Love in Bloom (7 page)

He tossed her a smile as he guided the truck around a curve in the pebbled drive and toward the back of the house. “Thanks. It’s been a work in progress.” He glanced into the rearview mirror, addressing his daughter. “Pumpkin, will you take Lily and the food into the house? I need to get to the barn.”

“Sure, Daddy.”

“Can I help?” Lily asked.

He brought the truck to a halt in front of the open garage. “Ever feed livestock?”

“No, but I’m willing to learn.”

He turned to look at Isabella in the backseat. “What about you, Buttercup?”

“I’ll show Lily what to do.”

“Okay, then.”

He backed the truck out and headed for the barn. Two minutes later they were walking along a graveled path. Tate closed a gate at the back of the barn then went into a small room just inside the building.

“Open the stall doors. We have an automatic feed and water system for the horses that I can activate in here. We’ll have to feed the cattle up front by hand after I drive in the horses.”

Isabella showed Lily how to slide the gates open. They would have to quickly roll them closed again after the horses were inside. Once the automatic feed system started dumping grain into the bins, Tate grabbed a rope and walked out to one of the corrals. Soon hooves thundered through the barn. Isabella hopped up on a post and advised Lily to climb up behind her. Perhaps a dozen different horses swung into six stalls and dropped their noses into feed bins. Isabella plopped down to the straw strewn floor and started whisking the gates closed. Lily followed suit. Tate jogged up, coiling his rope, and helped finish the job.

He slung the rope over one shoulder and returned to the small room at the back of the building, reappearing a few moments later with a laden wheelbarrow. The girls followed him to a pen at the front of the barn. While Isabella and, belatedly, Lily, dumped feed into a bucket, Tate crawled over a fence and dropped a loop over the head of a good-size calf, which he then snugged to a post.

“Sugar, bring me the kit,” he said, running a hand down the calf’s flank to its belly. Isabella picked up a black zippered bag and handed it to Lily, who then carried it over to Tate. “Grab his tail,” he instructed, “but watch those back legs and don’t get yourself kicked.”

“Uh. Okay.”

He glanced up in surprise at Lily then shot his daughter a speaking glance before turning his attention back to the calf. “Pull on his tail. Just stay well back while I doctor him.”

Lily looked at Isabella, who nodded encouragingly, and grabbed hold of the swishing tail, stepping back and leaning away from the animal. It jerked and bawled, but Lily held on, reasoning that if Isabella could manage such a feat then she surely could. Crouching down next to the animal, Tate crooned a steady stream of encouraging words as he unzipped the kit, prepared a syringe and then irrigated a wound on the calf’s underside, explaining his actions as he went along. The animal didn’t really put up much of a fight. Apparently it had been through this process several times already. Tate ended by giving the ungrateful beast an injection, then he waved Lily away, released the calf’s head and chuckled as it trotted to the bucket to feed.

He and Lily walked to the fence. After helping her climb over, he passed the medical kit to Isabella and easily vaulted the fence himself. Lily and Isabella sat in the truck while Tate tossed bales of hay into the back before driving around to the corral in front. He cut the wire on the bales, and the three of them tossed the hay into the corral to feed the few head of cattle penned there for one reason or another.

They scrubbed their hands at a spigot beside the barn, using a bar of soap inside a net hanging by a chain, and ate their burgers sitting on the tailgate of the truck while the sky darkened and the stars began to pop out.

She said a quick, silent prayer of thanks for the meal, as was her habit, and took a bite.
Now this,
Lily thought, breathing deeply of the loamy smells of earth and animals and growing things,
is more like it
. While nothing at all like what she had imagined, this was somehow what she had been seeking when she’d filled out her grant application back in Boston. Strangely she finally felt that she was getting to know Bygones and Kansas. Or maybe it was that she was getting to know Tate and Isabella.

“Grandma and Grandpa will be here with the fireworks soon,” Tate observed, after chugging the last of his water and recapping the bottle.

“Time to strain the berry tea!” Isabella announced excitedly.

They climbed into the truck and drove to the house. This time Tate pulled into the neatly organized garage and everyone got out. Isabella led the way, chattering all the while about the special tea that had been steeping all day.

