For A Father's Love

by JoAnn A. Grote

  Mandy patted Gram’s hand again. “The doctors know what they’re doing. There’s no denying there’s risk involved, but it’s Grandpa Seth’s best chance to stay here with us.”

  Gram nodded.

  “I won’t pretend I know how God’s going to answer our prayers.” Mandy’s tone was gentle. “But remember what He said in Jeremiah: ‘I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.’ He only has good in mind for Grandpa Seth and you and Jason.”

  Jason felt Gram’s shoulders rise beneath his arm as she took a deep breath. “Thanks for reminding me,” she said, her voice firmer than he’d heard all morning. “I’m glad you’re here, Mandy. You’re family, and our family didn’t feel complete until you arrived.”

  “Thank you. This is exactly where I want to be right now.”

  Jason caught the glitter of tears in Mandy’s eyes before she blinked them away.

  It does feel right that Mandy’s here, Jason thought. He didn’t let himself explore the fact that she’d refused to formally join the family by marrying him. He hadn’t enough emotional energy to deal with that now. I’m just glad she’s here, Lord. Thank You for bringing her back into my life.

  Mandy pulled two folded papers from her purse. “Beth and Bonnie made get-well cards for Grandpa Seth.”

  “How sweet.” Gram accepted the papers.

  Jason glanced down. Both homemade cards were addressed to “Grandpa Seth.” Jason smiled. It touched and amused him that the girls had adopted Mandy’s name for his grandfather.

  Beth’s card showed a girl hugging a man with a beard. Beneath the picture she’d written in blue crayon, “This is me giving you a bear hug.” Bonnie had drawn a girl sitting on a bearded man’s lap and written in red, “I miss you. Come home soon.”

  Jason chuckled. “Gramps looks like Santa Claus in their pictures.”

  Mandy and Gram agreed, laughing.

  Their conversation dwindled to a few comments and words of encouragement. They passed the Bible and devotional book back and forth among themselves until Dr. Monroe walked in with an infectious grin. “Seth held his own in there. The operation couldn’t have gone better.”

  “Does that mean he’ll be all right?” Hope filled Gram’s face.

  “There are no guarantees, but he has a great chance of recovering.”

  Gram’s face relaxed somewhat. “Thank the Lord.” She gave a mischievous grin. “And you, of course.”

  Dr. Monroe chuckled. “I don’t mind not receiving top billing.”

  “Can we see him?” Gram’s voice trembled.

  “He’s not awake yet. They’re moving him back to ICU. He’ll be there a couple days. Just standard procedure.”

  “When can we see him?” Gram asked.

  “When he wakes up. Let me give you an idea of what to expect during the next couple months.”

  The next couple months. The words brought relief to Jason. They sounded so positive. Not the next couple hours or days—but months.

  “Seth will be on a ventilator for a day and a half,” Dr. Monroe continued. “That’s normal, so don’t let it worry you. Looks a little scary, but it’s a good thing. After he wakes up, we’ll get him out of bed and into a chair.”

  Jason started. “So soon?”

  “He won’t be staying there long, I assure you. A short while and then back to bed. After a couple days, if there are no complications, he’ll be moved out of ICU. We’ll keep him here four or five days longer, monitoring him until we’re sure he’s recovered sufficiently to go home.”

  Gram’s grin widened. “Home.”

  Jason caught Mandy’s glance and smiled. She smiled back, her eyes sparkling with the same joy he knew she saw in his eyes.

  “I didn’t think he’d be home before Thanksgiving,” Gram admitted.

  “Definitely by Thanksgiving, barring complications.”

  “Will he need medications?” Jason asked.

  “Only aspirin. I don’t want him doing anything too physically demanding for the first few weeks,” the doctor warned.

  “I suppose Seth needs to change his diet,” Gram speculated dryly.

  “Low fat, low cholesterol is the way to go. I’ll talk with you about it in more detail before Seth is discharged. I’ve some brochures that might help you out.” The doctor drew his pepper-and-salt eyebrows together. “Along with the physical issues, there are other important changes to watch for.”

