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“You all warmed up?” Jodi’s gaze flickers over the can of bear spray in my holster and the bell on my wrist. I limited myself to one today.
“I am.”
“Great. The bike path is over there.” She points to a narrow opening in the trees, beyond the lot, and begins leading us in that direction. “Have you been on it yet?”
I shake my head in answer.
“It goes all the way down to Wasilla. We obviously won’t be going that far.”
I fall into step beside them as uncomfortable silence lingers. I wonder if they find this as awkward as I do.
“Thanks, for letting me come with you.”
“Safety in numbers, right?” Emily offers, her voice wispy and timid.
I match their pace as we close the distance to the trail ahead. “So, have you lived here long?”
They both nod but offer no opportunity for more conversation, and so I give up, keeping my attention ahead to where the cautionary yellow signs appear, warning of bicycles and runners.
And moose.
And bears.
My anxiety spikes.
“We’ve been running this trail for years and we’ve never run into a bear on it,” Jodi says, seeing where my eyes have landed. Muriel must have told them about my paranoia. I can only imagine her version: that girl from Canada who’s afraid of her own shadow.
“How far are we going?”
“We do ten miles on Saturdays. Muriel said you’d be up for that?” They both watch me expectantly.
Did she, now … That’s sixteen kilometers. I could barely handle six kilometers back in March and I haven’t run since.
I do a quick glance to confirm that Jonah is already gone. Too late to turn back.
I’m the stranger here, crashing mother-and-daughter time, I remind myself. I force a smile. “Sure, should be fine.”
Chapter Twenty
I hear the distant buzz of Muriel’s ATV long before I spot her through the window, coasting up the driveway.
Toby texted me twenty minutes ago, warning me his mother has decided today’s the perfect day for us to prep the garden, with the soil warm and dry enough.
With a groan, I hit Save on a draft of my latest Calla & Dee blog post, entitled “The Reluctant Gardener.” The original title, “The Hostile Gardener,” sounded too … hostile.
I wince as I stand, my thighs still sore from Saturday’s run. Grabbing my gardening cheat sheet—a compilation of basic tips from my mother and notes I gathered from an Alaska Gardening 101 blog—I step into my rubber boots and drag myself outside to face my determined neighbor.
* * *
“You almost done there?” Muriel bellows from the far end of the garden, wiping the back of her gloved hand across her brow.
“I think so!” My back and shoulders throb as I drag the rake one last time. We’ve been working tirelessly for hours, churning the old dirt with the mounds of fresh, black soil and manure that Jonah dumped in here the other day, until the mixture is loose and level. My stomach is growling, my body is coated with sweat, and I can feel the dirty streaks that paint my cheeks.
Muriel treks between the long, tidy rows of soil she built using a hoe, her boot prints remaining behind. “You need some water. Here.” She reaches down into her cooler and pulls out a bottle. “Drink up. Come on now.”
I accept the bottle, downing nearly half of it in under twenty seconds, no longer fazed by the way she herds and cajoles and demands.
“Better?”
