Sister's Choice (38 page)

Jamie heard Grace’s message. Two people did not have to see eye to eye to be happy together. She was sorry her problems with Cash weren’t that simple.

“Maybe you didn’t have to agree on everything, but didn’t you have to trust each other?”

“We came to that the hard way. But we came to it.”

“It’s tough to imagine the good times you had with Ben, when all I’ve heard about are the bad ones.”

“Good girl. You’re making an effort, when what you really want to do is go to bed and cry yourself to sleep.”

Tears sprang to Jamie’s eyes, something that happened far too frequently. “Exactly how did you go from distrust and anger to falling in love?”

“Do you really feel like hearing this?”

Jamie knew the alternative was lying awake reliving her conversation—perhaps the final one she would ever have—with Cash. “Maybe I could just use at least one happy ending tonight.”

Grace squeezed her hand once more; then she offered Jamie the sugar. “Ben and I fell in love an inch at a time. Maybe that’s the best way, because the foundation is solid and sure. But it also means it’s hard to see. And that was true for us.”

1942

S
ylvie would never be thin, but in the past four weeks she had lost a considerable amount of natural padding, and now, in overalls rolled up to the knee, she looked sleek and healthy. Her face was tanned, her cheeks rosy and her curly hair was tied back in a becoming pink kerchief. Grace stood at the bottom of the extension ladder and yelled up to her sister-in-law.

“I wish Ethan could see you now. You look like Mother Earth picking those apples.”

Sylvie snapped another stem between her thumb and forefinger, and carefully placed the apple in the burlap sack hanging against her chest.

“At least Ethan wouldn’t tell me picking apples isn’t woman’s work, the way Hiram told Dolly.”

Ethan, Sylvie’s husband, was Grace’s second brother, always the most affable of the Fedley boys. Hiram was Grace’s third brother, the one closest to her age, and the tyrannical husband of Dolly. Hiram, like Anna, had always had traditional notions about the way everything should be done. Grace suspected some Puritan Fedley forefather had gravely presided over New England witch hunts, and Grace’s sister and youngest brother had been the unfortunate recipients of that heritage.

“At least Dolly told Hiram what he could do with his opinion,” Grace said, just loud enough for Sylvie’s ears. Dolly was picking three rows away.

“Good thing she did. She’s the best picker you’ve got. Now go and get busy. You don’t have to stay nearby. I’m not falling off this ladder, and that’s a promise.”

Grace wasn’t comfortable with the extensions that helped her work crew get into the very top branches of the apple trees. But she knew she had to
become
comfortable. Taking chances was the order of the day. A lot of the crop was waiting to be picked, although the earliest apples were already on their way to market.

And a glorious crop it was. With soldiers in need of supplies and foodstuffs already beginning to be rationed, apples were in high demand for drying and canning as sauce for the troops. Grace could sell every apple she produced, picked and somehow carried to market. Of course, now she was learning that she had to worry about gas and tires to get the apples anywhere, and eventually might need to hitch Buddy, their retired plow horse, to a wagon to do it. She also had to repair and pray over every piece of machinery the farm had in its possession, since it was growing clearer each day that no spare parts would be available until after the war. In fact, rumor had it that every cubic inch of scrap metal would soon be carted away to be melted down for the war effort.

But those were future problems. She had enough on her hands right now.

“I’m going to check on the younger children,” she told Sylvie. “Then I want to see how the older ones are doing harvesting those greens.”

“I hope they’re about done, because there are a lot of drops to pick up out here.”

Picking up fallen fruit wasn’t the whole story. There was a lot to do everywhere. Work was the one thing that was not in short supply at the orchard. Work and, of course, apples, a bumper crop in a year when one had been desperately needed. Terrible things were happening all over the world, but there were little miracles here and there, as well. Cashel Orchard was one of them.

Grace carefully placed her own apples in a crate to be hauled to the apple shed before she removed her sack and hung it on the nearest fence post.

At the rim of the orchard she stopped a moment, wistfully estimating the number of steps to the house for feet already tired from a long morning of hard work. She yearned to be able to drive the old pickup to the front door to save time and strength. But that kind of indulgence was out of the question.

