Buch lesen: «A Hopeful Harvest»

Chapter One

Mortgage. Electric bill. Car payment. Gasoline. Milk. Bread. Eggs.

That was as far as Liberty Creighton’s budget would stretch until the apple crop came in. She measured ingredients for the tank sprayer, added water and got ready to drive the aging tractor along the expanse of trees in Golden Grove, Washington. Recent rains meant additional spraying to guard against worms and disease.

Was she foolish to take this on to fulfill her late grandmother’s wishes to keep Gramps on the farm? Or was it an act of kindness?

She wasn’t sure, but she was on the cusp of her first solo harvest. Their winter budget depended on these final weeks and she and her five-year-old daughter had spent the last year in a town that used to scorn her. Maybe still did. That was their problem. Not hers. Except it still hurt, so maybe it was her problem after all.

She’d completed the Fujis and Galas when the calendar app on her phone buzzed a reminder. She stared at it, dismayed. Lunch with your best girl, twelve o’clock, Golden Grove Elementary!

She was a mess. She hadn’t bothered to shower or get dressed in regular clothes because somehow she’d marked her kitchen calendar for lunch with CeeCee tomorrow. Not today.

Maybe the app was wrong.

She knew better as she raced for the house. If she skipped the much-needed shower, threw on clean clothes and hurried to the school…

The clock said 12:05 p.m. when Libby flew back down the stairs. Gramps was snoring in his recliner. She wanted to tell him she was leaving, but she’d have to wake him and deal with his growing disorientation and there was no time for that.

She scribbled a quick note instead. “Lunch at school with CeeCee. Back soon.” She put it on his little side table. The table used to be cluttered with pills and random items. She’d reorganized it when she moved in and the order seemed to help Gramps’s cognition. He didn’t seem as confused with her there, managing things.

She dashed out the door, got in the farm truck and turned the ignition key. It started on the first try.

Thank You, sweet Lord!

She breathed the prayer as she headed for school, trying to ignore the dashboard clock. By the time she pulled into the parking lot, it was 12:19 p.m. She hurried to the door and hit the call button.

No one answered.

She pressed it again as precious seconds drained away.

The door buzzed. She went inside.

“Sign in here, please.” An elderly woman stood alongside the security desk inside the door. “And state your business.”

“Lunch with my daughter.” She spoke brightly as she scribbled her name in the log. When she spun to go, the old woman frowned and stuck out a hand. “Time in, please.”

Libby wrote the numbers 12:21 as quickly as she could, then rushed to the cafeteria. She homed in on the clatter of children and lunch trays. She darted through the first set of double doors and scanned the room.

Kids of all sizes were milling around. Adults were overseeing groups of tables, and while she knew CeeCee’s teacher, Libby had no idea who the lunch monitor was for her class. She moved to the right, toward the smallest children, and spotted CeeCee as the monitor called them to attention. “Mrs. Reynolds’s kindergarteners, time to take care of your garbage and recyclables and line up.”

She got to CeeCee’s side as her little girl stood up to clean her area. “Hey, girlfriend!”

“Mommy!” Pure joy lit CeeCee’s face. She threw her arms out and half jumped into Libby’s arms. “I knew you’d come! I knew it! I told everyone that my mom would never forget about me.” She turned back toward the gathering children. “Here she is! This is my mommy!”

The lunch monitor didn’t try to hide her frown or sound all that sincere. “That’s wonderful, darling. She can walk us back to the classroom. Won’t that be special?”

Her tone said it wasn’t all that special, and her sour expression indicated that Libby fell short in this woman’s estimation. Don’t let her push your buttons. Keep your chin in the air and own the moment.

Libby longed to take the woman down a peg. Clasp CeeCee’s hand and sign her out for the afternoon and make the whole day special to make up for her mistake. She couldn’t, though. She had work waiting, work that had been put off for too long already. On top of that, Gramps couldn’t be left on his own for long periods of time, so that meant she’d walk CeeCee to her class, kiss her goodbye and go back to her orchard chores.

“Mommy, thank you for coming!” CeeCee hugged her again, as if popping in for five minutes was enough.

It wasn’t, but she thanked God for her daughter’s understanding heart. “You’re welcome, darling. I’ll see you when you get home, okay?”

