Why am I even worrying about this? There’s no building. There won’t be any weddings at the orchard.
“It can still work. The foundation’s okay. Walls can be rebuilt.”
“With what money? I spent my savings on this place. I spent your savings. We’ve lost the back half of this season’s crop.”
A biting wind swept over her as she watched the fire marshal round the barn, faced streaked with cinder. She stood, ready to hear his verdict as to what could’ve possibly caused a blaze to erupt so quickly. He stopped to inspect something near the ground.
“Kit—” Willa began.
“Please don’t tell me this is just a setback, Willa, and that I shouldn’t give up. I know it could’ve been a hundred times worse. I know the mature thing to do is buck up and square my shoulders and move forward. But I’m not there. Not yet.”
Something of a smile flitted over Willa’s face before she spoke. “I wasn’t going to lecture you.”
“Sorry,” Kit muttered.
“In the past two weeks, you’ve been through a hailstorm and a fire and—judging by a certain young man’s absence of late—maybe some heartache, as well. Last thing you need is an old woman’s sermon.” Willa’s silver bangs shaded deep-set eyes brimming with compassion.
“You’re not an old woman,” Kit said.
“Tell that to my creaking joints. But what I was going to say is, you’re not in this alone.”
“Dad didn’t even show up.”
“His loss, Kit. It’s always been his loss.” Willa shielded her eyes from the sun with one hand. “I don’t know if you remember this, but that month or so your father was home when you first moved here, I was around quite a bit.”
“You’ve always been around.” Unlike Dad.
Would she ever stop thinking thoughts like that? Weighing everyone else’s presence against Dad’s absence?
“But I was around perhaps a bit more than needed during that time. I had supper almost every night with you kids and your grandparents and Mason. There were quite a few nights when your grandparents would turn in early and I’d stay and watch a TV show with the three of you.”
Where was this going? And why was Willa reminiscing now of all times?
“You and Lucas would fall asleep, and your father and I would talk.”
“Willa, are you saying—”
“I’m saying you aren’t the only one who has wished from time to time that Mason Danby wasn’t so blind to what all was waiting for him back in Maple Valley.”
Kit simply stared. She’d had no idea. No earthly idea. “I didn’t realize . . .”
“Oh, a silly woman’s long-ago fanciful wish of inviting herself into someone else’s family, it’s not at all the same as a daughter’s hurt. But sometimes knowing another person shares at least a hint of your grief, well, it can help.”
“I’m not sure it’s grief I feel as much as anger.”
Flynnie ambled across the yard, coming up beside Kit and nudging her head into Kit’s leg.
“Which is understandable. But allowing grief a little space to breathe, that can be awfully healing. Grief about your dad. Grief that you never got to know your mom. Grief about the fire and the barn and Beckett.”
She might have cried if not for the tears she’d emptied in the past day. “What would I do without you, Willa?”
The older woman pulled her into a hug. “That’s something you won’t have to worry about for a long, long time, Lord willing.”
The fire marshal’s uncomfortable throat-clearing interrupted. Kit swallowed and stepped back. “I’m ready.”
“Definitely electrical,” he said as he pulled off his baseball cap and swiped his palm over his forehead. “Obviously a lot of it’s charred, but it’s easy enough to pinpoint where it started. Electrical box in the east wall.”
Kit nodded. “That’s where we saw the sparks. But it doesn’t make sense. This was new construction. It’s not like the wiring was old.”
The fire marshal nodded. “True, but things like this happen. I was out at a fire a few months ago a couple counties away. Brand new house in a subdivision. Family had only moved in three weeks prior. Electrical fire started in the basement and consumed the entire house.”
A fluke. She’d lost Grandpa’s dream to a fluke.
“Although, it’s also a possibility something chewed on some of the wiring. You’re out in the country. Squirrels or chipmunks could’ve gotten to any exposed wiring. Or . . .” He looked down at the animal still nudging her leg.
Ohhh. She’d had Flynnie in and around the barn with her every day in the past week. She hadn’t watched her closely. It was possible . . .
Kit closed her eyes as the probability pricked through her. When she opened them again, it was to see both Willa and the fire marshal eyeing her with twin concern.
“I can’t believe my own pet might’ve caused the damage. Or an electrician’s mistake.” Or God was simply trying to get through her thick skull once and for all that she didn’t belong here. That it hadn’t been his voice urging her to plant herself here, grow roots, and watch a dream blossom.
She’d been holding on to a feeling, but look at the facts: the hail, the buyer, the fire, the barn. How much more had to happen before she got the message?
She hugged her arms to herself, her sweater flapping in the wind, several loose strings knotting from its frayed hem.
“I’ll work up an official report,” the fire marshal said. “I’m really sorry about the damage, Miss Danby. If there’s anything else . . .”
“No. But thanks for coming out so quickly.”
He shook her hand, then Willa’s, and started for his vehicle.
“I have no idea what to do next, Willa.” She’d closed the orchard for the weekend, obviously, but it might as well be for the season. She wasn’t like Beckett—she didn’t know how to charge forward without thinking and planning and lining up all her details.
She was sapped of energy and, worse, of desire.