Instead, she set a steady, measured pace, not too fast, so she would wear out quicker, but not too slow, so that precious time would be wasted. Every move she made these days was calculated to reap the largest benefit. Sometimes the calculations—not to mention the work—exhausted her——but more of the time she felt exhilarated. She was making a difference. She was succeeding, when just months ago failure had literally knocked on her front door and leered at her predicament.

She rested for a moment on the front porch, leaning against a post and gazing back at the orchard. From somewhere in the distance she smelled the tang of burning leaves, and from much closer, the winey fragrance of cider mash fermenting in a pile behind the house, so it could be spread with manure later in the season as fertilizer.

Even from this distance, she could hear laughter, and the high, sweet shouts of women. From the back of the farmhouse she could hear a child crying, but not as if tragedy had struck. This was a child who just wanted more attention. Adam, she thought, although possibly Sylvie’s littlest girl, Roly, short for Roly Poly because, quite simply, she was. Grace hoped Roly outgrew the reason for the nickname quickly, although her real name, the Germanic Ermentraude, was likely to get her into trouble these days.

What was Ben going to think when he drove up to the orchard next week and saw what she had done? For a moment, as it did several times a day, the question made her heart beat faster. Ben had no idea what was happening here. Once her decision had been made to save the orchard, she had written him, suggesting that when Otis Gaff sent signed papers to Fort Belvoir to sign, Ben mail them back to Grace. She had explained that she’d found an attorney at the bank who would look them over for free before she delivered the copies to Gaff herself. There were rumors of Otis cheating other people, she’d said, and this was simply a precaution to preserve their future. Then she’d held her breath and hoped Ben would take her suggestion.

He did. The signed contract came to her directly, where it went into the cookstove that same night to start a merry blaze. Then she wrote a letter to Otis, so he wouldn’t continue to correspond with Ben, explaining that the orchard was no longer for sale and Ben would tear up any other mail he received. With utter confidence she forged Ben’s name at the bottom.

The next morning Grace delivered the forgery and explained that since Otis had gone back on his word and tried to buy the orchard for less, Ben had decided not to sell at all. She was sorry, but after all, that was what happened when one neighbor tried to cheat another. Then she’d gotten into the pickup and driven away before the old man could sic a particularly nasty-looking dog on her.

Now she was living with the consequences of that almost euphoric burst of creativity. She had convinced her two closest sisters-in-law, whose husbands had both been inducted into the Army, to live and work at the orchard while their men were away. She had hired three more women who lived nearby for seasonal labor, as well as the brother of Ben’s hired man.

Grace was paying as much as her neighbors who hired help, but not as much as any of her workers might earn in a factory. Still, here at the orchard, all the women had their children at hand and well cared for. They could visit them when they took breaks, and have meals together. The school children helped out on Saturdays, like they were doing today, and the younger were well cared for as the mothers took turns in the farmhouse entertaining them. Her sisters-in-law had company and no concerns about transportation to their jobs, and the neighbor women could work whenever they were able to leave their own chores.

Next spring she would enlarge the vegetable garden by an acre so that even more fresh and canned food would be readily available, and she would add four more acres of corn—if the tractor held out long enough. No one at Cashel Orchard would ever have to save ration coupons for a can of fruit. There was fresh milk and butter, and hogs fattening on corn and fallen apples to become ham and bacon. The work was hard, but except for the occasional spat, the women got along and enjoyed each other’s company. Most of the time the children were happy to have playmates.

And if all went as planned, there would be enough money at the end of the season to pay all the orchard’s debts and still have enough left over to buy the supplies they would need for next year.

Cashel Orchard would never run as efficiently, as scientifically, under her control as it had under Ben’s stewardship. Grace didn’t have the experience or knowledge to select new varieties for planting trials, or to experiment with updated methods of pest control or fertilization. She was forced to rely on the knowledge of their hired man and other local growers willing to share their expertise. She was reading her way through Ben’s small library of pamphlets and agricultural tomes, but fifteen minutes at night before she fell into an exhausted sleep was not enough time to learn everything she needed.

When Ben came back from the war, he would find the orchard changed, perhaps somewhat the worse for decisions she’d been forced to make. But she prayed he would also find that the sign at the entrance still said Cashel Orchard and that his sons still lived on the land they would someday inherit.

