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THERE WERE THREE kinds of days in Monica Accord’s life—days when she didn’t care, days when she knew she should care and the odd, rare day when she actually did care.
This morning, driving onto Noah Cameron’s organic farm outside of Accord, Colorado, she cared.
Too bad. Life would be easier if she didn’t have a conscience.
She parked beside Noah’s ancient pickup truck, which was next to a big old farmhouse that appeared to be abandoned. White paint peeled from the railing on the veranda. One eaves trough hung askew—it was a forgotten house, the owner off to parts unknown without a backward glance.
Was she at the wrong place? She had understood it to be a working farm.
Yesterday, the court’s directions to the farm had been clear. The address was correct. This had to be the right place, but she couldn’t be sure. Situated as it was down the highway that ran south from Accord, instead of north toward the attraction of Denver’s shopping centers, it ran counter to Monica’s internal compass. She rarely drove out this way.
And no one came out of the farmhouse to greet her.
She glanced at her watch—7:00 a.m. Maybe Noah was already up and out in the fields, or maybe he was already in town at his store. Maybe she wouldn’t have to face him this morning.
She could live with that. The shame burning a hole through her stomach concurred. Though at least the shame was better than emptiness. Something, anything, was better than nothing.
Bewildered, she glanced toward the fields. Ah. There was the proof of a working farm. Meticulously and perfectly tended, and an obvious indication of where the owner put his energy—the fields were cared for a heck of a lot better than the house.
She stepped out of the car and studied the yard. Sorry-looking place.
In yesterday’s courtroom when Judge Easton had intoned, “Guilty of a wet reckless,” and had sentenced her to two hundred hours of community service, she’d thought she would be talking to high school kids about the dangers of drinking and driving.
She would have taken that on happily. Because what she had done last Friday night had been beyond reckless—there was no excuse for drinking and driving.
As her daddy had said after the verdict, “You don’t make mistakes often, sweetheart, but when you do, they sure are doozies.” He’d softened it with a hug before walking out and leaving her to pay her five-hundred-dollar fine. Fair enough. It had been her mistake and hers alone.
Lecturing kids would have made sense.
But no-o-o-o. Judge Easton had given her a far tougher sentence.
This whole terrible experience had moved with mind-numbing speed, as though she was caught in a vortex. Was she the only person who’d done something wrong last weekend? She’d committed a crime on Friday night and, boom, she was in a courtroom a few days later. She’d barely had time to hire herself a lawyer, but then, the facts were not in dispute. She had been drinking. She had run down Noah on his bike and had broken his arm. She’d heard he also had plenty of scrapes and bruises.
She shivered. She was lucky she hadn’t killed the man.
The judge sentenced her yesterday and, boom, she was to start right away. Today. Was it a slow point in crime or did Noah have some kind of pull with the courts?
The whole town knew Noah as an ethical guy. Truly, she didn’t think he’d do anything like pull strings.
If anyone had pull, it was the Accords, not the Camerons. Not that they’d ever used it. She strongly doubted the justice system in Montana was corruptible.
Was this rush because of the time of year and the fact that Noah needed help immediately? She imagined June must be a busy month for a farmer. Maybe that was the real and simple answer.
So here she was, serving all two hundred hours on Noah’s farm, near him, with him. Crazy old judge. What did he think Monica knew about farming?
She’d expected to have to atone, but with Noah? Pure, simple torture.
Why couldn’t it have been anyone other than arrogant, holier-than-thou Noah Cameron on that dark road last Friday night, he of the über-huge brain who lorded it over others every chance he got?
They had gone to high school together, him one year behind her, but even then she’d been intimidated by the massive mind lurking inside the hippie exterior.
From her youngest days, she’d been made to feel inadequate by him.
Even worse, these days she worked for his mother. And Olivia Cameron wasn’t the least bit happy that Monica had hurt her precious Noah.
Didn’t anyone—the judge, Olivia, Noah, the townspeople—get that she would never intentionally hurt anyone, least of all someone she would happily never have to deal with for the rest of her life?
For years, she’d pushed the guy off her radar, but now she couldn’t avoid him. She had to spend the next couple of months with him—her entire summer—all because of a mistake fueled by loneliness. Still, she knew there were no excuses.
She approached the nearest field with trepidation. Ha! She’d bet Noah would never believe she even knew a word like trepidation, let alone its meaning and how to use it properly.
Stepping over a couple of puddles, more miserable than she’d been at any time in the five years since Billy’s death, she moaned low in her throat. A bird somewhere nearby sang in response.
She should have worn sturdier shoes. Rubber boots, maybe. Problem was, she didn’t own any. Until yesterday, she’d never owned a pair of jeans, either. She didn’t do denim.
Across a long field of swirling dirt in leftover patches of early-morning mist, to a stand of trees in the distance, plants dotted rows of dark earthen hills like tiny green hieroglyphics, a foreign language she would have to learn by immersion—and fast. Sink or swim.
She used to be that new, that green and full of promise, like those plants. Where had it all gone?
Fascinated by their burgeoning vulnerable beauty, she squatted and rubbed a tender leaf between her fingers, both the plant and the soil still cool in the early day.
Babies scared her. Small helpless creatures terrified her. These soft plants intimidated her. What if she killed them?
If she bent over and walked down the rows with her palms outstretched, she could read them like braille, but she still wouldn’t understand their needs, or how to keep them alive. She still wouldn’t know how to farm.
Her lawyer had told her not to worry, that Noah would guide her.
She wouldn’t be surprised if Noah kicked her off the farm upon first sight. In the pit of her stomach, that blasted recurring shame stabbed at her with a hot poker. Her tummy had been doing somersaults all morning.
She didn’t want to be here, to have to face the man she’d hurt.
She touched the plant closest to her.
“How do I help you to grow?” she whispered.
Against the bright green, her hands screamed “pampered,” her nails manicured with OPI’s Not So Bora Bora-ing Pink. These hands that had never gardened—had never even tended a houseplant—had to learn how to dig around in the dirt.
What had the judge been thinking?
What on earth did one night of loneliness and one drink too many have to do with farming?
She spotted Noah across the field, watching her, red hair blazing in the sunlight. Noah, she’d noticed, presented two faces to the world—the happy, easygoing hippie and the über-intelligent, fierce activist.
At