Page 5 of Captivating Anika

Then I greet my customer, get her seated at my station, and head to the back to mix her color while motioning Molly to follow me.

“Does Kim have a full schedule today?”

“Two simple wash and cuts and one highlights and cut this morning. The first one at ten.”

“Good. After you get Debra a coffee, I want you to contact Kim’s clients for this afternoon and see who you can move to next week with apologies and an offer of twenty-five percent off their next appointment. When her ten o’clock comes in, let me know.” I grab the bowl of dye I was mixing and start out of the supply room. “Oh, and I’ll need you to wash hair and blow-dry this morning. Are you up for it?”

It’s almost nine when I finally walk into my house, carrying a poke bowl I picked up on my way home.

What a day.

By the time I had a moment to check in on Kim in the apartment upstairs, it was already past lunchtime. She’d been dozing on the couch and had some cooking show playing on the old TV I left up there.

The good news was, she was done being Chris’s punching bag. The bad news was, she was not ready to report him to the police, which she felt would only aggravate Chris more. Nothing I said could change her mind on that, and she outright refused to go to a shelter.

With her safety in mind, I finally offered her to stay in the apartment. The building has good security, which both my dad and my brother insisted on when I bought it. I figure it would probably be the safest place for her.

After my last customer left at seven thirty, I took Kim’s car, drove it to the Durango Town Square parking lot, picked up a few things for her at the City Market, and hauled the bags three blocks back to the salon. Making sure she was comfortable for the night, I got in my car, stopped to grab dinner, and headed home.

I’m toast. My entire body is one big throbbing sore. That’s what happens when I don’t take my breaks during the day, my body immediately revolts. Everything hurts in a way I know will linger for a couple of days.

I groan when I kick my shoes off and hobble barefoot to the kitchen. There, I fill a glass of water, grab my pill bottles from the cupboard over the fridge, and take my meds. Not that I have any illusions relief will come that easily.

That will require a bit of self-care, something I’m not particularly good at.

Hog

“I think it’s time to get Petunia inside, Boss.”

I follow his line of sight to the sow, munching on the corn my foreman, Franco, just put out.

“Any signs she’s ready?” I want to know.

“She’s getting restless. A little snippy with the others. I think a day or two.”

“Is the pen ready?”

“Yeah, it’s clean.”

Petunia was my mother’s favorite pig—the last one she named—but the sow is getting up there at eight years old. She’s a good breeder and has been producing two litters a year for us, but I think it’s time for her to slow down a little.

The hog farm has been in my father’s family for three generations. I’m technically the fourth one in line, but it’ll end with me. I was an only child, so I have no siblings to hand it over to, and I’ve already dedicated too much of my life to the farm.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the pigs, but farming was never my dream. It was my father’s. Mine was the fire department, which Dad resented from the moment I joined. I stuck around at the farm though, but only because of my mother.

My father was a tyrant, and his father before him. Spare the rod and spoil the child, that was his style of parenting. When I was too young to stand up for myself, my mother would jump in, and Dad wouldn’t hesitate to beat her instead.

By the time I was fifteen though, I was already towering over my father and I could sense the power started shifting. My father was a bully, but also a coward. I never touched him, but I made sure he knew I wouldn’t hesitate if he even tried to lay a finger on Mom or me ever again.

It’s what kept me here long after I should’ve started my own life. Mom refused to leave, sticking to the vows of her marriage, even when my father became ill twenty years ago, and she spent the next eight of them looking after him.

The day he died twelve years ago, it was like a heavy cloud lifted. Still, I stayed, looking after the pigs Mom loved so well, although I did put my own stamp on it by reducing the number of pigs and converted the farm to a free-range operation. I was able to accomplish that with the help of Franco Ayalo, a young Colorado State graduate who majored in animal sciences with hopes and dreams of an enlightened way of farming.

When my mother passed away quite unexpectedly five years ago, I sat down with Franco. I wanted to sell and he made it clear he wanted to buy the farm but lacked the funds. We hammered out an agreement that allowed Franco to buy into the farm.

Right now, he lives in a trailer behind the farmhouse so he has no overhead and takes only a minimal salary to survive, in lieu of a growing stake in the property. He started growing vegetables, added four milk goats and a dozen hens, so we’re almost completely self-sustained in terms of food.

Franco makes goat cheese and sells it at a few farmers’ markets in the region, along with any surplus eggs and produce. He also sells some free-range pork but the bulk of that goes to a few farm-to-table restaurants we’ve developed contracts with.

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