Stranger's Gift (40 page)

John wasn't really listening to Arlen. He was thinking about Hester and how he might find some time to be alone with her. He was as surprised as she would no doubt be to realize that his intentions were romantic. But then he had seen her wandering around his property as he stood at the sink washing the plates and glasses that she'd used to serve the dessert. She walked slowly with her hands clasped behind her back, her head shifting to take in everything around her. He saw her pause near one of the garden beds long enough to pick up a handful of soil and let it sift through her fingers. Moving on, she had touched the shattered trunk of an orange tree destroyed by the hurricane winds and then glanced around as if realizing that something was missing. Finally she had patted the trunk of the tree and then slowly walked past the repaired toolshed and empty chicken coop to the packinghouse. Shielding her eyes from the sun, she had stood looking up at the roof and finally disappeared inside.

“…like to get Samuel out here to have a look,” Arlen was saying. “Maybe tomorrow if that works for you?”

“Sure,” John replied, wondering what Hester was finding so fascinating in the empty packinghouse.

“You know, John, if you're planning on selling the place …”

“I am,” John said, giving Arlen his full attention.
I don't really have a choice
.

Arlen nodded. “Well then, we'll figure that into the work we do. We can keep things pretty simple. After all, your most likely buyer for such a prime piece of property would be a developer who will no doubt tear everything down anyway.”

It wasn't that John hadn't thought of that himself. It just hurt to hear the words spoken aloud. “As long as the developer can pay the price,” he said. “I won't be able to repay MDS until the place sells. You understand that, right?”

Arlen took a moment. “And you understand that, as I've already told you, we do not accept payment.” He actually sounded insulted and seemed dangerously close to losing what little temper he had.

“But …”

“No.” Arlen pushed himself away from the table and stood up. “But since it seems so important to you to keep a balance sheet on this project, I have a suggestion.”

“I'm listening.”

“Open your eyes and your heart, son. God has blessed you in many ways, but He also expects those He has blessed to be a blessing to others.”

The concept that he had been blessed was debatable, given his complete failure, but the old man meant well and so he nodded. “I'll give that some consideration,” he said.

“Excellent. Now where do you think that daughter of mine has gotten to?” He glanced around as if just realizing that Hester had left them alone.

“She's outside.”

“Well, we're going to need some measurements. Do you have a carpenter's tape?”

John opened a drawer and handed him the measuring device. “What else?”

Arlen took paper and the pencil from his pocket. “Nothing I can think of. Do you mind if I …” He nodded toward the front hallway.

“Not at all. I'll help,” John said.

“No. If it's all right, I like to do this part alone. I seem to think better in silence and solitude. Go find Hester. Do you have some more of those ferns you gave her for Sarah's garden?”

“I do,” John said.

“Good. Go help her dig them. Perhaps it will inspire her. The garden has been sadly neglected for weeks now.”

John got a pitchfork and shovel and large bucket from the toolshed and then headed for the packinghouse. Inside, he found Hester perched on one of the long sorting tables that had gone through the hurricane untouched. She was writing furiously on a small pad of paper and muttering to herself.

“Arlen thought you could use some more ferns for the garden,” he said. He leaned the gardening tools against the worktable. “What are you working on there?”

“Nothing, a sketch…idea.”

“May I see it?” She handed him the rough sketch, and he saw at once that it was the packinghouse. “And may I ask why?”

“Remember that magazine you picked up at the hospital and asked me to return for you?”

John nodded.

“Well, there was this article about people around the country—ordinary people—who have put together programs to help others. A woman in California who had gotten the idea to have teenagers collect unwanted fruit from private yards was featured.”

“And you thought why not here in Sarasota?”

“Well, yeah. Since then we've discovered that there's a similar program in Tampa and they've been very helpful.” She took the sketch from him and put it in her apron pocket. “It just helps to see the layout of a building that was once used for similar work.” She motioned around the large, cavernous building, then shrugged. “Ready to dig those ferns?”

“You sure you've got time to get them back in the ground?” he teased.

“Guilty. How did you know I hadn't gotten around to that yet?”

“I found a wild orchid growing along my lane that I thought you might be able to save. So this morning, before I figured out that everyone would be at services, I stopped by your house and saw the ferns still sitting in the bucket.” He held up the empty bucket he was carrying. “At this rate I'm going to run out of buckets pretty soon.”

Her smile was both beautiful and sad. “I never seem to get around to the things that really matter.”

“Right. Like saving an entire homeless population or making sure the survivors of the hurricane get the clothing and household goods they need to start over, like—”

“Honoring my mother's memory,” she said quietly. She had not moved from her perch on the sorting table, and her gaze met his directly. “How do you honor the memory of your parents, John?”

So here it is
, he thought. She had given him the opening he'd been looking for earlier, but it had come so unexpectedly that he suddenly found that he did not have the words. “I know I owe you an explanation,” he said as he put down the garden tools and pushed himself up onto the table beside her.

“You don't owe me anything, but if you're inclined to finish the conversation you started that morning at breakfast, I'm listening.”

He glanced at her, expecting to see judgment or at the very least skepticism in her eyes, but instead he lost himself in their sapphire depths. “It's hard to know …”

“Start with how she died.”

He stared down for a minute, gathering his thoughts, or maybe he was just fighting the memories, reluctant to go back to that horrible time.

