Amos leaned his back against the headboard. “I’m going to sell off the orchards. I can get big money for that acreage. Enough to put a dent in these hospital bills.”
Julia slapped her forehead, gave it a real crack. “So that’s it. Well, you can just forget it. We’ll find a way to pay down that debt, Dad. The church will help us—you know they will.”
“Everyone’s suffering after this drought. I can’t expect them to pay what they don’t have. They’ve already helped us—above and beyond.”
“We can get along without selling off the orchards.” Julia’s chin lifted a notch. “We always have.”
“I’ll keep the house for all of you, so you’ll always have a home, free and clear. I don’t want to leave behind any doubts or debts. And I’ll keep a few acres surrounding it, for a garden and pastureland for Menno’s livestock.”
“Just who do you think you’ll sell it to?” Julia asked, firing up. “What if one of our neighbors can’t afford to buy it and you end up selling to a developer? Why, they’ll bulldoze everything right up to the house. And they’ll stick in as many houses as they can fit in. You’ve seen what it looks like. No yards. Just house after house after house.”
“I’ve made up my mind,” Amos said, very dignified. “And you know what my mind is like when I’ve made it up.”
Boy, that upset Julia.
It got quiet then, very quick, while M.K. and Sadie waited to see what Julia had to say to that. It was like watching a Ping-Pong game.
Fern walked in with a stack of fresh laundry. She set the stack down on the bureau top before she turned to Amos. “Just because the boat rocks doesn’t mean it’s time to jump overboard.” Then she left.
15
After supper, Julia and Menno went out to check on the animals and lock the barn. She sent Menno back to the house, and tousled his hair when he gave her a puzzled look. “You go in. M.K. is waiting for you to help her with a puzzle. I’ll be in soon.”
“But . . . the bear,” Menno said. “Dad said not to go out at night by ourselves. He won’t even let Lulu out.”
She smiled. “I won’t be out that long. I promise.”
She walked down the drive to the roadside stand. The last few hours had been so emotionally churning, she had forgotten to close up the stand for the day. The honor jar was still there, plus the day’s produce that hadn’t sold. As she walked, she mulled over the conversation her father had with them. She knew that he was settling his accounts, preparing all of them for his passing. He was trying to solve all of the tangible problems his absence would create—but what about those intangible problems? What about M.K. needing a parent in a role that a sister couldn’t fulfill? And how would Sadie cope? She was so tenderhearted and sensitive. If her father sold most of the land surrounding the house—and maybe that was the right thing to do, maybe not—what would Menno do without a farm? What would he do without a father to guide him each day? What would any of them do without their father? He was their anchor.
No, that wasn’t right. God alone was their anchor, she reminded herself. God’s ways were good and just. If he took their father home now, he must have a good reason.
But what?
She had prayed so often for God to heal her father. She believed in prayer. Prayer worked. Lately, she had prayed and prayed and prayed as she had never prayed before. She prayed one large circular prayer beginning with “Lord, thy will be done” and ending with “Please, God, please, please, please, don’t let my dad die.”
But God seemed to be saying no.
She reached the stand and saw the honor jar was gone. The produce was gone. She had thought she had heard a car door slam during dinner. Someone had driven by and taken it all. It wasn’t the amount—maybe twenty or thirty dollars—but it was the last straw on a bad day. Self-pity, which had been buzzing around her all afternoon, settled in. She looked up at the sky. “It’s not fair!” she said to herself, eyes filling with tears. “It’s just not fair!”
“What isn’t fair?”
She whirled around to find Rome watching her, a curious look on his face. “What do you mean, sneaking up on me like that?”
“I wasn’t sneaking.” He took a step closer to her. “So what’s not fair?”
“Everything!”
“Like what, exactly?”
“Like . . . my father wants to sell the land to pay off his hospital bills because he’s sure his heart is wearing out on him. And he’s probably right!”
“That’s why I keep encouraging him to get on the heart transplant list.”
“He won’t do it. I’ve tried.”
