“I couldn’t sleep.”
He hesitated, then came down the row next to hers, a hen waddling behind him. The hen paused in a grassy spot, pecking, and he shooed her back through the natural gate. She fluttered and squawked but obeyed.
Again Ruby let go of a soft laugh. “I never knew they were so interesting. They were chatting away, walking with me like they were a couple of dogs.”
“They have a lot of character, all right.”
He joined her, reaching down amid the lavender to pinch off three blossoms. “Has Lavender talked to you about the varieties?”
“A little. Some are for perfume, some for culinary, some for decorative purposes, right?”
“Yep.” He bruised the blossoms and held them out to her.
Ruby tried to remember her discussion with Lavender. “This is Grosso, right? And it yields more but has a less pure lavender scent because of …” She frowned, inhaling, then caught the scent of it. “Camphor?”
He gave a nod, lips turned down in approval. “Good.”
“How do you get the oil out?”
“We have a lavender distiller. It extracts the oil from the blossoms. Takes about fifty gallons of blossoms to produce a half cup of oil. And that’s with Grosso, not Royal Velvet.”
Rolling the lavender and the roses together, Ruby sniffed. “I’d love to see it sometime.”
“I’m sure that could be arranged.” He plucked another trio of buds, bruised them with his thumbnail, and breathed them in, almost meditatively. “It’s a good crop this year.”
“Why don’t you take over the farm for Lavender?” Ruby asked. “You seem to like it.”
He bent his head. “No, that’s not my goal. I’m here to take care of the animals, to help her out.”
Something about the slant of his jaw, the set of his shoulders, told her there was much more there than that. She used a trick she’d learned long ago, of simply being quiet to let someone talk, but he could out-quiet just about anyone.
“Why farmwork, Noah? Did you grow up on one?”
“Not really. My parents were farmworkers, and I grew up in that world, mostly in the Central Valley in California.”
“So all kinds of farming.” She rearranged her history of Noah, seeing him as a young man in the lettuce fields. “Are they from Mexico?”
He gave her a half grin. “Is that who works in the fields?”
“Oh, don’t do that.” Ruby met his gaze. “It’s a legitimate question, not racist.”
“I’ll let you off the hook.” He started walking down the row and gestured for Ruby to follow. “They are not from Mexico. My mom was half Mexican, half Anglo. My dad is Cheyenne and Ute with a little bit of Navajo thrown in for good measure.”
“Ah.” She flashed him a sideways grin. “Brother! Did I tell you I am 1/120th Cherokee?”
His sun lines crinkled faintly, almost into a smile. “You did. I can see it in your sense of humor.”
The baby swirled again, and she touched the place, smiling to herself.
“So that’ll make the baby, what—1/240th Cherokee?” Noah asked, straight-faced.
She snorted in laughter. “That’s right. If it were true, which it isn’t.”
“I kinda guessed that.”
“Be sweet to Hannah, will you? She’s already got a big crush on you.”
He nodded. “Poor kid. That’s a rough story. Maybe she’ll want to help me around the farm a little bit today. Her mom seemed like she could use a break.” At the end of the row, he stopped. “Are you feeling better?”
The kindness, the way he stood there looking at her with concern, made her eyes prickle. She ducked her head. “I guess.” She shrugged, tucking a lock of hair around her ear. “We’ve been broken up for nine months. I should be over it by now.”
“Or not,” he rumbled. “It takes as long as it takes. But you’ve got good friends, and everybody is really happy to help you with your baby.”
“I know. I’m lucky.”
“Cute, too. Hope you know that.” He looked toward the treetops, the gesture of a shy person.
“Oh, yeah? Pregnant, throwing up, and now crying?”
“Still cute,” he insisted. “Come on. I want to show you something.” He held out his hand, and Ruby took it in the friendly way it was meant. His palm was calloused and hard. It felt like a hand you could trust.
“Did you come looking for me?” she asked.