“’Cept you don’t have a home.” One of CeeCee’s classmates spoke up, a little girl. “CeeCee said you don’t have a home so she lives with her grandpa. Right?”

“No home, for real?” An adorable boy shot dark eyebrows up in surprise. “Then you can come and stay with us, CeeCee, with me and my dad. And my big sister! I would like that a lot!” Excitement widened his smile and Libby fell in love with him instantly.

“Except we do have a home.” She squatted low and made eye contact with the kids, including the girl who called CeeCee out. “With my grandpa on the apple farm. We moved here to raise apples and pears and plums and to help CeeCee’s great-grandpa get around.”

“But we didn’t have a home before, did we, Mommy? When we were in that other place and they made us move. Right?” There was no denying CeeCee’s earnest request for honesty.

An old ache hit Libby’s heart.

Should she admit they’d been homeless? Or gloss over it? Nowhere in the parenting books did the experts explain what to do when your abusive ex-husband bleeds money from your accounts and leaves you bruised and penniless without a roof over your head.

She wanted to brush it off.

She didn’t. She faced CeeCee and nodded. “We did have to move, didn’t we? And then Ms. Mortie called me to say Gramps and Grandma needed help. We headed up here the very next day. It’s cool how God worked things out, isn’t it?” She smiled at the class as the teacher came forward to direct them into the kindergarten room. “Just when they needed us, we needed them right back.”

“’Xactly!” CeeCee kissed her goodbye and skipped into the room, totally happy. She didn’t understand the scourge of homelessness.

Libby did.

But she would never again fall victim to a man’s deceit. She’d been foolish once. She would never be foolish again.

The wind came out of nowhere. One minute former army captain Jax McClaren was heading toward his solitary cabin in the hills, and the next, his pickup truck was broadsided by a gust of wind so strong that it thrust the heavy-duty 4x4 sideways.

He gripped the wheel, then fought to maintain his forward progress.

The wind had other ideas.

Military training clicked in. He reduced his speed, eased on the brakes and kept the wheel straight. The brakes created instant friction to help keep the tires under his control. Not the wind’s.

He edged his way back to the proper side of the road as another car approached, heading west. When the wind slammed again, he narrowly missed sideswiping the smaller car.

His phone chose that moment to indicate a weather warning. “Approaching low front,” advised the digitized voice. “Expect dangerously high winds.”

He could have used the warning ninety seconds earlier.

The wind played tug-of-war for control of the truck. He was between towns. He’d left Golden Grove after finishing a job for a kindhearted widow who liked to bake him cookies. He had every intention of heading back to his solitary cabin to soak up some peace and quiet. Away from people. Away from gratitude he didn’t deserve. Away from life.

But when the wind slammed him again, he wasn’t sure he was going to make it. As that took hold, he realized two things more. An old man, wearing nothing but boxer shorts and a T-shirt, was walking down the road, trying to block the raging wind with an inside-out umbrella. Behind him, not far from a bungalow-style house in need of attention, a wooden barn literally blew apart.

Jax didn’t blink. Didn’t think. He just pulled to the side of the road and jumped out of the truck, directly in the old man’s path.

His actions startled the man. White hair flying in the gale-force winds, the old fellow stepped back in alarm.

Jax had lost a grandmother to Alzheimer’s nearly a dozen years before. He’d watched the disease drain her mind. Her joy. Her attitude. And her caring. But while others grew impatient with Grandma Molly’s changeable faces, he wouldn’t. Couldn’t. Through the long years of decline, he’d focused on one thing: that she was the same grandmother who helped raise three little boys when they lost their mother. He knew she loved them to the very end. She just didn’t remember it.

Recalling that, he used his most respectful tone as he faced the confused wanderer. “I thought I’d give you a lift to wherever it is you’re going, sir.”

“You know where I’m going?” queried the old guy as if hoping for a positive response.

“I expect we’ll figure it out,” Jax replied.

“Sounds like a plan!” The old fellow tried to move toward the truck but the wind bested him. Jax took his arm gently and steered him toward the truck door.

A car was coming their way from the east.

Farther out, another car was fighting its way up the road from the west. He helped the man into the passenger side of the truck, then hurried around to reclaim the driver’s seat. He thrust the truck into gear and started forward. “Were you going home? Or leaving home?” He shot the aged man a comforting look and didn’t once mention the lack of attire, but inside he was seething.

