Seasons of Tomorrow (38 page)

The dogs barked, a few familiar let-me-in demands. They’d wait maybe five minutes and bark again.

“Good morning.” She went to the side of the bed and ran her fingers through his blond hair. “If you can go back to sleep, you should.”

He reached for her hand and drew it to his lips, kissing it twice before he rose and slid into his pants. He settled the suspenders over his T-shirt. “I’ll deal with the dogs.” He peered down at her, looking pleased. “What’s for breakfast?”

“Pancakes and bacon.” She’d gotten the hang of cooking a few things, even for supper and dinners. But she had a long way to go yet. Iva, who’d honed her skills under Phoebe, was an encouraging and good teacher.

A strange jolt ran through Rhoda. Jojo came to mind, and Rhoda had a feeling …“ I … I think Jojo’s on her way here.” She wasn’t sure whether to dress and pin up her hair or head for the door as is.

A sense of urgency gave her chills, and she ran down the steps and out the front door. Just as she stepped onto the porch, the dogs howled, notifying her someone was here. But where? Rhoda scanned the driveway and saw no one. An overzealous white spruce blocked her view, but was there a car near the mailbox? She hurried down the driveway and spotted Jojo retreating from the mailbox and returning to her car. The woman was wasting no time, and Rhoda was sure she was in a hurry to leave.

She started running. “Jojo! Wait!” How foolish did she look in a housecoat and clown shoes with her long, braided hair bouncing wildly? “Wait, please.”

The dogs bristled, barking furiously at Jojo.

“Ziggy! Zara! No!” Samuel’s strong voice came from behind her as he clapped his hands. “Kumm!”

The dogs stopped barking and ran toward Samuel, but they paused when they came to Rhoda. She pointed toward the house. “Go.” She turned, seeing Samuel on the porch. The dogs obeyed, and she was sure Samuel would put them inside.

Jojo opened her car door, ready to get in. “I didn’t mean for anyone to see me.”

Rhoda could see her seven- or eight-year-old daughter asleep in the backseat of the car. “I’m glad I did. Would you come in?”

She eased the door shut and left the car idling. “No. I’m leaving … starting over.” The look in Jojo’s eyes was haunting, so lost and yet so filled with animosity. “It’s taken me two months to see for myself the concerns you shared at the store that day.” She shuddered. “But I see it now.”

Rhoda wondered what had happened that would shake Jojo like this.

Jojo looked at her daughter. “I was a fool to put Sophia in harm’s way as he and his wife battle over a marriage he’d told me had died long ago.” Her blue eyes were chilling. “But I would still be blind to it if you hadn’t forced me to look.”

“Do you know where you’re headed?”

“Not yet. I’ll know when I get there.”

“Jojo.” Rhoda couldn’t manage more than a whisper. What was Jojo thinking? More important, how could Rhoda reach past all the voices and panic of Jojo’s childhood and say something that would matter to her?

Jojo returned to the mailbox and got out the letter she’d apparently put there when Rhoda spotted her. Jojo held it out to her. “You’ve been nice to me, and I didn’t want some cosmic knowledge haunting you again, so I left an explanation rather than just disappearing.”

Rhoda took the feathery light envelope, and maybe it was the look of desperation in Jojo’s eyes, but Rhoda understood a little more. “I know you feel there is no other choice than running. There’s an alarm inside you, warning you to flee while you still have a chance.” She paused, trying to piece together her limited understanding with what she’d been reading about survivors of child abuse. “That warning saved you from beatings as a child, helped you know what to do and where to hide, didn’t it?”

The hint of tenderness Rhoda had seen on Jojo’s face as she passed her the letter turned stone hard, but she nodded. Chills flooded Rhoda’s skin as she felt some of the terror and knew some of the thoughts Jojo had dealt with most of her life. All the confusing, misguided messages and feelings Rhoda had sensed about Jojo and Sophia since moving here—strong danger, abandonment, and a need to flee—were only partially true. The rest was God allowing Rhoda to sense the misery and unrest inside the adult heart of a once-abused child. The depth of pain and anxiety … the inability to trust … the fear of people warring with the need for people … the moments of feeling good about oneself being buried under an avalanche of horrible memories, self-loathing, and doubt. As the realizations battered Rhoda, she could’ve crumbled right there under the weight of it.

“Jojo.” Rhoda held out her trembling hand. She wanted to hug her, but instead she stood there with her hand out.

Jojo stared at her. “You’re just weird.”

Rhoda laughed and lowered her arm. Perhaps hoping Jojo would take her hand was a bit too much. “The alarm going off inside you, urging you
to run, is stuck. You need someone to help you dismantle it or tune it out or something. Fleeing into the unknown isn’t the only way to cope with it. I’ll help you … if you’ll let me.”

“You can’t, because I want as far from Camilla as possible.”

“Why?”

“You know why. She’s a horrible person.”

Rhoda wanted to correct her about that, but she remembered something Samuel had said the night they sat in lawn chairs in an open field and talked. “Is she?”

“Absolutely! I’d never let her get near Sophia. She stood there and let the beatings happen!”

Confused, Rhoda did as Samuel had suggested—if a question came to her, ask it. He thought that if the person didn’t answer, her intuition might. “She did?” And then she knew … “Or your mother did?”

Jojo got into her car and pulled the gearshift down several notches.

“She’s not your mother, Jojo.” Rhoda spoke loud enough to be heard through the closed window.

Rather than pulling off, Jojo clutched the top of the steering wheel and lowered her forehead onto the back of her hands.

