No one says anything about my lack of hair or my illness.
Dean volunteers both himself and Nicholas to help in the apple orchard, while I work in the kitchen and—at North’s request—spend time curating the books in the library, which was my job when I stayed here after college.
Bella is at first wary of being away from me, but she slowly warms to Asha, who cares for the younger children, and before long they’re playing duck-duck-goose out in the grass. At noon, everyone piles back into the main house for lunch.
Dean and Nicholas return, triumphantly bearing a basket of apples, and we sit at the trestle tables in the dining room to eat fragrant bread fresh from the oven and homemade vegetable soup.
After lunch, Dean, Nicholas, and Bella play board games in the library while I go in search of North. As expected, I find him in his woodworking shop.
The smell of sawdust fills the air. The tables are covered with woodworking tools, as well as dozens of finished and half-finished bowls, boxes, and toys.
North is sitting on a stool, a work light illuminating the table in front of him as he sands a small piece of wood.
“What are you working on?” I hitch myself onto the stool beside him.
He holds up the piece. It’s an intricately carved chess piece—a knight on horseback. I take it from him and examine the details.
“It’s beautiful. Is it a commission?”
“No, but we’re renting out space in a few downtown shops, so I thought I’d put it up there.” He nods toward the other pieces on the table, all finely carved and crafted, and the smooth, glossy chessboard.
“What kind of wood did you use?”
“Walnut and maple.”
I pick up a pawn and study it, rubbing my finger over the curves.
“When I was in Russia, I saw this chess set that had been made by a guy who was a prisoner in the gulag,” North says. “Looked like a regular set, you know, maybe of wood. Then I found out it had been made of breadcrumbs. The prisoners would chew bits of bread and press them together to form the pieces so they’d have a way to pass the time. Still standing all these years later.”
I try to picture it—a prisoner carefully sculpting an entire chess set out of bread. I wonder how long it took to make, how many games the prisoner played. How many he won.
“Aside from knowing it was a work of art, in a sense,” North continues, “I thought it was amazing this guy who probably got one piece of bread per day would sacrifice eating it to create something. In the damned gulag, even.”
I do that, I think with sudden clarity.
Okay, not entire chess sets out of chewed-up breadcrumbs, but chocolate swirl cupcakes and lemon parfaits, and crayon pictures of hedgehogs with my daughter, and multi-colored Lego fortresses with my son, and drawings of Paris, butterflies, and gardens where everything blooms bright. Even in my own personal gulag of cancer, I create things too.
North hands me the knight and points to a clean cloth. I pick up the cloth and clean the sawdust off the piece. He begins to smooth away the rough edges on the queen.
“You’re doing all right, then?” he asks.
“Most of the time.” I shrug. “But it’s rough. Scary. I won’t know if the cancer has spread more until I have scans after chemo. I have dreams where it’s digging into all different parts of my body, like barbed wire. And even with a good prognosis, I still wake up sometimes wondering if I’ll be alive this time next year.”
This is what I love about North. He doesn’t say, “We all wonder that.” He doesn’t tell me that of course I’ll be alive. He doesn’t try to tell me everything will be okay or that other people have it much worse than I do. He doesn’t tell me not to worry.
He just nods.
We sit in silence for a while—him carving chess pieces and me polishing them. I’m cloaked in the warm, comfortable feeling I had so many years ago, when the world had jagged edges and Twelve Oaks was the only place where I knew they couldn’t hurt me.
I know differently now. Safety isn’t a physical place—it’s knowing you are unconditionally loved and accepted, and it’s a feeling of peace that you somehow cling to even in the darkest of times. Not that I always do, but I’m learning to try.
The love and acceptance part, though…I’ve got that.
“He