“We have to try harder.”
“This is between my father and God. A heart transplant is no simple thing. I don’t know how I would feel if I were in his shoes.” She crossed her arms against her chest. “Do you?”
“I would fight to live, that’s what I’d do. I can’t understand why Amos won’t fight for all of you. He has a chance—but without that transplant, he’s going to die.”
“Stop it!” Julia lifted her hands and held them over her ears to shut out the words. She stood frozen, her spine rigid, her hands clamped to her ears. Tears coursed down her cheeks.
Rome wrapped her stiff body in his arms and began stroking her back and shushing her. “There, now, it’s all right. I’m sorry I made you cry. Last thing I want is to hurt you. There, now, everything’s going to be all right.”
Gradually the tension ebbed from her body, and for a moment she sagged against him. He was so solid. So safe.
Safe? The thought made her jerk away. She drew back her shoulders and stood back, despite the tears she couldn’t quite stop shedding. “I have to go.” She turned her back to him and began to walk toward the house.
“Julia, wait!”
She turned back. Rome reached down and picked up a basket. In it was the honor jar, filled with money, and the day’s unsold produce. “I saw you hadn’t closed up for the night. I was bringing it up to the house when I noticed a fence board had fallen over there, so I stopped to nail it.” He handed her the basket. “Everything’s going to turn out all right, Julia.”
It was a nice thought, but Amos wasn’t Rome’s father, and Windmill Farm wasn’t his home. Still, he was trying to be reassuring and Julia did appreciate the sentiment. Something caught her eye and she looked in the basket to see a handful of fives, tens, and twenties stuffed in the honor jar. So much money for one day! The most she had ever made. And here she thought it had been stolen.
Impulsively, she leaned over and pecked a kiss on Rome’s cheek. Her action surprised them both. She felt her breath catch as Rome turned to look at her more fully. In the fading evening light, his dark eyes seemed black and serious and compelling.
“Hi, guys!” M.K. pranced up. “What are you two doing all alone out here?”
M.K. ran ahead of Rome and Julia to the house. It was close to lightning-bug time, and Uncle Hank said he might have a yarn or two to spin. When Uncle Hank was in a storytelling mood, you didn’t want to miss a minute of it. She told Rome and Julia to hurry, but they didn’t seem as eager to get to the house as she thought they’d be. Uncle Hank and her father were sitting on the front porch, in rockers that Menno had brought out, like two dotty old men. She’d never thought they resembled each other, but the thinner her father became, the more he looked like Uncle Hank. The thought made her sad.
“THERE YOU ARE, MARY KATE!” Uncle Hank thundered. “I can’t start my story without you!”
She sat on the steps with her back against the railing. Sadie sat next to her, and Menno jumped up to sit on the porch rail. Rome sprawled out on the grass, below the steps, where Lulu found him and covered his face with licks. Julia found a place next to Sadie, who had Lulu’s pup in her lap. Tonight, even Fern was joining them. She brought an upright chair from the kitchen out on the porch and sat in it like she was at church. “Shoulders,” she tossed in Sadie’s and M.K.’s direction, and Sadie immediately straightened her b
ack.
Uncle Hank leaned back in the chair, feet spread apart, his head tilted up toward the ceiling, an indication that he was ready to begin. “It was the winter of ’58,” he started. “I was just a lad, not much bigger than our Mary Kate.” He looked down at her when he said that and she smiled. He always began his stories in the same way.
“There had been sightings of a large white buck that winter. Ten points on his antlers! It had become something of a legend. Folks weren’t entirely sure if that buck had been made up or if it was a real thing. Lots of speculation was going on about the big white buck that winter.
“Sure enough, one day, that buck passed the schoolhouse, and a farmer was on his tail. The farmer opened the schoolhouse door and called out for all hands to join in a grand hunt. We had a man teacher and, knowing his boys and what would happen, he put his back to the door to keep us boys from fleeing. No sooner had he done it than up went three windows and out poured a live stream of boys. There wasn’t a boy left to chew gum. Finally, the teacher followed.” He winked at M.K. “He was too timid a fellow to stay alone with the girls.”