At least that was what he would find if he didn’t sell the orchard—this time for real—the moment he got back from basic training. She was expecting that moment early next week. Ben’s last typically terse letter had informed her that he’d been granted two weeks leave between training at Fort Belvoir and shipping out to whatever unknown destination was being chosen for him. As with everything else about the war, that could change. But in the meantime, Grace was to expect him.

Right now, Ben thought that Otis had decided not to move into the house until next summer, and was allowing Grace and the boys to pay rent and continue living there while they looked for a place closer to a job for her. Ben believed Grace had deposited the sale money, minus Otis’s rent, in his bank account, making certain, with the help of their fictitious attorney, that all was correct. She supposed it was a good sign that he had trusted her that far, although, of course, his trust had been misplaced.

From the moment she’d decided to ignore Ben’s decision and take over management of the orchard herself, she had wondered how he would react when he discovered her deception. Had she trusted
him
more, she would simply have told him her thoughts and worked out the details with his help. But theirs was not a marriage built on sharing.

Besides, what man would believe that a woman with no experience and no training in orchard management could make a success of growing and selling apples with the help of other inexperienced women? If Grace made a mess of things, the property would be devalued, and Ben would be lucky if Otis Gaff repeated his stingiest offer. If she
did
make a success of it, then Ben would be forced to treat her like a partner, perhaps even the orchard’s savior, and their entire relationship would change.

She couldn’t imagine how things were going to play out. Most of the time she didn’t have even a moment to worry about it. But now, with Ben’s leave drawing near, she knew she was going to have to find the time to think of a way to explain it all to him.

For now, she had work to do.

Inside, she followed the noise to the kitchen, where the children were having a snack. Little heads with hair of every hue were bent over plates at the table. Lulie, Sylvie’s oldest girl, was babysitting today, and they were lucky to have her. In two years she would graduate from high school and seek a more lucrative and exciting job. For now, though, she was available on weekends to care for the younger children, so all the mothers could pick apples, and the children looked forward to having her there, particularly three-year-old Roly and six-year-old Hildy, her little sisters.

Adam, still a mama’s boy, held out his arms the moment he saw Grace, and she lifted him from the high chair. He was the youngest, and with all the men away at war, bound to stay that way a while. Hiram and Dolly’s two youngest sons were busy eating bread slathered with apple butter. Four older Fedleys and four of the neighbor women’s children were outside harvesting turnip and mustard greens from the vegetable garden. As soon as snack time ended, Dolly—today’s cook—would come inside and begin work on the afternoon’s dinner, the largest meal of the day. Last night Dolly had cooked beans and baked corn bread in preparation. The newly picked greens would be a welcome addition, along with apples fried in butter.

Always apples. Every meal. Grace knew they were fortunate, so fortunate, to have them, when so many in Europe were starving.

“How’s my little man?” she asked Adam, kissing his cheek. “Did you eat a good snack?” She carried him around the table, saying a word or two to each child, and patting them on their tiny shoulders. Lulie looked tired, which was understandable, but she had the group well in hand. The mothers had found that sticking to a schedule worked best. Once snacks were finished, the children would have a brief rest time, each clutching one small toy that wouldn’t disturb the others. Lulie would need the rest most of all.

Grace saved Charlie for the end, squatting down with Adam still in her arms and kissing his cheek. “Have you had a good morning?”

“Roly hit me.”

“On purpose?”

He shrugged.

“Are you hurt?”

He shrugged again. She saw Ben in the movement. No surprise that Charlie, as young as he was, had copied it. She just hoped Charlie would learn to express his feelings a bit more clearly than his father.

“Would you like to come outside with me for a little while? I’m going to check on the older children and see how many greens they’ve picked.”

His eyes lit up, although he did a quick scan of the table first to be sure he wasn’t missing something more important. So much for being mad at his cousin.

She promised Lulie that she would be back in time to keep the boys from disrupting the scheduled rest period, and guided Charlie around the table and out the kitchen door. The patch of greens was beside the barn, and she stopped for a few moments of guilty pleasure to let the boys pat Buddy’s velvety nose over the pasture fence. Then they joined their cousins and friends, who had indeed harvested enough greens to show they had been working while they told stories and laughed.

Her own childhood might have been devoid of color and conversation, but to her delight, the next generation seemed to be on a different path.