“I went to your camper first.” He didn’t let go of her hand, and Ruby liked how much bigger he was next to her, tall enough that she had to look up to see his face. “You seemed upset yesterday.”
A wash of grief moved over her, head to toes. “Yeah.”
“It never seems like it when it happens,” he said gruffly, “but when something breaks, there’s usually a good reason.”
Liam’s face floated in front of Ruby. “I can’t talk about it.”
He nodded, tugging her through the break in the shrubs and down the hill toward the chickens. Their beds were made of hay, and a roof covered the wide, open space. Chickens wandered through, waddling to and fro, some busily, some lazily, all colors—white and gold and black and mottled variations of all sorts. A slight, dark woman of about twenty collected eggs carefully, yellow eggs and blue, pale green and the usual white and brown.
Noah spoke to her in Spanish, and she flashed a smile over her shoulder, shooting back something saucy and aloof. He laughed but didn’t share it with Ruby. She peered into the basket at all the eggs.
“Over here,” Noah said, and led Ruby to a nest where two tiger-striped kittens, eyes still closed, curled together with a pair of eggs.
“Oh!” Ruby cried. “That is the cutest thing ever. Can I touch them?”
“It’s better not to handle them when they’re so young.” A chicken fluttered over, complaining loudly, and pecked at Noah’s foot. “As you see.”
They stepped back, and the chicken leapt up to the nest and settled protectively over the kittens and her eggs.
The girl raiding the nests said something arch, and Noah shot something back without looking at her. She wandered up the hill.
Ruby watched the girl’s hips swaying exaggeratedly. “She’s teasing you?”
“She says you are a woman with some curves, that’s good.”
“Great.” She rolled her eyes. “Just what a jilted girl wants to hear.”
“Women worry too much about being skinny,” he said abruptly.
Ruby put her hands on her tummy. “I don’t. I love this body, whatever shape it’s in. Being sick teaches you that.”
“I guess it would.”
“I figured you for the silent type,” Ruby said. “You’re very talkative, actually.”
“Not with everybody.”
Ruby smiled.
A cell phone buzzed, and Noah slipped it out of his hoodie pocket. He glanced at the message. “Gotta go.”
“Thanks,” Ruby said. “For everything.”
“De nada.”
Lavender Honey Farms
yamhill co., oregon
Home Shop Blog Directions Philosophy
Many of our lavenders are coming into full bloom as we head into the height of the season. We are beginning to harvest blossoms for a variety of uses, and we will be filling up our gift shop for the Lavender Festival, coming up in July. That’s a glorious time to visit Yamhill County, so if you haven’t done it, grab your husband or your daughter or maybe your best girlfriends and come tour the glories of lavender country.
We will be hosting more than a dozen workshops—some on culinary arts, some on decorative uses of lavender, some on photography and plein air painting, and even one on making perfume. Space is limited and these workshops fill up fast, so take a look at the full calendar and sign up today! A refundable five-dollar deposit will hold your place.
Lavender Honey Farms Schedule of Events
For the full description of the Lavender Festival, check out: http://www.oregonlavenderdestinati
ons.com/festival.php.
Chapter 18
As she walked the perimeter of the farm at dawn on Friday, Lavender saw her old friend Ginger again. This time she sat on a wooden folding chair facing the blooming fields. A canvas was propped on an easel before her, and she had a palette in her right hand, a paintbrush in her left. Even at a distance, Lavender could see that the canvas was a blur of purple and blue.
Twice in life, Ginger had come to do this very thing, paint the lavender fields, so Lavender first thought it was a memory rising up out of the earth, as they so often did these days.
But then she noticed that Ginger’s hair was long, spilling down her back in red curls. Her dress was airy and pink, a dress from another time. Lavender whistled for the dogs, compelled by something to walk up the hill toward the specter of her friend.
As Lavender approached, Ginger dipped her brush into a small pool of color and dabbed it on the canvas. She wore a white apron over the front of her dress, but a little paint had stained the sleeve. It had always been that way with Ginger: She was one of the great natural beauties, but her dress was always a bit askew, her shoe had a grass stain, a hem was coming undone, and paint showed up everywhere—under her nails, in an eyebrow, in a smear on her elbow.
