Page 24 of Heartland

I let out a sad little moan as she moves the sweet-smelling pot past my nose. “Are we equal partners in this venture or not?”

“Sure, but you’re the one who doubted it would work.”

“I was wrong. Very, very wrong.”

“Heat and patience, Dylan. That’s all it takes. So show me some patience.”

She pours the caramel while I try not to look down her shirt. The swells of her breasts arerightthere, damn it.

But it doesn’t mean I have a “thing” for Chastity. We’re good friends. And I can’t help that I have eyes.

“Find the sea salt?” Chastity suggests. “The first batch needs some love.”

Don’t we all.

I reach for the salt.

Nine

Chastity

I wakeup at dawn in my little bed upstairs in Leah and Isaac’s home. I’m wired to wake up early and not because this is a dairy farm. On the Paradise Ranch, sleeping in was the easiest way to earn a punishment. It meant a smack from my stepfather’s paddle or going hungry at lunch.

Old habits die hard. And not just for me. When I walk into Leah’s kitchen at six thirty a.m., she and Isaac and little Maeve are already there, too. Leah and Isaac are standing side by side at the kitchen counter, drinking tea, while Maeve—their preschooler—sits at their feet chattering to her dolls.

Leah and Isaac are the only couple I know of who ran away from Paradise Ranch together. Leah’s father wanted to marry her off to a fifty-five-year-old man with three wives, and Isaac was so in love with her at seventeen that he couldn’t let that happen.

So they left, picking fruit across the Midwest until arriving in Vermont, where they found year-round work. It took them years to save up enough to buy their little farm. But they did it.

I can’t imagine what it would be like to have a partner so devoted to you that he’d risk everything to give you a normal life and to be your one and only.

Most of us have to save ourselves. There’s honor in that, too. Except it’s lonely. Even now, I feel like an interloper as I wish them good morning.

“Hi, sweetheart,” Leah says. “I have a frittata in the oven. Should only be a few more minutes.”

“That sounds great.” Leah is a fabulous cook. So is Isaac. When I first arrived in Vermont I was so malnourished that I weighed less than a hundred pounds. I am grateful for every meal I’ve eaten at their table.

But I’m also conscious of the fact that I can’t sponge off them forever. They aren’t my parents. It was by design that they made themselves discoverable to runaways from Paradise. When I turned up, they were ready to receive me.

That was two years ago, though. So when Leah discovered I could get a hardship scholarship at Moo U, I jumped at it.

I go to the silverware drawer and pull out forks for everyone. I’m setting the table when Maeve decides that she needs my attention. “Lemme show you my fort,” she says, tugging on my hand.

“Okay, awesome.” I let her drag me into the laundry room where she’s draped an old set of curtains off a countertop to make a hiding place beneath.

“There’s a lantern!” she says. “Lemme turn it on.”

Childcare has been one of the only ways I can really help Leah. So whenever Maeve wants my attention, I’m willing to sit cross-legged on the floor in her latest hiding place, while she chatters to me about hiding from dragons and making pies to sell at the market.

Someone runs on quick feet past us, and I expect to be called to breakfast. But that’s not what happens. The bathroom door is flung open and there’s the sound of someone vomiting.

“Oh, heck,” I whisper.

“Mama,” Maeve says solemnly.

“Poor Mama.”And poor me, I add privately. I shouldn’t have come home this weekend. I can’t afford to get the flu. I still get sick more often than most people, because I grew up in an isolated community without the same germs that other people learn to fight off.

“Mama gets sick every morning,” Maeve says. “And sometimes at night.”