with sandwiches and lemonade. He was a big man with a farmer's tan that stopped abruptly at his shirt sleeves, a faded Grateful Dead T-shirt stretched across his chest, and dirt permanently embedded in the creases of his knuckles. He set the tray on an overturned crate and nodded at Carrie like she'd been coming here for years.
"New recruit?" he asked Marge.
"That depends." Marge sat on a stool and reached for a sandwich, looking at Carrie. "You having a good time, or is this torture?"
Carrie laughed. "Honestly? Best morning I've had in months."
"Well then." Marge took a bite. "We hire part-time in the summer. Market setup, harvest days, whatever needs doing. Nothing glamorous. Fifteen dollars an hour plus produce. If you're interested."
"I wasn't—" Carrie started, then stopped. What was she going to say? That she hadn't come here looking for a job? That she was just a divorced woman from the suburbs who'd wandered into a farm because she didn't know what else to do with herself?
Except. Fifteen dollars an hour wouldn't make a dent in her financial problems. But it was something. And more than that—it was purpose. A reason to get up. A place where nobody knew her story, where she was a woman learning something new with soil on her hands.
"I'll think about it," Carrie said.
"Door's open whenever you want it." Marge bit into her sandwich. "We're here every day. Except Sundays. Sundays we rest."
