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It hadn’t even been that long since I’d last been here, but it felt like another lifetime. There were the wooden signs along the local road that said “Red Pinecone Farm” and “fresh carrots for sale,” signs that I had made and painted out myself, years and years ago. I drove my truck up along the dirt road that had the big, retrofitted barn that had the main shop inside it, and I cut the engine.
I expected tears to come, but none did. My throat was tight as I looked out over the fields.
I had been through so much while working here, yet now I somehow still felt like I was starting over again. I’d thought I’d known who I was. Known what I should do to be a good person, to do the right thing. And now I could feel myself becoming another version of me.
Or, maybe I was becoming a version of me that had been in there, deep down, all along.
Like I was being sculpted by some artist, and he’d just decided to chisel away tons of chunks of marble, which were now shattering to the floor.
But for once, I didn’t feel lost. Even now, as I felt like I was in the eye of some storm I couldn’t understand, I was less scared than I’d ever been before. I knew where I was, even if I didn’t know what I was doing yet.
I picked up my phone, dialing a number I truly hadn’t expected.
“Sawyer,” my mother said as she answered, sounding just as shocked as I would. “Since when do you call me when it’s not our agreed-upon time?”
“Mom,” I said simply, “I think I’m attracted to men.”
I hadn’t planned on saying it.
Tears broke off down my cheeks now, releasing something that felt more freeing than it did sad. My watery eyes made the view of the slowly setting sun on the farm look even more beautiful, like a painting, rich with gold.
She was silent for a moment. It was nice to know that for the first time ever, I truly didn’t care what she was going to think. I didn’t care what she was going to say, or if she’d approve of it, or if she’d yell at me like I was a kid again.
I just wanted to say it.
The truth.
A change I’d probably been feeling, like an iceberg of my own under the surface, for a long time, without ever stopping to face it.
“Well, all right,” Mom said. “You know, Carol’s son is gay, and he does very well for himself. The orthopedic surgeon, honey, you remember him from the Christmas party, right? I should see if you two could be set up for lunch sometime soon. Really, Sawyer, he does very well for himself.”
I puffed out a laugh, reaching up to wipe away the tears that had streaked down my cheeks.
It was miraculous. In my mother’s own way, she had accepted what I’d told her completely. She was still herself, trying to set me up on dates and meddle in my life and all-around overstep my boundaries. But she accepted me. Accepted something that I thought would be an unwritten rule, that she would despise.
“Thanks, but no thanks, Mom,” I said, falling right back into our usual dynamic. “I think I’ll be able to handle dating for myself.”
“You know I’m always just trying to help you, Sawyer,” she said.
For another five minutes, she did her usual, telling me an anecdote from work and reminding me that if I wanted an office job, it was always there for me.
She was never going to change all of her ways. And I knew that if I wanted any relationship with my family, I was going to have to accept that they would probably always have vastly different views on what success meant, both in work and in personal matters. We might never get to be close, but for the first time ever, I felt like I could show them the real me without shame, and without guilt.
That mattered. Even if my family still treated me poorly over the next few years, even if it got to the point where they slowly faded out of my life, I still wanted them to know who I really was.
Now, they’d know one portion of that, for the first time ever.
When we hung up a little while later, even the fields of the farm in front of me looked different. I felt free in a way I didn’t think I’d ever truly felt while I’d been working here, as wild as it sounded now.
I loved it here at the farm. But I hadn’t loved myself.
Even when Harlan had spent years and years trying to convince me to.
I sucked in a deep breath of air through my nostrils, leaning my head back against the cool headrest in the truck.