Who would leave a sick, elderly person alone like this? Who would let him out of the house wearing nothing but underclothes? If a parent allowed a child to wander like this, they’d be arrested.

The old man pointed toward the bungalow just beyond the destroyed barn. “I reckon I know that place.”

“That’s where you came from?” Jax asked. He had to speak up over the roar of the wind. It raged through the trees and whooshed beneath the truck. He signaled a left turn just as an oncoming car signaled a right turn into the same driveway. “Looks like you have company, sir.”

The word sir made the old man smile. “I could use a bit of company now and again, but my missus won’t be happy about bein’ surprised. She likes the house just so when company comes by. That whole ‘cleanliness bein’ next to Godliness’ thing, you know. That’s a woman thing, I expect.”

Jax wouldn’t know. He’d been steering clear of God, family and women and anything that smacked of commitment or caring or real emotion. Surface stuff he could handle since leaving Iraq. Anything deeper than that sent him on to the next job. The next task. The next neighborhood. Offering his help but never his heart. He pulled to a stop as a middle-aged woman exited the car next to him. The insignia on her door indicated she was from a local home health care agency.

She looked from the old man to him, then the flattened barn and let out a low whistle. “What’s happened here, Cleve? Where’s Libby?” She included both men in the question as the wind helped push them toward the house.

Jax lifted his shoulders. “Don’t know. I found him walking down the road alone as the barn blew apart. I’m Jax McClaren.”

“Carol Mortimer, from the home health service in Wenatchee. Folks call me Mortie. Come on, my friend, I can’t be taking your pulse or blood pressure out here, now can I?”

Her question seemed to confuse the old man further.

She took hold of one of his arms. Jax took the other, and together they tried to guide him into the side door of the house.

He had other ideas. “I promised I’d keep a lookout,” he told them, and for a thin fellow, when he dug his heels into the soft valley soil, he dug hard.

“We can help,” said the woman softly. “It’s Mortie, Cleve. You remember me, don’t you? Where’s Libby? Did she have to go out?”

“Please don’t tell me that someone would leave this gentleman on his own.” That hiked Jax’s blood pressure to new levels.

The wind slammed them. He was just about to lift the elderly fellow into his arms and carry him into the house when a car pulled into the driveway.

It slid to a quick stop and a woman jumped out. The raging wind wrapped her longish sweater around her, and her light brown ponytail whipped back and forth, but it was her face that caught Jax’s attention.

Despair, mixed with a generous serving of worry and determination darkened her blue eyes. Despite that, she was still beautiful like one of those inspirational movie heroines his grandma used to watch.

She ran forward and got right in front of the older man. “Gramps, I think that wind’s a little too strong for any more spraying today, don’t you?”

The old fellow stopped. Stared. Then he blinked as if he’d just come out of a dark movie theater into the light.

The wind pummeled him.

Wide-eyed, he hurried forward of his own volition now. “What are we doin’ out in this?” he shouted as he hustled up the side steps and into the house. “Libby, you know better than to run the tractor in a storm like this, don’t you?”

The young woman went right along with his new train of thought. “I do. And I’m pretty sure you taught me to dress properly before going out in gale-force winds.”

The old fellow was quick to defend his choice of attire. “Well, I was in a hurry, you know.”

The woman—Libby—held the old-timer’s gaze but she offered him a pretty smile, lightly teasing. “Do tell.”

“I was on the lookout for something.”

A quick look of regret flattened her features, but she reengaged the smile swiftly. “Yes, you were. I asked you to watch for CeeCee’s bus while I was spraying the orchard. But that doesn’t come until later.”

“So I didn’t miss anything?” He posed the question quickly, as if worried he might have messed up. “I knew it was important, but I might have dozed off in my chair…”

The home health woman brought him a fleecy pair of pajama pants and helped him into them.

“And there was a wicked crash and I woke up and knew I was on the lookout for something, but for what?”

Libby looked around in confusion. “A crash?” She scanned the room and the kitchen beyond.

She went pale. Her eyes went wide. She stared out the back window at a monster-size pile of broken sticks and bricks and huffed out a slow, sad breath. “The barn.”

Jax hated to bring more bad news, but he’d already spotted her grandfather outside when the barn went down. So something else had awakened the elderly gentleman. He crossed to the side door, opened it and stepped outside.