  Unease slithered through Jason’s chest. “What changes?”

  “Depression is common after this kind of surgery. A lot of heart attack survivors become reflective, almost have a change in personality. They look back over their lives—see what they’ve done, what they wanted to do and didn’t, what they may never have a chance to do now. Let me know if he gets depressed, but don’t be surprised by it. It’s normal. Seth’s life has changed forever.”

  Jason nodded. This has changed all of our lives forever.

  Eight

  Jason leaned against an old, white wooden pillar on his grandparents’ back porch, removed his billed hat, and rubbed his red-plaid-flannel-covered forearm across his forehead. He glanced at his watch. Only time for a quick break before Beth’s class arrived.

  He breathed the crisp mountain air in deeply, relishing the pleasure of spending a day outdoors in the mountains instead of inside his Wall Street office. Looking at his hat, he grinned. ASU for his alma mater—Appalachian State University—stood proudly in gold against the black background. The cap was worn, the colors faded. Gram had found it in the attic yesterday.

  The hat brought back memories—some fun, some fond, some not so pleasant. Fun memories of the companionship he’d found as part of the college baseball team. Fond memories of meeting Mandy and the relationship that grew quickly to love. Not-so-pleasant memories of Mandy refusing to marry him.

  He wrenched his thoughts from the past and forced them to the scene before him. Mountain ridges spread into the distance like stilled waves. They were covered with Christmas trees, which looked like green pyramids standing in orderly rows. The scene, as always, filled him with awe and quiet joy. In spite of the fourteen- to sixteen-hour days he and the other men put in, he loved this work and this place. If it weren’t for Gramps’s heart condition and Jason’s knowledge that Neal and the other partners back in New York were overworked because of his absence, Jason would have felt completely content.

  “Mandy’s presence would still have played havoc with that contentment,” he admitted with a wry shake of his head to a scarlet cardinal in a nearby holly bush.

  Moving color in the form of people and trucks filled the Christmas groves: men cutting trees, carrying trees, stuffing trees into binders and pulling them out, piling the trees on trucks. Besides Ted, who’d helped Gramps manage the farm, eight men worked on the farm year-round. That number neared thirty with the locals and college students hired this time of year.

  Business was going well. All the overseas orders had been shipped, as well as orders to retailers in distant states, along with most of the live trees, which were shipped with ball and burlap around their roots. This coming week—the week before Thanksgiving—would be a challenge. Gramps had retail lots in Atlanta, Charlotte, Winston-Salem, Raleigh, and other large cities. It took two truckloads of trees a day just to keep the lots in Atlanta stocked. No rest for the weary here.

  He stretched his arms over his head and winced. He thought he’d have worked out all the creaks and crimps in his joints and muscles by now.

  “Hi, Jason.”

  “Hey, Mandy.” He lowered his arms as she stopped at the bottom of the steps. She looked great in a red-and-black- checked wool coat. She looked good in anything, for that matter, but he especially liked to see her in bright, cheerful colors. “What are you doing out of the store? It’s only one o’clock; a lot of hours left before quitting time.”

  “Beth’s teacher asked if I’d act as a chaperon for the tour this afternoon
. The school requires one adult for every seven children on field trips. One of the class mothers who’d pledged her time for today called in sick. You won’t mind if I tag along, will you?”

  “The more the merrier.” He glanced at his watch again. “The kids should arrive anytime now.”

  “They’re already here. Grandma Tillie was leaving the store when they arrived. She asked me to find you.”

  He took the four wooden stairs in two steps. “I’d better get a move on.”

  “It’s okay.” Mandy fell into step beside him. “She’s taken the class to the nursery. She said she’d start the tour there, and you can take over when you catch up with the group.”

  “I’m surprised she left Gramps alone.”

  “He’s napping, so she took advantage of the time to bring her frosted sugar cookies down to the store. That’s where we’ll serve the kids cider and cookies after your tour and the hayride. I don’t think she’d leave him for a moment except for the cell phones you bought them.” Mandy gave a bright laugh. “She keeps her phone in a carrier attached to her belt. She said she feels like a cowboy wearing a six-shooter.”