When Lavender saw her the first time, Ginger had behaved like the other ghosts—she didn’t seem to know Lavender was there. This time, she looked up and smiled.
Her skin was translucent and unlined. Lavender had forgotten how startlingly clear her eyes were. How young they once had been!
“Are you coming for me?” Lavender said, without knowing she would.
“Are you ready?”
“Not today.”
Ginger nodded, dipped her paintbrush, and again stroked color on the canvas.
“When?” Lavender asked.
Ginger smiled, the expression ever so slightly sad. “Soon, my friend.”
A quick clutch of emotion seized Lavender’s throat, and she looked away, overcome by a wild sense of loss. She took in the view of the flowers, the hills in the distance, the diffuse light of the cloudy day.
At the top of the hill, not a ghost but a solid human being was wading through the fields: Ruby. Surprisingly, Noah stood at the opening of the bushes. He had the most curious expression on his face, somehow hushed, as he watched the girl in the flowers, her light-blond hair caught beneath a kerchief, her curvaceous figure clasped by a T-shirt and jeans.
Not yet, Lavender thought. Not now. She turned her head to say so, but Ginger was gone, dissolved like a breath of mist into the day.
Not yet.
But, just in case, there were things that had to be done. Whatever attachment she felt to this earth belonged to the lavender and the chickens and the farm. She had to find an heir.
Would it be Ruby? Or Ginny? Could it be the thing that would draw Hannah back from the moment she’d lost her father and sisters? Could Valerie stay here long enough to find her new place?
Lavender strode quickly toward the workshop and her office, filled with a sense of urgency the questions aroused. She had to get this settled.
Chapter 19
Ginny awakened in her bed, at first thinking she was at home. A breeze blew over her face and the bed was enormously comfortable. It was the gently moving ribs of her dog, panting quietly, that drew her into reality. The food poisoning, the guys at the door—
She bolted up, eyes flying open, and a pain stabbed the base of her neck.
“Whoa, there, girl,” said a rumbling, rusty voice.
Ginny jumped practically out of her skin, a move that made tremors radiate through her limbs. A big hand landed on her shoulder. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”
She peered at him, the face slowly coming into context. Gray eyes, that wavy salt-and-pepper hair. “Jack?” Her voice came out as cracked as an antique dish. “What—”
“How do you feel about a glass of water?”
She remembered then how sick she’d been, the vomiting and diarrhea and terror and fever. She put a hand to her forehead, feeling that the fever had broken. “Maybe. What time is it? What day is it?”
“It’s Friday, around seven-thirty, I guess.”
“Wow.” She felt dizzy, unable to fit the pieces together between last night and this morning. “Water is a good start. There are bottles in the fridge.”
He fetched one, twisting the top off before he handed it to her. “Go easy.”
Folding a hand over her tender belly, she sipped gingerly. The water was cold and poured down her parched throat in a welcome stream. “Whew.”
He perched at the edge of the bed. “How are you?”
“Better, I guess.” She realized that she was wearing a nightgown, and that had not been what she was wearing last night. A flush covered her neck. “Did you change my clothes?”
“Yeah, sorry. I thought it would help. You were soaked with sweat, completely delirious, when I got here. Was it food poisoning?”
“Pretty sure. What else comes on like that, right?” She sipped the water again and looked at him. “But how did you know to come help?”
“You texted me.”
She frowned. “No. My phone is dead.”
“Well, I got a text. Maybe it’s okay now.” He pulled his phone from his shirt pocket and punched a couple of icons to bring up a text: From Ginny Smith: Urgent. Very sick at Grizzly Lake. Please come.
A ripple of something unholy washed down Ginny’s spine, completely out of proportion to the situation. She couldn’t actually remember much past curling around Willow on the floor—maybe she had texted him.