“It was winter. There was snow, a lot of it, and it was bitterly cold. Worst winter in a decade, the weather people kept saying. But she insisted on going out.”

“Why?”

“It was my fault.” He felt tears well and willed himself to contain them. “I had started on this Walden thing that fall, and at first everyone seemed to think the idea might have merit. It's not unheard of even for an Amish community to find itself caught up in more worldly ways.”

“So when you read Thoreau's book, you thought that here was a guide for getting back to the old ways?”

John nodded and cleared his throat. “But the more I talked about how the community might apply certain elements of Thoreau's experiment to our lifestyle, the more people seemed to be alarmed by it, and by me.”

“Your mother was concerned?”

“Not
with
me, for me. She had heard from a friend that things were getting out of hand. What had begun as trivial was quickly escalating into something much more serious, but I was too stubborn to see that. Mom insisted that we needed to make sure the leadership of the congregation had my side of the story. She hated gossip in any form.” He paused and shut his eyes to block out the memory. “She had learned that the bishop would be meeting with the elders that night, and she was determined that I be there.”

“So you and she…?”

“No. I refused to go. We had had this really terrible argument, and I had stormed off to take care of the evening milking. Mom and I could knock heads now and then. I come by my stubbornness honestly.” He stared up at the light filtering in around the roof vents. “Next thing I know she's got our horse hitched up to the buggy and is climbing into the driver's seat. She hadn't driven that buggy once since my father had died. Either I drove or we didn't go anywhere.”

He sucked in a breath and let it out with a shudder. Hester placed the flat of her palm against his back and remained perfectly still, waiting for him to continue.

“But that was Mom. In some ways she had always felt like the outsider in the community, especially after Dad died. She was determined to make my case to the powers that be, even if I wasn't. I started after her, yelling at her to stop, but she was so strong-willed, nothing was going to stop her from going.”

A bird flew through the open door and settled on a crossbeam in the ceiling.

“What happened, John?”

“The driveway was covered in ice. I could see that the horse was nervous. I kept yelling for her to stop, but then a passing car backfired and …”

“The horse bolted?”

John nodded and tried to swallow around the lump that filled his throat. “He slipped and the buggy turned over, and Mom …” He swiped at the tears he could no longer hold back.

“But you weren't in the buggy with her,” Hester said softly. “There was nothing you could have done to prevent this, so why did you say that you killed her?”

“Because afterward I knew what others were saying. I knew full well that I was on the brink of being called before the congregation. I mean, any fool understands that once the bishop gets involved, things have gone to a whole new level. And I should have known that when I stubbornly refused to back down, she would take matters into her own hands. She was fierce that way.”

“The old saying applies—hindsight is twenty-twenty. But John, if this is the whole story—”

“It is …”

“Then the fact remains that you had nothing to do with her death. It was her choice to go out that night, John. You did everything you could to stop her.”

He continued the story as if she hadn't spoken. “A passing car saw the overturned buggy and stopped. The woman had a cell phone and called for help, then stayed with us until the ambulance arrived. But it was already too late.”

“She died in your arms?”

John nodded. “She put her hand on my cheek and said three words: ‘Find the balance.' “

“I don't understand.”

“It was an old joke that we shared. Whenever things got overwhelming and she had trouble adapting to the Amish life, Dad would always tell her to find the balance. After he died, and I would come home after getting into some argument with another kid or in a bad mood, she would remind me that if Dad were there, he would tell me to ‘find the balance.' And as she got older and became frustrated with knees that hurt and eyes that needed glasses for fine needlework, I would throw it back to her: ‘Find the balance, Ma.' ” He savored this sweeter memory for a long moment, and then looked around. “Haven't exactly done that, have I?”

“I suppose that depends on how you define
balance
,” Hester said. “But I do know that for you to go around saying you killed your mother is just one more tactic you've developed to keep people at arm's length.”

“It's not something I go around saying to folks,” he protested.

“You said it to me,” she challenged. “And you don't even like me.”

“What gives you that idea?”

“Oh, I don't know. Could be the way we're always on guard around each other. Could be—”

Without taking time to consider what the possible consequences might be, John pulled her against him and kissed her. “I like you, okay?” he whispered, and when she did not fight him, he kissed her again. Then he released her and hopped down from the table. “Are you going to help me dig these ferns or not?”

Hester could not move, much less find the energy to dig ferns. Her body felt like water, and her mind was racing like a speedboat. And she wasn't sure she could handle thinking about the somersaults her heart seemed to be attempting.

John Steiner had kissed her. Twice. Without any warning at all. Without for one second stopping to consider what
her
feelings might be.
Typical
. The man was so…She realized she was running her forefinger over her lips. “Oh, get over yourself,” she muttered and picked up the shovel he'd left for her.

Outside, John was stabbing the pitchfork into the hard soil. For all the rain they had had earlier in the season, it had been dry for weeks now.

“Be careful,” she said. “You'll break them off without getting the roots.”

“We do grow ferns up north,” he said, and she could hear frustration in his voice. It didn't help that he refused to look at her.

They dug in silence for several minutes, nothing passing between them other than the sound of metal hitting hard-packed earth. “Maybe if we soak the soil,” John said, but it was evident that he wasn't asking for her opinion.