  He chuckled.

  “It was a great idea you had,” Mandy continued, “that Grandpa Seth, Grandma Tillie, you, and I carry phones with us and then programming all our numbers in so Grandma Tillie or Grandpa Seth can reach any of us in an emergency with just the touch of a button.”

  “The phones are worth the cost in peace of mind.”

  “Here’s my phone.” Mandy held it up. “I’ve decided to get a holder like Grandma Tillie’s. That way there’ll be no chance I’ll set the phone down and forget it someplace.”

  “Your dedication to them means a lot to me.”

  “They’re special people. I’ve loved them since we first met.”

  He remembered that meeting. He’d introduced them, confident he’d found the girl of his dreams, confident she’d one day be part of their family.

  Mandy stuck her phone in her pocket. “Grandpa Seth is certainly glad to be home.”

  “That he is. In the two days he’s been back, he’s given Gram more than her share of headaches. I don’t remember Gramps showing much temper down through the years, but he sure is ornery now. Doesn’t like being dependent on Gram, I suppose.” Jason reached to open the door to the nursery. “Guess I wouldn’t like depending on someone else either.”

  Mandy’s eyes flashed with teasing laughter as she moved past him. “Ah, yes, you independent mountain men.”

  Her friendly, fun manner bordered on flirtatious. Jason caught himself just in time from kissing the lips smiling up at him. The realization jolted him and roughened his voice when he replied, “You mountain women hold your own with us.”

  “We do our best.”

  Mandy’s response was almost lost in Gram’s greeting. “You’re just in time, Jason. I’ve told the children all about how Christmas trees start as tiny seeds in the crevices of pine cones, then are grown in here until they’re strong enough to survive outside. I’ll let you tell them about the rest of the Christmas tree business.”

  “Thank you, Gram.” He raised one hand high in greeting. “Welcome to the Always Christmas Farm.”

  As he smiled at the children returning his greeting, he thought, Those third-grade mountain boys have no idea what’s in store for them in a few years from those future sixth-grade mountain girls.

  ❧

  Mandy stood, hands in her jacket pockets, behind the children at the edge of a grove of Fraser firs.

  “It smells like Christmas out here,” one little girl said.

  The adults laughed, but the other children chimed in to agree with their classmate.

  “It always smells like Christmas here,” Beth said. Her dry tone spoke volumes of the sense of ownership she felt for the farm that had in such an unexpected manner become her home. Beth stood right in front of Jason. As if claiming ownership of him too, Mandy thought. She wished Beth dared let her guard down and allow herself to like Jason, but she realized that might make it more difficult for Beth when Jason returned to New York.

  Mandy looked over the children to where Jason stood. It felt luxurious, this opportunity to openly watch Jason without worrying he or anyone else would think her indiscreet.

  His looks hadn’t changed much in the eight years since they’d stopped seeing each other. He was still trim, and his hair hadn’t started graying, but his skin had lost the fresh look of youth and gained a tougher texture. The laugh lines at the corner of his eyes had deepened and now stayed visible whatever his expression.

  The largest difference was the sense of maturity. Anyone meeting him would immediately recognize him as a man who carried responsibilities well. She felt a twinge in her chest. He’d grown into a fine man. Any woman would be honored to be loved by such a man. And she’d turned his love down. She’d make the same decision today given the same circumstances. But there was a difference—today she’d make that decision knowing she’d never stop missing him.

  “There are many kinds of Christmas trees,” Jason was saying. “The trees in this grove are Fraser firs. Some people call Frasers the Cadillac of Christmas trees. Frasers have strong branches with short needles, so it’s easy to hang ornaments on them. Come close and look at the needles on these trees.” The group shifted closer to the trees on either side of him. Some of the children reached out to feel the needles. “As we go through the farm, I’ll show you how to tell the different kinds of Christmas trees apart. Notice that the needles on these Fraser firs are flat, a rich, dark green on top, and silvery underneath.”

