She paused. The crowd laughed. Juniper nodded her head, and Rowan handed her a tissue Gloria pulled out of their purse and passed to her for Juniper.
“But you deserve every second of this time that we want to honor you. Thank you for everything that you have done and will continue to do. You have all of our support, as much as you need of it. We will give it to you.”
The crowd cheered and clapped. Juniper had to take a moment to gather herself.
“Kenah (thank you), Councilwoman Lightfoot, and everyone else,” she motioned to the crowd. She looked at Rowan and gave her a quick smile. Her own separate thank you.
“Our Tribe, our land, our water, and our health sustains us. I am so thankful to everyone here for honoring the work that’sbeen done.”
She was careful, even still, to not claim herself as the sole doer of that work. She might have been at first, but not anymore. Not for a long time.
“When I came home from college without finishing my degree, I was so lost,” her voice almost broke but she continued, “and the way I found myself again was by growing a garden. I saw the purpose was twofold. I was able to contribute to sustaining life in our community, and I also knew that community would sustain me. I would like to say that I know it’s not always perfect here. It’s hard for everyone to feel like they can find their place here, that they will be accepted for who they are, the paths they’ve walked, and how they want to contribute to our community. We struggle in more ways than we admit sometimes. But everything we need is right here, if we each believe and commit ourselves to finding a better way to do things and sharing that with each other.”
Victor whistled through the fingers at his lips in agreement. She breathed out a self-conscious laugh at first but straightened her posture and smiled. Then she launched into the history of the gardens and how the community could start accessing the food, thankful to be able to divert the attention to the work they did together, before the students closed out the event with a song.
Rowan wrapped her arm around Juniper as they walked over to talk to their parents.
“Junie, Junie, Junie, wow. Look at you. Rowan, how did you get so lucky?”
Rowan shook her head and laughed. “I honestly don’t know, Dad.”
He winked at them both. In reality, they were both lucky to have found each other, to have found this second chance. Anita held her hands out, and Juniper leaned over to her. She took her face in her hands.
“I don’t know what I did to grow a baby up to be a woman like you. I am so damn proud of you, Juniper.”
She brought her in for a hug and brushed her fingers through her hair. Juniper closed her eyes and savored it.
“So tell us about this trip you both got planned,” Victor said, crossing his arms.
“I hear they’re going out of the country in a couple weeks,” Anita joined in on the teasing, throwing an elbow in his direction.
Juniper and Rowan’s eyes darted toward each other’s, and the biggest smiles spread across their faces.
Victor narrowed his eyes. “That seems suspicious.”
“What? We can’t be excited to go to Costa Rica? It’s kind of a work trip anyway. We’re going to see an ecotourism business some friends of mine started… you know, to get ideas to bring back here,” Rowan said, narrowing her eyes back at Victor before smiling.
“Mixing businessandpleasure, I see,” Anita teased.
“Okay, that’swaymore than enough from you two. No more sitting together.” Juniper wagged a warning finger between the two of them. Then she linked her arm through Rowan’s, and they turned back toward the pavilion. “Why are they so wild?”
They made it a few paces to the pavilion before Rowan stopped them. “By the way, what is going on between those two?” She asked.
They looked over at Wren and Beckett who seemed to be deep in conversation, each standing on opposite sides of one of the pavilion poles. Beckett swiped at her bottom lip with her thumb while Wren narrowed her eyes at her saying something they couldn’t hear from where they were standing.
“I don’t know,” Juniper said through a laugh.
“Is Wren into women?”
“I didn’t think so. Some people do figure it out a little later in life. As much as I’ve grown to love her, I still don’t know if I trust the General’s intentions though.”
Rowan laughed at that. “Honestly, I think she’s just a big flirt. Driven by ego.”
“Ya think?”
“Before we get distracted by anything else. I have a little surprise of my own to share with you.” She reached into her back pocket and pulled out a key. “Now that you’ve given me your official answer.”
Juniper watched Rowan’s face falter with what she thought looked like nervousness. Juniper took the key and slid it into her back pocket.