Willa squeezed her shoulder. “You’re not in this alone. You’ll get through it with the help of people who care about you. You’re not abandoned, Kit.”
Abandoned.
The word felt like a stamp on her heart, regardless of what Willa said. Unerasable. She simply didn’t have it in her anymore to hope.
How could that be his father lying so motionless?
Beckett stood in the doorway of the intensive care unit room. He’d only made it this far last night, when the doctor had first allowed family to visit in pairs. He’d walked with Raegan from the waiting room to here, but he couldn’t make himself accompany her the rest of the way in.
Dad hadn’t been awake then. He wasn’t awake now.
The nurse adjusted one of the tubes protruding from Dad’s head bandage. “You can come in, you know.”
He made his legs work and entered. The room smelled of clean linens and greenery. So many plants of all shapes and sizes crowded the narrow windowsill, several balloons bobbing above the display. Everyone in Maple Valley must have sent something.
The nurse tucked a pillow under Dad’s head, angling him slightly. “I’d ask if you’re one of Case’s sons, but the resemblance is so obvious, it’d be a silly question.”
He couldn’t look at Dad’s face, not yet. So he looked at the IVs that disappeared into his arms. The pulse oximeter clipped to one finger. The bags hooked to a rolling machine with tubes threading to Dad’s bandages.
“This is an EVD,” the nurse explained. She fingered one of the tubes. “External ventricular drain. That helps us make sure there’s no fluid buildup around the brain. There’s an intracranial pressure monitor too. It does exactly what it sounds like—measures the pressure inside your father’s head. We’ll take that out later today, most likely.”
He sank into a chair beside the bed, finally letting himself look at Dad’s face. It was pale and slightly swollen. An oxygen mask covered his mouth and nose.
Let him live, God. Ju
st let him live and give me so many more years with him.
The prayer had hovered like a ghost at the back of his mind, flimsy and translucent, since yesterday morning. No, since he’d first learned of the tumor. But now it was a strident pleading, devoid of any kind of elegance.
Please.
“Has he woken up at all?”
“A couple times last night. He was groggy, of course, but he knows where he is and he responded when the doctor asked him to blink, squeeze his hand, that sort of thing. He should be awake quite a bit more today.”
Beckett let out a soft breath. “Will he be in any pain?”
The nurse crossed the room, pulled a keyboard from a swiveling stand underneath the computer monitor near the door. “He’ll have a bit of a headache, yes.”
“Painkillers?”
“We gave him something mild last night. But we need to monitor his pain level, make sure there’s no undue swelling. For that reason, we don’t want to overdo the meds. Pain is an important symptom. We don’t want to risk missing it.”
Beckett nodded, now unable to look away from Dad as the nurse typed away behind him. A sudden reversal. “So he’s really going to . . . he’s going to be . . .”
The nurse’s typing stopped. He heard the creak of her stool as she stood. The padding of her footsteps nearing the bedside. Felt her hand on his shoulder. “He’s doing wonderfully, Beckett.”
He glanced up. “You know my name?”
“Your father gave me the whole rundown on your family in pre-op before the anesthesia kicked. I think it was his way of calming himself. He said you would be the one who looked the most like him.”
Tears he’d refused since yesterday morning sprang to his eyes now. The nurse patted his shoulder and then left the room.
Beckett reached for Dad’s hand, careful not to move the clip on his finger or nudge the IVs. His father’s palm was warmer than he’d expected.
He’s going to be okay.
No, they still didn’t know whether the tumor was cancerous. They should have some answers on that by Monday. But right here in this hushed moment, he could believe it. He’s going to be okay.
“I’m sorry it took me so long to get here,” he whispered to the empty room, to his sleeping father. “Not just yesterday. I’m sorry I stayed away for so long. I keep wasting time and messing up and then missing out and I’m just so sorry.”
There were no wracking sobs today, not like that day at the depot when he’d finally set free so many years of furrowed hurt. Let his dad encircle him with all the strength and comfort he’d pushed away since the day he’d left town. It had been an unshackling. A letting go.
Today was a holding on. To courage in the midst of fear. To faith in the midst of uncertainty.
To a father’s love he knew had never once wavered.
“I love you, Dad.”
Muscles that had spent tense days coiled inside him loosened now as a lone tear landed on the bedsheet and the hand holding his tightened just the slightest.
18
It was the smell of Grandma’s tomato basil sauce that pried Kit from her bedroom. The curiosity about who was making so much noise in the kitchen.
The passing thought that it might be Beckett.
But no, more likely Willa. She’d spent several evening meals at the house in the week since the fire. Whereas Beckett had spent most of those days in Iowa City with his dad.
She missed him. Longed to have a real conversation with him instead of the few brief texts they’d traded. But would it only make things harder? Had the brief foray they’d taken past friendship ruined any chance of going back to where they were before?
The zesty aroma heightened when she stepped into the kitchen. But it wasn’t Willa pulling plates from the cupboard. “Luke?”
“Good, you came down. I figured you had to get hungry eventually.”
She glanced at the clock above the kitchen window. After seven? That meant she’d been in her room for three hours, sitting cross-legged on her bed, laptop open in front of her.