  His words opened a memory in Mandy’s heart. The night they met, they’d gone with a group of friends to a pizza parlor. Long after the others went home, Jason and Mandy had stayed, talking into the night, learning pieces of each other’s lives and hearts. He’d looked across the table, playing with the straw in his empty soda glass, and said, “Your eyes are the same shade of green as Fraser fir needles in the sunlight.”

  She’d laughed, truly amused to hear her eyes compared to the needles of a tree, but secretly she’d felt a deep joy at his comment. Already she’d learned how he loved trees, especially the royal Fraser fir.

  Two tractors pulling large, hay-filled wagons chugged to a stop nearby, jolting her back to the Christmas farm. At Jason’s command, the group climbed into the wagons and selected places to sit in the scratchy, sweet-smelling hay.

  The children sang Christmas songs as tractors pulled the wagons between groves of different kinds of trees. At each stop Jason explained more about the trees and business. He described the care that went into a tree for the seven to ten years it took for a tree to grow from a seedling to a treasured part of someone’s Christmas: keeping weeds and grass mowed, fertilizing the trees, shearing them to keep the near-perfect triangular shape people like. “We spray the trees for pests too. That’s important. The wrong pests can wipe out an entire crop of trees.”

  He invited the children to gently touch the trees, study the shape and feel of the needles, and smell the trees. “Not all Christmas trees smell the same. Rub the needles of this Douglas fir. They smell a bit lemony, don’t you think?”

  Mandy watched Jason introduce the children to the trees, watched the excitement that radiated from him, the tenderness in the way his large fingers touched the needles. A strange combination of quiet joy and sadness filled her. He seemed made for this world. The man who’d burst into her store the day after Grandpa Seth’s heart attack, the man whose picture accompanied articles in business magazines wasn’t the Jason Garth she knew. In spite of the years he’d worked in New York, she couldn’t imagine this man in the billed black-and-gold college cap and tan corduroy jacket living the life of a high-powered executive in one of the world’s most powerful cities.

  The children’s delighted laughter broke into her thoughts. Jason had spread the branches of a fir to reveal a bird’s nest. He led the children to a nearby tree and showed them where a deer had nibbled at the
tender growth. At another spot he pointed out where he’d found a wild turkey nest. For the rest of the ride, the children kept a lookout for wildlife, not even disappointed that they saw only small birds, squirrels, and one rabbit.

  A boy with thick brown hair that reached his eyebrows shifted to his knees in the crackling hay. “I bet there’s bears around here too, aren’t there, Mr. J. P.? And wolves and panthers.”

  The relish with which the boy envisioned dangerous wild creatures running free on the farm amused Mandy.

  Beth groaned. “You’re just trying to scare us girls, Andy. There’s no dangerous animals around here, are there, J. P.?”

  Mandy saw Jason’s hesitation and knew he was searching for an honest answer that wouldn’t frighten the children. “It’s true there are dangerous animals in the mountains, Beth, but they seldom stray out of the deep forests into civilized areas like this.”

  Beth and Andy exchanged I-told-you-so looks.

  When the wagons returned to the nursery, Jason led the children into the one-story, warehouse-looking building where workers boxed trees to send to individuals and made wreaths and roping at long tables.

  “You send Christmas trees in the mail?” A red-haired, freckled, skinny boy looked skeptical.

  “Yes. We ship trees to some faraway places: Canada, the Virgin Islands, Chicago, Phoenix, Hawaii, Miami—”

  “My grandparents live in Miami,” the boy interrupted. “Did you send a tree to them?”

  Mandy grinned as she watched Jason struggle to keep from laughing.

  “I’m not sure. I don’t personally address all the packages we ship out. Maybe you should write your grandparents and ask them.”

  The boy nodded, his expression sober. “I’m going to e-mail them and tell them they should buy one from you ’cause you have the best trees.”

  “We sent my grandparents a Christmas tree from here,” Beth announced. “They live in Texas.”

  “That’s right,” Mandy agreed. “And now it’s time for us to head to the Christmas store for cookies and hot apple cider.