Menno rolled that over in his mind for a moment and let out a loud “Haw!”
Uncle Hank leaned back in his chair and crossed one big boot over the other. “The deer took off across a field and onto the lake, covered with ice. The deer slipped and one of the big boys—Mose Weaver—came very near to overtaking it. But just as he reached out to touch it . . .” Uncle Hank reached a hand out in the air as if he was trying to touch the buck “. . . the deer found its footing and set off again. Quick as a wink, the deer was on the north shore of the lake. We boys kept our sight on the deer and lit out after it.
“After a long hunt I found the deer in some brush, and gave vent to my gentle voice,” to which M.K. snorted and Uncle Hank nudged her with his boot, “and out it ran, well rested and as good as ever. By this time two of the boys had run home and returned with guns. As the deer passed within a few feet of them, they just stood in awe of this magnificent beast. Neither took a shot at it until it was well hidden in the thick bushes. Each blamed the other for not shooting the deer.”
“Did anyone ever get that deer?” Menno asked.
“Alas, Menno, none of us tasted venison from that hunt.”
“What ever happened to the buck?” M.K. asked.
“What became of the deer I never knew, but that winter, we were all seriously afflicted with buck fever, something only time and experience will cure.”
Fern gave a guffaw. “Hasn’t done much to cure you. You’ve got yourself a serious case of bear fever. You spend half your time trying to track that bear and cub!”
Uncle Hank looked offended. “That bear is going to hurt somebody soon. She’s getting bolder and bolder. Came right up to old Fannie King’s kitchen door last week. Scared Fannie so bad she dropped her choppers!”
Sadie gasped. It didn’t take much to scare Sadie, but even M.K. felt a tingle down her spine.
“Uncle Hank!” Amos said. A warning passed between the two. They all noticed. Well, maybe not Menno.
That bear and cub were starting to get everyone edgy. It was the top news of every gathering—who had seen them last, what damage they had caused, how crafty that mama bear was, if it was time to call the game warden in. Sadie shivered, though the night was hot.
Uncle Hank eased up out of his chair, stretched, and yawned. “It is a well-known fact that a buck’s tail is not very long, but this one will be an exception unless I come to a close.”
It had sprinkled a little in the morning, but now the clouds had broken up and the August sun was bearing down. Julia found Rome out in the pasture where Menno kept his small flock of ewes. She called to him and he waited for her at the top of the meadow. Before she reached him, he wiped the perspiration from his cheeks with his sleeve. He was pushing a small cart filled with clover hay. Menno’s ewes had crowded around the cart, trying to snatch hay, and made it difficult for him to move. As she walked toward him, the ewes looked up, regarded her with their sweet, blank faces, and then went back to the serious business of eating. She shaded her eyes from the late-afternoon sun.
When she reached him, she held out a napkin with fresh hot doughnuts on it. “Fern made these for you. She thought Dad and Sadie’s diet might be wearing thin on you.” They had all lost weight this summer, all but M.K. and Menno, for whom Fern relaxed kitchen rules.
He pulled off his gloves and threw them on top of the hay. He took the napkin from her, lifted it, and breathed deeply. “I could smell those doughnuts frying way out here.” He took a bite and closed his eyes. “Takes me right back to my boyhood.”
“You haven’t mentioned your family. Where did you grow up?” She found herself often wondering about Rome and wasn’t about to let this opportunity pass.
He broke off a section of his doughnut. “Here and there.” He popped the last bite of doughnut in his mouth and reached for his gloves. He broke open a dense clump of hay, releasing a sudden scent of white clover. He scattered the hay over the ground, so the ewes would leave the cart alone.
“Rome, what would you think about staying a few extra months this fall to help us get through the harvest? Menno does well when he has someone working with him. If you could stay through October—work with Menno on the hay cuttings, supervise the threshing frolics, help us get the corn into the silo.” She paused. “The truth is, having you here has brought a peace of mind to my father.”
