That traveller’s itch and wanderlust was vicious once it arrived, and it hung a countdown clock over our heads, tick-tocking for a departure.
Almost as if she heard our growing restlessness, Mrs Collins left us a neatly penned note in the repaired letter box asking for a tour in one weeks’ time.
We’d stayed longer than any place in two years, but even though Ren didn’t want to make me homeless again, another reason we hadn’t traded walls for trees was that he felt as if he hadn’t done enough.
The house was immaculate compared to the state it was in when we first arrived. The roof was solid and watertight. The bedrooms rodent and pigeon free with fresh paint, beautifully sanded floors, and furniture that I’d painstakingly washed, waxed, and restored.
The downstairs was just as impressive with its polished chandeliers, spotless—if not still ancient—kitchen, and the lounge had a full makeover with new walls, re-tiled fireplace, replaced chimney flu, and an emerald rug the size of a small country we’d found in the attic and spent weeks airing out.
We were officially down to almost nothing in our wallets, but I didn’t think I’d ever been so happy. Ren had even stopped coughing as often, thanks to having a proper house to protect us and regular vegetables in our diets.
Things were good.
Better than good.
But by the time Mrs Collins arrived for her tour, Ren and I grew nervous about showing her around.
It was her home, after all.
The photo album of her youth and scrapbook of her twilight years. Had we trespassed on those memories?
To start with, she’d listened as Ren explained what we’d done and nodded as we showed her room after room. Toward the end, though, her nods turned to trembles and the curt replies from a gruff woman became silent tears from a grateful widow.
We feared she hated what we’d done. That somehow, we’d overstepped.
But of course, we worried for nothing.
It took two hours and forty-three minutes to show her around, bypassing the gardens and tennis courts that we hadn’t had time to tackle, and as we all stood on the repaired front veranda with peach roses perfuming the muggy breeze, she pulled out her cheque book and wrote us a figure that, even if we could’ve cashed the cheque, we wouldn’t have felt comfortable taking.
Ten thousand dollars.
Probably her entire retirement kitty, judging by the patched-up blazer she wore.
Obviously, we insisted we couldn’t take it.
Not just because it was too much, but because we had no way to cash it. No bank would touch us, no loan office would trust us—not without identification.
But even though it was a gift we couldn’t accept, there was something special about being offered that cash.
Ren and I stared at the cheque all evening after Mrs Collins had gone, and somehow, in that moment of feeling worthy and valued, we turned to each other and said, “It’s time to go.”
The next day, we called to let her know the annex was free, and it wouldn’t take a gardener much to tidy up the outside in order to sell the old girl for a tidy sum.
We left with freshly packed backpacks and aired out sleeping bags, leaving the cheque on her kitchen bench with a simple note saying thank you.
We were penniless and homeless, but our happiness made us richer than we’d ever been.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
DELLA
* * * * * *
2020
“ARE YOU SURE, Della?”
I leapt into Ren’s arms right there in the tiny office of Lo and Ro’s Fruit Picking. “I’m sure. But only if you’re sure.”
He chuckled into my hair, holding me close, making my legs dangle off the ground. “Well, we just spent our last dollar, so unless you want to be in love with a thief, I suppose we don’t have a choice.” Letting me go, he smiled at Lo—a middle-aged woman with a baby boy tugging at her skirt and a sun-burned button nose. “We’ll take the job. How long was it for again?”
Lo—short for Loraine—pushed a clipboard toward us with a pen. She, along with her husband, Ro—short for Ronald—owned a farm that grew apples, pears, and berries.
“Five to six weeks, depending on how quickly we strip the orchards before working on the greenhouse berries. We like to pick later in the season because we can charge more as fruit gets scarce with colder weather.”
“Makes sense,” Ren said as I grabbed the clipboard and began hastily filling in the boxes. Names? They were easy. Phone number? We had one of those. Date of births? Fine, we could fudge that. Most details were easy apart from three things.
“Eh, Lo?” I looked up, tapping the pen against the form. “We don’t have a bank account or an address, and recently we were robbed, and they took our driver’s licenses, so we don’t have any I.D. Is that going to be a problem?”