Screen blank. Seven days and she still hadn’t figured out how to tell Dad about the fire. Unsent drafts congregated in a folder inside her email account. Perhaps it wasn’t lack of explanation that held her back, but simple obstinacy. Dad hadn’t bothered to show up or to call or to follow-up. Besides, he didn’t know about the barn in the first place. What difference was there now?
But it was Friday. Which meant he’d expect a weekly report. And she’d come to a decision: They should accept the offer from Lucas’s buyer. Why put it off? They could hobble through the rest of the season or they could be done with it. Dad and Lucas had lost interest long ago. She’d held on for too long.
“You made dinner?” Spice bottles sat in disarray on one counter, and flecks of red sauce stained the stovetop.
“Tried. Can’t guarantee it’s perfect.”
“Did you follow the recipe taped to the inside of the cupboard?”
He nodded as he loaded plates with angel hair pasta and accompanying sauce.
“Then you can’t have gone too far wrong.”
He handed her a plate and fork. “Let’s eat on the porch.”
She followed him outside, where he folded onto a porch step, perching his plate on his knees. Chilled, late-October air curled around her as she settled beside him, along with the hazy light of a pastel sunset. The fragrant flowers of the autumn clematis climbing the side of the porch had long since morphed into a silvery mass of fluffy seed heads.
She took a bite, the burst of flavor just right, just like Grandma’s. “This is good, Luke.”
He circled his own bite of pasta around his fork, the breeze sifting through his thick hair. He’d finally cut it, but only barely, and he’d let a near-full beard cover his cheeks and chin in the past weeks. It gave him a burly look, as if he was ready to hunker down for winter’s eventual descent.
But he wouldn’t be here for winter. She’d sensed the rise of his restlessness for days. Seen the distance steal into his eyes. But it was better than the haunted shadows of weeks earlier. The fire had somehow pulled him from his former listlessness. He’d spent days hauling debris from the barn, taking over many of Kit’s chores. He still woke her with his nightmares every couple nights, but something was shifting—slowly.
They ate in silence while the last sliver of the sun tarried in the west. The gentle colors of dusk reached through nearly bare branches to dapple the lawn, and a scattering of leaves skimmed off the pile Lucas had raked earlier in the day.
“I’m okay with selling.”
The scraping of Luke’s fork across his plate halted. “What?”
“I said I’m okay with selling. I won’t argue anymore. It’s probably easiest this way.”
“Kit—”
“You need the money to start over. If Dad’s willing to give me a cut, too, great. If not, I’ll figure something out.”
Lucas’s pause lingered. “Listen, I’m going to tell you something. And I’m not telling you because I think it’ll be all liberating or because Eric told me I need to—”
“You’ve been talking to Eric—?”
“—or even because I particularly want to or anything. But, well . . .” He pushed his plate out of the way and shifted, angling so that his back leaned against the stairway railing behind him. “Afghanistan.”
She stilled.
“My troop was mainly doing humanitarian work, digging wells, clearing roads, that kind of thing. There was this group of kids that would wander out from one of the villages to watch. Saw them all the time, didn’t think much of it.”
His gaze fastened on the horizon, flecks of light dusting his eyes. Memories trailed over his face until, in an instant, he stiffened.
“It was an IED—improvised explosive device. Obviously meant for us. The kids were coming out to watch again. Stepped in the wrong spot.”
“Oh, Luke . . .”
“I saw the whole thing. I was working on a fence. My close
st buddy was a mile away. Three of the kids were dead, one was alive. I didn’t even think, I just picked him up and started running in the direction of the village.”
She closed her eyes, the scene so painful to picture, she couldn’t begin to imagine what it must have been like to live it.
“Strangers somehow got me to the right house, but by the time I reached it, he’d died. His mother screamed and wept, and I just stood there.”
His shudder was enough to shake the porch step.
“I didn’t even realize until hours later my arms were burned. The boy’s body had been so hot . . .” Lucas swallowed, his jaw twitching. He pressed his dry eyes closed, tone void of emotion. “His mother took care of my burns. I still can’t fathom that. On the night her son dies, she takes care of the man who delivered her dead child to her . . .” He shook his head.
She couldn’t help her question. “Lucas, when you got home, when you were on trial, why didn’t you stand up for yourself? You’d witnessed something traumatic. Dad got you that lawyer—”
“That’s why.” His posture turned rigid. “Because he ignored me until his reputation with his Army pals was on the line.”
Stark understanding settled in. Why had she never considered how Dad’s absence had affected Lucas? But while she’d kept trying to find ways to wrench her father into her life, Lucas had done the opposite.
“It was stupid. My thought process was a mess, but I wanted to hurt him.” The napkin in his hand was crinkled, sweat-dampened despite the cool of the night.
She inched closer to him on the step. “I was so worried those two years.”
He looked at her through eyes clearer than she could ever remember seeing. “I know. And I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Kit.”
She leaned her head on his shoulder, something she hadn’t done in years. “Where did you go after that? Why didn’t you go back to camp?”
His silence stretched. He wasn’t prepared to tell the rest of his story. She wouldn’t push. Not anymore.
“Why did you tell me now?”