“It’s a berry special recipe,” she joked. “It come down in the family. We get the berries as soon as they’re dark enough. They grow practically on the ground, so you got to watch where you’re stepping, and when we get enough I boil ‘em up with the leaves. Daddy helps me. And we cook the sugar in until you can’t even see it anymore. When it’s not hot, we put it in the fridge, and then after a long time, I pour it through a piece of material. What is it, Daddy?”

“Cheesecloth.”

“Oh, yeah. I don’t know why it’s called that, ‘cause we don’t make cheese. We’re making tea, blue tea for Red, White and Blue Day! It’s tadition.”

“
Tra
dition,” Tate corrected patiently.

“Yep. Tadition, from my grandma Hoyt to my mama to me. Daddy says it’s his favorite thing about the whole day.”

Lily looked around her as they passed through a tiled back hall that opened onto the rear yard at one end and into the front entry, flanking the stairwell, at the other. Hooks bearing various outer garments lined the wall on either side of the door into the garage. A box bench, no doubt containing galoshes and other types of footwear, stood between the back and garage doors, its hinged seat painted with daisies. An old-fashioned milk can sat next to it, filled with umbrellas, a baseball bat and a scarred cane. The whole thing had a neat but homey feel to it. More telling than any of that, however, were the photos lining the opposite wall.

All eight-by-tens in identical wood frames, they varied between photos of a chubby, bright-eyed, flame-haired infant and an equally bright-eyed, flame-haired young woman whose curls tumbled down her slender back in wild abandon, or were sometimes tamed into twin French braids that ringed her head and frothed into a riot of curls at her nape. The redheaded beauty yelled at a baseball game, petted a horse, laughed heartily, smiled dreamily, sat on a log, drove a tractor… The baby, no doubt Isabella, played with her toes, a favorite rattle, a doll, reached for a mobile, blew bubbles at the camera. There were no photos of the two of them together, no photos of Tate or anyone else, just Isabella and the young woman who had to be her mother.

The latter woke an ache in Lily’s chest. She had the feeling that she was looking at the reason for Tate’s every frown, snap and growl.

Daddy’s not married, either
.

Lily had tried not to think about Isabella’s statement, not to wonder how Tate had come to be a single father, but she felt in her bones that he was not divorced. No, these photos told her that Tate Bronson was widowed. Somehow his young wife had died. He had yet, however, to let her go. That became abundantly clear as Lily followed father and daughter into the roomy kitchen with its golden woods and rusty stone countertops.

While Lily sat at an iron and glass table, Tate and Isabella fetched a pot from the stainless steel refrigerator, fastened a piece of cheesecloth over a crock in the sink and slowly poured the contents of the pot into the crock. From where Lily sat, she could see through the dining room to the living area, where a large, gilt-framed wedding portrait hung. A very young Tate in cowboy hat, blue jeans and a tuxedo jacket ran hand-in-hand with Isabella’s mother, who wore a billowing, strapless white wedding gown, her long, curly red hair and a white veil flowing out behind them, across a field of golden waving grass much like that which surrounded the barn outside. Sunlight slanted across a cloudless sky, beaming down on the happy couple.

Lily’s heart literally ached for him. What had happened? How had Tate survived such loss? She felt silly and foolish, remembering her distress when some man she’d liked had failed to notice her or, worse, had shown an interest in her more vivacious younger sister. Tate had truly loved. Tate had been loved. His loss had been real. Lily’s had never been more than secret and imagined.

God forgive me for my petty self-centeredness,
she prayed silently.

A giggle drew her attention back to the activities at the sink. The cloth was now piled with berries and leaves. Tate set aside the pot and twisted the cloth to remove all the juice before dumping the remains into the compost can, then he stretched a fresh piece of clean white cloth over the top of the crock. He did this twice more before the pot was empty. Isabella’s fingers were stained by the time they were done, but thanks to a dishtowel that Tate had draped around her neck, her clothing remained clean. Tate squirted dishwashing liquid into the pot and ran hot water into it then left it to sit while he and Isabella filled glasses with ice and ran the tea from a spigot in the crock. Isabella then proudly presented a glass to Lily. The tea was indeed blue, sweet and a bit minty.

“Lovely. What is it?”

“Dewberry,” Tate answered. “It was Eve’s grandmother’s recipe.”

