“Fine. Don’t take too long, Jeeves. Ow!” I let out a yelp—of surprise, not pain—at Jonah’s swift parting slap across my backside before he climbs into the truck.

“Calla?” the older, wiry woman in yellow—in her late forties or maybe even early fifties—calls out.

I smile, even as my cheeks flush. There’s no way they missed that. “Yeah. Hi.”

She slows to a walk to close the last ten feet. “I’m Jodi.” She gestures to the softer-bodied, raven-haired woman next to her who is closer to my age. “This is my daughter, Emily.”

My glance flips back and forth between the two, looking for the resemblance, finding it in the slender bridge of their noses and their closely set eyes.

Emily offers a lukewarm smile in return.

So far, this feels as awkward as walking into a stranger’s house for lunch uninvited.

“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?”

“Uh-huh,” I manage through a pant.

“You’re all out of breath.” She snorts. “I thought you were a runner!”

“This is different … from running.” Though I sounded about the same by the time I reached the end of my ten-mile run with Jodi and Emily—two quiet-mannered women who I learned speak little and smile even less. I’ve already politely declined their invitation to join them next weekend.

Preparing this soil is backbreaking work. And this woman, who has three or four decades on me, is out here by choice, her breathing even. The only sign she’s exerted herself is the damp gray curls stuck to her forehead.

She leans against the garden gate, settling a biceps over the top that would give most guys I’ve dated a run for their money in an arm-wrestling match. Beyond, Zeke grazes on a patch of newly sprouted weeds. Muriel insisted that he should be allowed to wander while we’re working out here. Meanwhile, Bandit took off into the woods, to climb a tree. “You’ve got yourself a good first garden, Calla,” she says with a satisfied nod. “We can start planting tomorrow.”

“The porch guy’s coming to install the screens tomorrow.” Thank God. The bugs haven’t risen from their winter nests, but I know they’re coming, each day growing a bit longer and warmer.

“And are you helpin’ him build?” Her wrinkled lips twist with a doubtful smirk.

“Well, no, but—”

“So, I’ll bring the seedlings in the morning. We should be able to get everything in by noon.”

There’s no point trying to explain that I don’t want to be all the way back here when a stranger is working on my house. What if he has questions? What if he needs my opinion? I’m sure she’d have an answer for that, too. Right now, though, I want her to leave so I can shower, eat, and rest my throbbing body until Jonah comes home.

“Have you seen the rest of your property yet?” Muriel asks suddenly.

“Uh, no. There’s, like, almost a hundred acres.” I haven’t ventured beyond the driveway and the pen. My guess is I’ll never see all of it.

She lifts her chin in that way she has sometimes when she talks. Like she’s about to tell me a secret, something she knows I don’t know—which is undoubtedly a lot. “I’ll bet Phil didn’t tell ya about the old cabin.”

I pick through my memory and come up blank. “What cabin?”

The broad smile that fills her face makes me instantly regret asking. “Come on. You and me are goin’ for a little ride.”

The back of Muriel’s jeans and coat are splattered with mud by the time she hops out of her seat in the middle of the thicket.

I check my own pant legs to confirm that my clothes are equally dirty. The narrow, wet path she led me on to get here was sinking and churning beneath the weight of our ATVs.