A Stranger's Gift (Women of Pinecraft)

by Anna Schmidt

  He couldn’t help wondering if Hester had noticed, or if she cared. She certainly seemed indifferent to Samuel, at least romantically speaking. On the few occasions when John had seen them together, she had interacted with Samuel more as a colleague, the way she was with Grady Forrest.

  Well, it was hardly his concern. Why should he care if Hester’s intended fell for another woman? Why should he care about her happiness at all? Not that she didn’t deserve to be happy, he thought, as Samuel turned onto the cracked and broken asphalt road that led to the parking lot for the marina. She was clearly a good and caring person, a little too bossy for his taste, but her sincerity when it came to her concern for others could not be questioned.

  The marina parking lot was filled with cars and trucks. John could see men shingling the roof of the bait shop as Arlen directed progress from the ground. The combination of the medical boot and closed shoe gave John more confidence in his movement, and he was out of the car and walking down to the pier before Samuel and Hester.

  “You’re looking more like a human being than a lagoon monster,” Margery commented. “The hat’s a nice touch.”

  John grimaced as he fingered the brim of the straw hat. “It does the job,” he repeated. “And speaking of jobs, looks like you’ll be back in business within a couple of days.”

  “Yep. Amazing what friends and neighbors can accomplish when they work together,” she said. “And when you let them help,” she added dryly. “You ought to try it sometime, Johnny.” She didn’t give him a chance to respond. Instead, she walked away, calling out encouragement to the roofing crew.

  John stared up at the crew, watching as the men worked on the roof and a group of women scraped peeling paint from the exterior walls of the marina, chattering and laughing together as they worked. Suddenly he was a boy again back on the farm, working alongside his father as they rebuilt a neighbor’s barn after a tornado had roared through their valley. In the laughter of the women, he heard his mother’s laughter, deep and rich, and he remembered how his father would stop what he was doing just to look at her for a moment. It was as if he wanted to memorize every detail of her.

  “John?”

  Coming back to the situation at hand, John blinked and turned his attention to Hester. She was standing next to him, looking up at him with a puzzled frown. “Are you all right?”

  “Ich bin gut,” he said softly and realized it was the first time since leaving Indiana that he had used his German. “Fine,” he added, clearing his throat. “I came here to help, and so far I’ve done nothing. Time to get to work.” He picked up a hammer with his left hand and began pulling nails from the discarded boards that had been replaced by new wood.

  A moment later, Hester was working alongside him. John sighed. The woman was as bad as Margery, always hovering around.

  Chapter 14

  Samuel had taken his place on the roof, helping the other men finish the shingling. When the last nail had been pounded in, the men stood for a moment checking their work. Then Samuel waited his turn to come down the ladder and saw Hester working alongside John. She was unaware that he was watching her, and so he took the time to study her, consider his feelings for her.

  Hester was by anyone’s measure an incredible woman. The care she had devoted to her mother for five long years was in and of itself an act of such astonishing selflessness, but she had not stopped there.

  Rosalyn had told him that in the months that followed Sarah Detlef’s death, Hester had thrown herself into her work. She had stayed nights with sick children, and with elderly people whose main affliction was loneliness. And then the fire had come, and when Rosalyn had regained consciousness, it was Hester who had broken the news that her family had not survived. It was Hester who had stayed with Rosalyn and worked with her day in and night out until she recovered.

  And yet in all the conversations they had shared, Samuel had not once heard any of this from Hester herself. She was a plain woman in the larger sense of that word, taking none of the credit for the things she accomplished. And Samuel admired her greatly.

  He simply did not love her.

  He had come to Pinecraft in the spring. He had seen Hester every day, spent numerous hours sharing meals with her and her father and grandmother, attended services and other church and community functions with her. Yet when he examined his feelings for her over that time, he had to admit that they had not changed. He respected her enormously, and in the beginning he had told himself that was a good start. They could build on that.

  He also understood that she liked him. He had seen it in the way she would run her palm over some furniture he had finished for a customer. He saw it in the way she smiled at him when he teamed with Arlen on the shuffleboard court in the evenings after they had closed the shop. And he had told himself that in time they would find their way.

  And then he had met Rosalyn.

  In the weeks since the hurricane had passed, he had tried hard to tell himself that Rosalyn was merely a good friend to him, as she was to Hester. But when he found himself looking for her and at the same time trying to avoid her, he knew that his feelings had already blossomed beyond the point of simple friendship.

  The fact that Rosalyn seemed oblivious to his attraction only made matters worse. For because of her work for MCC and her close connection with Hester, Rosalyn was often with Hester, and whenever Samuel was with them, Rosalyn did not treat him any differently than she did anyone else. He knew that he should have found that reassuring, but the fact that she clearly did not see him as someone special was downright depressing.

