Chapter 14: The Manager's Ultimatum
The train north was a rattling metal capsule of quiet. Dee had a window seat, her forehead pressed against the cool glass as upstate New York blurred into a watercolor of dormant brown fields and skeletal trees. Her phone, now just a camera and a music player, was tucked in her bag. The silence it emitted was a physical weight in her pocket, absent for the first time in a decade.
It buzzed.
Not a text vibration. The old-school, jarring trill of an actual call. The screen lit up with the name LYDIA. Her manager.
Dee watched it ring, a tiny, angry rectangle of light in her lap. On the fourth ring, she swiped.
“Before you start,” Dee said, her voice low.
Lydia didn’t hear her. “What in the holy hellfire of bad decisions was that post, Dee? ‘Analog chapter’? Are you writing a manifesto for luddites? Your engagement is already dropping. The Aloe Vera people are asking if you’re having a mental health crisis. That’s code for ‘are we stuck with a problematic endorser?’” Lydia’s words were a high-speed train of practiced panic. “You don’t just ‘go dark’. You taper. You post sunsets and vague quotes about self-care. You don’t vanish!”
A man across the aisle glanced over. Dee turned further toward the window. Outside, a river snaked beside the tracks, iron-gray and cold.
“Lydia, take a breath.”
“A breath? I need a Xanax and a new client list. You need to get back online right now and post a story. Something breezy. A coffee cup. A book spine. Prove you’re not chained in a basement.”
The landscape opened into a wide valley. The sheer, un-curated space of it was a balm. “I’m not doing that.”
“You will lose followers. You will lose deals. Relevance is a tap you can’t just turn off, Dee. It leaks, and then it’s empty.”
Dee closed her eyes. She could see the gleaming surfaces of her Los Angeles life, all of them reflecting a version of herself she’d constructed for maximum appeal. It was exhausting.
“I’ll pay you double your commission for the next seven days,” Dee said, calm and clear.
The line hissed. “What?”
“Double. To manage the accounts. Post the archived ‘Golden Hour Glow’ tutorial on Wednesday. The Q&A highlights on Friday. Schedule the approved ads for the shampoo. Pretend I’m here. Be me.”
Lydia sputtered. “That’s… that’s not how this works. Your followers want you. The authentic you!”
“The ‘authentic me’ is currently on a train to muck out a barn, Lydia. I doubt that’s on-brand.” Dee opened her eyes. “After seven days, I’ll post something real from here. A picture of a cow, maybe. But I’m not coming back to LA for two weeks. My aunt needs help with her greenhouse.”
“A greenhouse. In Vermont.” Lydia’s voice was flat with horrified disbelief. “Is this about Matt? Because let me tell you, sulking geographically is not a good look. It reads as needy.”
The mention of his name was like a needle slipped between her ribs. Precise and expected, but still sharp. “This isn’t about him. This is about me not recognizing my own face in the mirror unless it’s filtered. Seven days. Double pay. Can you do it or not?”
There was a long silence filled with the rhythmic clatter of the tracks. Dee imagined Lydia calculating, her sharp mind weighing the financial incentive against the professional annoyance.
“Fine,” Lydia bit out. “But I’m not lying for you. If anyone asks, I’ll say you’re on a ‘research retreat for content’. Which is technically true, if your new content niche is existential despair and animal feces.”
“Deal.”
“And Dee?” Lydia’s tone lost its edge, just for a second. “When you fall off the grid, people invent reasons. The rumors will start. They’ll say you’re in rehab. Or pregnant. Or both.”
“Let them,” Dee said, and ended the call.
She powered the phone completely off this time. The quiet in the train car deepened, filled now with the muffled conversation of other passengers and the conductor’s staticky announcement for White River Junction.
Aunt Ruth’s truck smelled of gasoline, dog, and the ghost of a thousand garden tomatoes. It was a rattling red beast, its bed caked with frozen mud. Ruth herself was exactly as Dee remembered: a solid five feet of compact force, her hair a wild grey cloud under a knitted trapper’s hat, her eyes the pale, discerning blue of winter sky.
“You’re soft,” Ruth declared, not as an insult, but as a field report, after crushing Dee into a hug that made her spine pop. “City soft. But we’ll fix that. Throw your bag in the back. Did you bring real shoes?”
Dee looked down at her fashionably distressed leather boots. “These are real.”
Ruth snorted, a sound like gravel being poured. “Those are apology shoes. Shoes that say ‘I’m sorry for existing on this earth.’ We have boots that work.” She climbed into the driver’s seat, the truck groaning in sympathy.
The farm was ten minutes of winding, potholed dirt roads away from the station. It wasn’t the quaint, Instagrammable homestead of Dee’s faint hopes. It was raw. The main house, a faded yellow Cape Cod, listed slightly to the east. The barn’s roof bore a permanent sag. And the aforementioned greenhouse was a catastrophe of splintered wood and collapsed plastic sheeting, lying in a heap like the skeleton of a slain beast.
“There she is,” Ruth said, cutting the engine. “The monument to my over-ambition. The snow last month was wet. Heavy. She gave up the ghost.” She turned to Dee, her gaze appraising. “Your sister says your heart’s a bit collapsed, too. Structural integrity compromised by a heavy weight.”
Dee flushed, unprepared for the metaphor to be so literal, so ruthlessly applied. “Something like that.”
“Good.” Ruth nodded, satisfied. “Then you’ll understand the project. We don’t mourn the collapse. We clear the wreckage. We salvage what’s good. We rebuild something stronger where the weak spots were.” She pushed her door open. “First, we meet the crew.”
The “crew” was a motley assembly. Three Jersey cows who regarded Dee with wet, suspicious sniffs. A dozen hens that scattered like feathered gossip. An ancient border collie named Gus who leaned against Dee’s leg, his weight both a demand and a comfort. And the mud. Ubiquitous, cold, sucking mud that claimed her apology boots immediately.
That first evening, after a silent supper of stew that tasted profoundly of earth and thyme, Ruth handed her a pair of thick wool socks and heavy, oil-stained work boots. “Your uniform,” she said. “Chores at six. The light’s good by seven for greenhouse salvage.”
In the small, spare guest room under a slanting ceiling, Dee sat on the iron-framed bed. The air was cold enough to see her breath. She thought about Matt, a habit as ingrained as breathing. She wondered if he’d seen Lydia’s scheduled posts, the ghost of her online presence, and known they were a forgery. She wondered if he was with Elara.
The ache came, a deep, cold throb. But around it, something else was happening. Her body hurt in new, simple ways—the pull in her shoulders from hauling water, the chill on her cheeks from the wind. They were honest pains. They demanded presence, not analysis.
She picked up her dead phone, her thumb hovering over the power button. A tremor of want passed through her—to hear his voice, to see his name, to feed the hungry ghost of that addiction.
Outside, a cow lowed, a long, mournful sound that hung in the frozen air. Gus, sleeping on a rag rug by the door, thumped his tail once.
Dee placed the phone in the top drawer of the battered dresser. She closed the drawer.
She lay back in the dark, listening to the unfamiliar creaks of the old house. The hollow look she’d brought with her was still there, in the quiet moments. But it was no longer alone. It was now shared with the smell of woodsmoke, the weight of the borrowed quilt, and the sharp, clean outline of a task to be started at dawn. The wreckage was waiting. And for the first time, clearing it felt like a purpose, not an escape.