She didn’t have to ask who “Eve” might be, not that she had a chance as the front door opened and a middle-aged couple entered, followed by a younger couple and a toddler. Tate introduced Lily to his parents. Ginny and Peter Bronson were both in their fifties. Ginny’s short, thick, ash-blond hair hid her silvering well, but Peter’s dark brown showed a liberal sprinkling of gray. Tate obviously got his dimples from his dad and his warm brown eyes from his mom, from whom he also apparently got his height, Peter standing little more than an inch taller than his wife. The young brunette and tall, dark-haired man with the lopsided nose turned out to be Tate’s older sister, Gayla, and her husband, Bud Lott, visiting from Kansas City with their two-year-old son, Jay. Everyone seemed surprised to find Lily there, but no one appeared unhappy about it.

“You’re one of the newcomers,” Ginny Bronson said.

“That’s right.”

“Well, don’t worry,” Gayla, Tate’s sister, quipped, “just because the whole town’s future is resting on your shoulders.”

“The whole town?” Lily echoed, alarmed. Was the situation in Bygones truly that dire?

“Oh, not you personally,” Gayla said with a contrived little wave. “Besides, I hear that everyone has great hopes for this scheme.” She quickly changed the subject then, almost as full of questions as Isabella, though she managed to be a bit more subtle than Isabella had been.

Everyone exclaimed about Isabella’s berry tea, which they all drank while eating heaping helpings of Ginny Bronson’s flag cake, a confection topped with whipped cream, strawberries and blueberries. The Fourth of July, Peter Bronson joked, was always a “berry good time.”

After the cake they all trouped outside, carrying folding lawn chairs, and up to the crest of a low hill behind the house overlooking a pond, where a space had been cleared. Peter opened a box, and the fun began with Tate and Bud, who were obviously good friends, setting off the fireworks. Jay sat in his grandfather’s lap, while Isabella sat in her grandmother’s, oohing and aahing over every bang and bright splash of color. By the time the last starburst drifted into the dark mirror of the pond, Jay snored on his grandpa’s shoulder and Isabella’s eyelids drooped, though how either could entertain the notion of sleep with all the noise was beyond Lily’s understanding.

As the party walked back to the house, Peter talked about his forebears. “This was all part of the original homestead of Saul Bronson,” he said. “He came to the state in 1870 from St. Louis.”

“Isabella said something about a disagreement over a girlfriend,” Lily ventured warily.

“Mmm-hmm. Sarabeth DeMonde. Both Paul and Saul courted her, but she chose Paul, prompting Saul to head west and lose himself out here on the prairie. Within a few months, though, Paul realized that Sarabeth was not worth losing his brother and only family over. He followed Saul to Kansas, and together the brothers founded the town, calling it Bygones in keeping with Saul’s decision to forgive and forget. The brothers enjoyed a sizable inheritance from their parents, who were in shipping, and converted it into land. Eventually both married. Saul and his wife lived in town. Paul and his family preferred the country. Guess we take after Paul.”

“I can see why,” she said, inhaling deeply, enjoying the relative quiet. A bird called in the distance, the sound haunting and strangely poignant. “What is that?”

“Whip-poor-will,” Tate answered. “I sit out here sometimes at night and listen to them for hours. Don’t know which I love more, them or the doves.”

“It’s that old owl around here that I love to hear,” Ginny said. “I go to sleep listening to that ‘hoo-hoo-hoo.’”

“I’ve got a sleepy baby bird right here,” Bud said, cradling his son against his chest.

“We’d better get back to the house and get him down for the night,” Gayla said.

“We’ll be along shortly,” Peter told them as they moved off toward their vehicle.

“Mom,” Tate said, “could you stay and get Isabella to bed while I run Lily back into town?”

“Of course, son. Your dad can ride on home with Gayla and Bud.”

“Thanks, I appreciate it.”

Isabella hugged Lily, saying a sleepy “G’night.”

“Good night, sweetie, and thank you for all the help today and the yummy tea and the invitation. I had a
berry
good time.”

Isabella giggled and went with her grandparents into the house. “It was nice to meet you, Lily,” Ginny called as she passed through the door held open by her husband.

“You, too. Good night.”

Tate walked her into the dark garage and opened the truck door for her again, handing her up into the passenger seat of the cab with exquisite care. Lily read that as accurately as a letter.