  He could hardly avoid Rosalyn without raising questions about why he was avoiding Hester. So he buried himself in the work at the carpentry shop, insisting to Arlen that he could fulfill the back orders while Arlen attended to his work with MDS. And as he worked on a china hutch or desk that would find its way north to some snowbird’s home, he silently prayed for God’s guidance.

  For Samuel was deeply troubled by the state he found himself in—falling in love with a woman he’d barely exchanged more than four true conversations with while having in theory agreed to a union with the pastor’s daughter. If he turned his back on Hester, then what right did he have to continue to work for Arlen? He loved his work and had found his true calling in the crowded shop where sawdust and wood shavings littered the floor throughout the day.

  And his sense of loyalty was not just to Arlen. It extended to Hester as well, for it had been clear to Samuel from their first meeting that she had surrendered to the idea that one day they would marry and make a home and raise a family. She had accepted the life her father had planned for her in spite of the fact that Hester Detlef rarely acceded to the plans and wishes of others. And given her innate willfulness, Samuel could not help but wonder why Hester would acquiesce to her father’s wish.

  Samuel paused at the top of the ladder to watch Hester and John pull nails from discarded wood. It was true. In her way Hester was every bit as determined and stubborn when it came to doing things her way as—say—John Steiner was. More than once Arlen had alluded to the comparison. Arlen had always counseled patience, meaning Samuel’s need to practice patience with Hester, of course. And perhaps that was why Samuel had taken to visiting John Steiner more often. Perhaps in getting to know the Amish man who was in many ways like Hester, he was hoping to come to a better understanding of the woman who seemed destined to become his wife.

  Once Margery’s place had been restored and she was back in business, John was anxious to get his place to the point where he could move into the packinghouse and start planning how best to revive the groves of citrus trees that had been wiped out in the hurricane. During the three days it had taken Arlen’s crew to repair the damage to the marina, John had faced the reality that even without his fractured wrist and badly sprained ankle, he might eventually have to accept more help than Zeke could provide.

  “But no government people,” he told Margery one night as the two of them sat on the d
eck of her houseboat sharing supper.

  She rolled her eyes. “Did you see any so-called government people working here?” she asked. “No, you did not. If I had waited for them to show up, I’d be out of business ‘til a month from next year.”

  “I’m just saying,” he grumbled and turned his attention back to his food.

  “I suppose it’s too much to hope that your sudden epiphany or whatever it was that brought you over here to lend a hand might extend to accepting Arlen’s help.”

  John frowned. He had neither the physical strength nor the cash to rebuild the second story of the house. In the meantime, he had continued to focus his efforts on what he could repair—the planting beds, the packinghouse, the chicken coop. And yet …

  “Thought not,” Margery said as she stood up to clear away their plates. “You want pie, or is that against your principles?”

  “Got any ice cream to go with it?” he replied.

  “No, but you’ll never have a better-tasting pie than this one.” She ducked inside and emerged a few minutes later with two large pieces of shoofly pie on paper plates. “Hester made it,” she said, setting a piece in front of him.

  John recalled the pies cooling on the counter in the Detlef kitchen the morning the creek flooded. “They’re back home now?”

  “Not quite. Drywall is up and the paint’s drying in most of the properties from what Arlen told me. They’ll wait to work on their place last, get everybody else home and settled before they take care of themselves. That’s their way.”

  “What about the garden? Arlen’s wife’s garden?”

  Margery shrugged. “I expect that’ll be even further down the list, although I know it must be killing Hester not to be tending it. She planted it, you know. Called it therapy. Only question is who was it therapy for.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “She thought of it as therapy for her mother. Toward the end there when Sarah could no longer do anything but sit in that wheelchair and just blink her eyes to show yes or no, Hester got this idea of turning the front yard into a garden.”

  “You think the therapy was for her—Hester,” John said. It wasn’t a question.

  “Well, of course it was for Sarah. But long after Sarah passed, you’d see Hester out there tending those orchids, ferns, and bromeliads like they were precious babies.”

  John took another bite of the pie. He had to admit that it was the most delicious thing he’d tasted in weeks. “She bakes. She raises orchids. She runs a charity. She’s a nurse. What doesn’t this woman do?”

  Margery grinned. “Interested, are you?”

  “Not the way you mean it. Besides, she and Samuel—”

  “Are beyond wrong for each other.” Margery sighed. “I don’t know what Arlen was thinking. Sarah must be rolling over in her grave thinking that her spitfire daughter might end up with that mild-mannered man. Not that he’s not a perfectly good man—kind and generous to a fault, but not for our Hester.”

  John fought to disguise his interest. “You think so?”