“It’s about time for a change of scene soon.” He grinned at her. “There’s roaming in my blood.”
Julia couldn’t imagine such a thought. She looked out over the fenced fields, the cows clumped together under a shade tree, a creek that wound its way through the pastures to nourish the land. In the sky, high overhead, she could see the arrows of a flock of geese heading toward the lake. “A home like this—it seems to me that you couldn’t find a better place to be than right here. The earth here is generous and outgoing, like the people in Stoney Ridge. It’s a place that keeps you anchored to life.” She turned and found him staring at her. “But maybe you don’t want to be anchored.” She hadn’t posed it as a question, but she waited for an answer all the same. The emotions that played over his face ranged from sadness to coldness, then settled into something that looked like discomfort.
“Would you at least consider staying through October for my father’s sake?”
The rascal returned to his eyes. “What about for your sake, Julia?”
“What about me?”
He gave her a sly grin. “Do you want me to stay?”
“I wouldn’t be asking if I didn’t think you provided a benefit to my family.”
He threw the last of the hay onto the ground. Then he pulled off his gloves and turned to her. “So you want me to stay. Just admit it.”
She could feel bright red patches burning in her cheeks. “I’m only admitting that your presence provides peace of mind to my father. That’s all.”
His gaze slipped from her eyes to her lips. “So you don’t really care if I stay or leave?”
“No. I’m only asking for my father’s sake.”
He stepped closer to her and brushed her cheek with his knuckles. “So this doesn’t make you feel anything?” His voice was deep and teasing.
She drew up her chin and met his gaze. She thought about stepping back but decided she should hold her ground. Even the smallest retreat would show weakness, and she wouldn’t reveal any vulnerability. At the same time, his nearness made her head swim.
“And this?”
Slowly, Rome lifted his thumb and slid it upward along the curve of her jaw. His touch was surprisingly gentle. She knew she should pull back, she wanted to break away, but her legs wouldn’t obey.
As she gazed up into that chiseled face, she tried to remember every grievance she held against the Bee Man. But as he lowered his head and his lips found hers, her reasoning was blotted out. One of Rome’s arms slipped around her back, then another around her
head. She found herself falling into the kiss. Seconds, minutes, hours later, Rome pulled away. His forehead rested on hers.
“Still nothing?” he whispered.
His kiss was gentle and persuading, sweet and tender, nothing at all like Paul’s pleasant kisses.
Paul. PAUL. She sprang back. “Not a thing,” she said coolly, trying to not appear as shaken as she felt. She pushed past him to leave.
“Julia, where are you going?”
“Back to the house,” she called out without turning around.
“Then you’re headed in the wrong direction.”
Rome chuckled softly. Julia’s small figure was strangely dignified as she walked away from him.
Until that moment, Rome had never seen a woman blush on top of a blush, but Julia managed it when he pointed out she was starting out to the house in the wrong direction. He had to bite on his bottom lip to keep from laughing out loud.
It was mean, he supposed, what he had done to her. Kissing her like that, in broad daylight. It’s just that she looked so adorable, standing there with confectioner’s sugar on her cheek. She was warm in his arms, and she smelled like a doughnut.
What he couldn’t get out of his mind was that she kissed him back! Never in his wildest imagination would he have thought that prim and proper Julia Lapp would have kissed him back, with that much passion. And when she couldn’t meet his gaze, he knew she was embarrassed.
Just look at me, he thought, like some moonstruck teenager. Roman Troyer, the Bee Man, Roamin’ Roman, acting like an adolescent. He felt as if he were eighteen again, young and hopeful and naive, believing that anything was possible.
Julia had done him a favor, asking him to stay, making it seem like it was her idea. He’d already decided he was going to stick around a few more months. He felt a burden to help Amos get through this heart business. To help the whole family get through it. But how long would he stay? Would he still be here through Thanksgiving? Through Christmas? He hoped he might, and it was a strange feeling.
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