She pointed to the counter by the sink. “There’s a bowl of rice over there. My phone is inside. Will you get it for me?”
He followed her instructions, pulling the iPhone out of its nest. Ginny pressed the buttons to try to bring it up, first the home button, then the power button on top, just in case.
But some part of her knew it wouldn’t work. The camera was blurry and dotted with water. The screen showed condensation beneath the glass. “No, this phone is absolutely dead.”
“I don’t know,” he said with a shrug. “I got the text. I came. You were in bad shape, and I wasn’t too happy about some boys over there having a big party.”
A bolt of memory shot through her brain. “They tried to get in.” She clutched a fistful of Willow’s fur in her hand. “Willow barked like a crazy savage.” She bent over and kissed her dog’s nose. “Thank you, baby.”
“Maybe it was Willow who texted me.” He reached over and scrubbed the dog on the side of the face, and Willow gave a big smile, lifting up her chin so he would scratch her chest. “She wasn’t too happy about you being so sick.”
“How did you get in?”
“The locks aren’t all that tough on something like this, sweetheart, which we’re going to have a conversation about. Right now let’s get you something easy to eat.”
“Can you look up something for me on the Internet first? I need to call my friends and let them know what’s going on.”
“Sure.”
She gave him the website address for Lavender Honey Farms and asked him to connect to the phone number. It went through and a woman answered. “Hi, I’d like to talk to Lavender Wills if possible.”
“I’m sorry, she just headed out for supplies and won’t be back for a couple of hours. Can I give her a message?”
“Yes, please. Tell her that Ginny Smith has run into a couple of delays, but I should be there late tonight or early tomorrow. My phone is not working.”
“Hold on, let me write this down.” The woman repeated key words aloud. “Ginny Smith. Delays. Phone out. Anything else?”
“Yes. Will you ask her to post something to my blog so my readers won’t worry?”
“Oh, is this Ginny of ‘Cake of Dreams’?”
“Yes.”
“I read your blog every day! I love it. We have all been worrying about you since you didn’t post yesterday. Has that ever happened
before?”
“No. It’s a long story, but if you wouldn’t mind telling them that I’m safe, I’d really appreciate it.”
“I’d be honored. I can’t wait to meet you.”
“Thank you.” Ginny punched the exit button and handed the phone back to Jack. “I need a shower desperately. And I know you must need to get on the road, so I’ll be fine now.”
“I’m good,” he said. “I called and let them know there was an emergency.”
A sweetness swirled around her heart, colored pale green. “Really?”
“It’s your freckles,” he said, and winked. “Let me give you some privacy and you can get dressed, then we’ll go get some easy-to-digest food in Butte. How’s that?”
“Good,” she said. “Really good.”
She was very shaky but functional as they caravanned into Butte. It was a small town on the edge of the Rockies, the peaks still showing dirty white snow in some places. Would that be a glacier? Ginny wondered, pulling the trailer into a long space at the back of the parking lot. Jack parked his rig beside hers.
“How are you holding up?” Jack asked as they headed inside.
“Okay.” Ginny scanned her body, feeling the weakness left over from the violence of the attack on her system. “It will be good to get some food.”
The diner was clean and bustling, and they settled into a booth by the window. The seats were red leatherette, the view worth a million bucks—sharp, high mountains against a sky so blue it nearly hurt to look at.
Ginny shook her head. “I keep looking at the mountains and wondering what took me so long to get here. I feel like I was born in the wrong place.”
Jack held the menu loosely in his hands, gazing out the window. When the light hit his eyes, the pupils contracted so much that the irises looked as if they were made of silver disks. Beautiful and, considering the weird text situation, creepy. Maybe he was a being from the other side, an angel sent to accompany her on this wild journey, or some kind of a ghost.
But his hands were those of a man. A raw cut marred the middle knuckle of his index finger. The nails were mostly even, but one looked as if it had been torn off too short some time ago. The skin was weathered and brown.
The All You Can Dream Buffet Page 14