  “You think so?” Margery mimicked in a high falsetto before taking a bite of her pie and washing it down with a long drink of iced tea. “You sound like some high school boy. Get to know the woman. Come to think of it, the two of you …”

  She eyed John, sizing up the possibility. He raised both hands, palms out as if stopping traffic. “Get that idea out of your head, Margery.” He was willing to tolerate Margery’s attempts to get him involved in the larger community, but allowing the woman to get any idea of matchmaking would be disastrous.

  She shrugged and turned her chair so that she could prop her feet up on the railing of the houseboat and look out toward the sunset. “Suit yourself, but methinks the man doth protest—”

  “I have to get back,” John interrupted. “Thanks for supper, and if you see Zeke, ask him to stop by, okay?”

  “Yep.” Margery sounded half asleep.

  He made the short leap from the deck to the pier and then into the boat Margery had lent him, thankful that she had loaned him the boat when she probably could have rented it out. “And don’t go spreading it around that I’m looking for help,” he said.

  “Got it, you stubborn blockhead.”

  The following morning Zeke was there, sitting on the stump of a cypress tree when John crawled out of bed. “Morning,” he called. “Margery said you could use a hand.”

  John glanced around, saw no boat other than his own and no other visible means of transportation.

  “Did Margery bring you?” he asked, hoping the fisherwoman hadn’t talked about him in front of others.

  “Nope. Caught a ride.” Zeke nodded toward the lane. “Want some coffee?” He held up two large cups from one of several fancy coffee vendors John had noticed on Main Street.

  “Thought you were broke and homeless,” John commented as he gratefully accepted the hot liquid.

  Zeke grinned. “Can still sing for my coffee,” he said. “Had to give ’em two songs this morning, so you owe me.” He glanced around and released a long, appreciative whistle. “You’ve made some real progress here.”

  “Getting there,” John admitted.

  “Got yourself a small generator, I see.”

  “Samuel Brubaker brought it out one afternoon.”

  “Good man.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So what’s on tap for today, boss?” Zeke drained the last of his coffee and crushed the cup in one fist.

  “I’d like to finish closing in the kitchen and get it covered.”

  “No worries,” Zeke replied and set to work.

  For the next several days he came every morning, bringing John coffee and then getting to work. After a week, though, John noticed that Zeke didn’t look well, and he took frequent breaks either to relieve himself or simply to sit for a long moment, his head bent low to his knees.

  “You feeling okay?”

  “Picked up some kind of bug,” Zeke replied. “It’ll pass,” he added and grinned. “Hotter today, though, so I’m knocking off. See you tomorrow?”

  “Take a couple of days and rest up,” John said. “We’ve made good progress here. Take care of yourself, okay?”

  When Zeke did not return the following day or for two days after that, John figured he’d taken the advice to get some rest. But when he hadn’t come back after a week, John began to worry. He was well aware that Zeke marched to his own drummer on his own unique time schedule, but he also knew that if Zeke had committed to doing something, he was there until the job was complete.

  Something was wrong. He fired up Margery’s boat and sped under the Stickney Point Bridge then past the mouth of the creek, leaving a wake that earned him a warning blast from the shore patrol.

  How could he not have seen that Zeke was getting worse? The man had switched to tea the last day he arrived, telling John that he needed something to settle his stomach. And he was thinner than usual. He kept hitching up his pants, the same ones John had seen him wear every day for a week, and knotting the rope belt a little tighter.

  But John’s focus had been on the incredible progress they were making. The night before, he had slept in the packinghouse under an actual roof for the first time since the storm. He’d still slept on the sleeping bag that Samuel had provided and covered himself in the netting, but he had been inside, not in the cramped camper.

  As he navigated, he scanned the shore for any sign of Zeke. He passed under the Siesta Bridge. Nothing. Zeke was the kind of person who stood out with his long hair and his guitar slung across his back. As John passed the botanical gardens, he spotted the abandoned boat Zeke had shown him. Slowly he circled it, calling Zeke’s name but getting no answer. He pulled into a vacant slip at the far north end of the city’s main marina. Remembering Zeke’s description of where he had set up his “crib” as he called it, John ran down the sidewalk, dodging runners and dog walkers until he reached a small patch of exposed mud flats. He was very near the Ringling Bridge that carri
ed traffic from the mainland over to Lido and Longboat Key and the fancy shopping area known as St. Armand’s Circle.

  Glancing around, he saw a cluster of mangroves and sea grape bushes where the seawall curved. He ran toward them, seeing a man lying there. “Zeke!” His heart hammering, he touched the inert shoulder of a body folded in on itself and was relieved when he heard a low moan. “Zeke? It’s John.”

  “Oh, sorry, man. I …” Zeke sat up suddenly and wretched in dry heaves. “Pretty sick,” he said with a weary smile, his voice husky.

  “Let’s get you to a doctor,” John said.