A swirl of gravel dust stirred old memories he’d shoved aside. Haboobs. The Iraqi desert sandstorms. Troops hunkered down.

That was then.

This is now.

Determined, he walked to the back of the house. And there it was. A second barn, much smaller, but just as flat. Would the house be next?

The house blocked the wind, allowing him time to give it a quick once-over. Where the barns lay in splintered pieces, the house stood firm and square. It was old, maybe the original structure, even, and craftsmen knew how to put a solid building together back then. No, the house looked solid, if worn.

He drew a breath and walked back inside. The home health nurse was brewing tea in the small kitchen. She raised her brows as he entered. “Bad?”

“Yes.”

“Both barns?”

What could he say to make this better? Nothing. He nodded.

“But no one died. Or got hurt,” the nurse added as the old man’s granddaughter came through the connecting doorway. “It could have been worse.”

He turned toward Libby. “Someone could have been hurt. Or killed.” He looked toward the living room beyond. “He was walking along the road in his skivvies, dazed and confused because he was all alone.”

Her gaze narrowed. The smile he’d found engaging disappeared. “And who are you, exactly?”

“Jax McClaren. I was driving by when I spotted him. And the barn.”

“Mr. McClaren…” Carol Mortimer began.

He included the nurse in his look. “When someone is that sick, should they be left alone?”

The nurse made a face. “Some patients are fine on their own for an hour or two. It depends on what stage they’re in. In this case, Cleve’s been fine for short periods. But seems like we might need to revisit our thinking if he gets riled that easily.”

“Having a barn destroyed seventy feet from the nearest window isn’t an everyday occurrence.” Libby folded her arms and faced him. “We need to remember we’re not dealing with a small child but a grown man who thinks he’s okay, and some of the time he is. And there’s still work to be done because this is a working farm. Mortie—” she moved closer to the home health nurse “—you understand. He doesn’t want to go someplace else. It would kill him. Grandma said that time and again. He was born on this place and he’s made his wishes clear often enough. He was born here and wants to die the same way. How can I deny him that after all he’s done for me?”

“But what if Mr. McClaren hadn’t come along when he did?” asked Mortie. “What if Cleve had wandered until a branch hit him? Or an airborne missile from someone’s roof or barn speared him?”

“What choice do I have?” The young woman splayed her hands. “He wants to be on the farm. It’s his one link to reality, but the barn’s gone, the shed’s demolished and we should be harvesting the early fruit, except there’s no place to put it now. Do I throw in the towel on the harvest and tuck him somewhere safe? Or keep my promise to Grandma and let him have one last season?”

A school bus pulled up to the driveway, leaving the question unanswered.

Libby hurried out, wrapped an arm around a small child and walked her inside.

A woman and child striving to make ends meet on a falling-down farm.

They needed someone who knew construction. Someone who knew apples. And, maybe most important of all, someone who’d cared for an Alzheimer’s patient before.

Jax didn’t want to help.

This place, this farm, this family had too many needs. He could handle any one of them and maintain his distance, but to face all three?

That called to the protector in him, a side he’d buried when he’d lost four good men to an accident that never should have happened.

He needed to walk away. They’d get by, one way or another. Folks always did.

But when Libby drew the little girl in, laughing about the wind and shrugging off the blown-down barn as if it was no big deal, he realized he had no choice.

He tugged his faded army cap into place. “I’m going to let this wind ride itself out, then I’ll be back.”

Libby frowned. “What? Why?”

“To help.” He brushed one finger to the brim of his hat. “I’ll be here first thing in the morning.” He turned, not waiting for permission that might not come. “Miss Mortie. And Miss—” He tipped his gaze down to the little girl.

The little girl didn’t cuddle into her mother’s side like so many would. She beamed a big smile his way and held up her hand, splaying five little fingers. “I’m CeeCee and I’m this many and Gramps said we could get a dog someday. Won’t that be the best fun ever?”

“It sure will.”

He trotted down the steps and to his truck.

He shouldn’t do this. He knew it. He could pick up the phone, inform his family of the situation, and they’d bankroll whatever was needed, letting him stay away.

Except this time he couldn’t.

Was it the old fellow’s struggle that drew him? Or the beautiful and determined young woman? Or the guileless child?

All three, he realized as he drove around the semicircular drive.

He’d help. Then he’d leave, like he’d been doing for three long years.

End of story.