Rhoda opened the car door. “She never stood by and watched Zachary be beaten.” She kept her voice soft so she wouldn’t wake Sophia. “Camilla took the blows. She should’ve gotten out. But the past can’t be changed.
Your future
can be.” But then Rhoda realized that Jojo didn’t care about her future. She felt used up, like discarded junk no one had wanted in the first place.

“Jojo, think what it could mean for Sophia’s future if you didn’t keep responding to that false alarm. In ten years when your daughter is a teenager, she’s going to look at you on her way out the door, bags packed with bitterness and disappointment because of your addiction to fleeing and your inability to dare to trust the right people, and she’ll say
you
should’ve stayed.”

Jojo lifted her head. “Are you sure? Is it the same cosmic voice that said ‘tell them’?”

Temptation to lie tugged at Rhoda. If she said yes, Jojo would probably
stay, but she shook her head. “No. It’s just what I think could happen. But if you stayed here for a few days or weeks, we could think and pray until we knew for sure what you should do. Doesn’t Sophia’s future deserve at least a pause to ponder your next move?”

Jojo leaned against the headrest. “
If
I do this, I don’t want Camilla to know.”

Rhoda wanted to dance and holler for joy, but she simply nodded. “Just pull in front of the barn.”

Rhoda looked again at Sophia, and that’s when she noticed a violin case in the car. How many times had Rhoda heard violin music riding on the wind, coming from nowhere, when she first moved to Maine? “Sophia plays that, doesn’t she?”

Jojo nodded. “She seems gifted. At least that’s what a music teacher said one time, but I can rarely afford lessons for her. Getting lessons was part of why I made my last move.” She shrugged. “But it didn’t work out … at all.”

Camilla could give Sophia all the lessons she needed, at least for a really long time before Sophia outgrew Camilla’s abilities. But Rhoda wouldn’t mention that until the time was right. Jojo closed the door and backed up the car before pulling onto the driveway.

As Rhoda followed them, her heart sang a song of victory while she prayed desperately about Jojo’s next decision.

But for now Rhoda was above all else simply grateful.

THIRTY-TWO

Sunlight as clear and seamless as Jacob had ever seen caused the temperature to climb a little past comfortable. Teams—Iva with Crist, Samuel with Rhoda, Leah with him—worked the orchard like bees during pollination. Even Jojo and Sophia, who’d joined them only four days ago, were helping. Well, mostly Jojo. Sophia helped a little before she played with the dogs or dolls or practiced her violin.

Orchard Bend Farms was thriving, perhaps almost as much as his relationship with Esther. Even though he didn’t get to Virginia as often as he’d like, when he did, he spent a lot of time with Esther. She helped work on the kitchen project at Bailey’s, which was his whole purpose in building it. He’d discovered that Saturday was her freest day, and if he was there Friday night, she spent the whole day Saturday and into the evening at Bailey’s home. Bailey and his wife, Althea, welcomed him, inviting him to eat with them or just sit and chat.

Several apples fell from the surrounding trees.

“June drop.” Jacob knew it well and hated it. “If we had a dollar for every fruitlet dropping to the ground or being pruned, we wouldn’t need to harvest a crop of eating and canning apples.” He moved the ladder to a different spot on the tree and climbed it, searching for signs of fire blight or wormy or unpollinated fruitlets to prune.

Leah sprayed a rag with rubbing alcohol and scrubbed the blades of the long-handled shears. “Now where would be the fun in not needing a harvest?”

“Where would I be without your sarcasm?”

She shook his ladder. “Up a tree without one of these?”

He chuckled. There wasn’t much sense in thinking where he might be if they didn’t need a good harvest. He had to be here, dealing with the June drop. Every tree was doing its fair share of getting rid of unwanted fruit on
its own, but, as always, for the best yield they needed to help mother nature.

“The shears clean?” He looked at his sister below. She hardly reminded him of the girl he’d grown up with. If she was still brokenhearted, and he believed she was, she didn’t show it. When had such maturity set in?

“Ya.” Leah held the very end of them, reaching the five-foot pruning shears as high as she could. “Do you really think they need this much cleaning between every cutting of fire blight?”

He grabbed them. “Yep. If we didn’t clean them well, rather than bringing the disease under control, we’d actually help spread it.”

For some reason he glanced a few trees down. Samuel was animated as he and Rhoda talked. His brother flirted with her, and then they burst into laughter for some reason. Jacob chuckled … and then blinked, staring at them.

Could it be? Had he finally found complete peace with Rhoda marrying Samuel? He focused on his feelings and thoughts … and smiled. Not only that, but he’d gone beyond it. He was
grateful
to be free to explore a relationship with Esther.

His phone buzzed, and he tried to free his hands, hoping it’d be Esther. Whether together or talking on the phone, he and Esther enjoyed each other. There was something about having a guy-girl relationship with neither one being interested in courting or marriage that was totally refreshing. But if things kept going as they were, he could see where the relationship might lead to something more … if she was interested.

Ach, his hands were full. He tossed the weak or damaged fruitlets he’d been collecting onto the sheet below. “Leah, take these, please.” He waited until she grabbed the pruning shears.

With his hands finally free, he dug for his phone. But the call had ended. He pressed icons, trying to see who’d called.
Lancaster Medical
. Jacob’s heart jolted.

“You gonna keep playing with that thing or what?” Leah asked.

“I got a call from the hospital.” He climbed down the ladder.

Leah froze. “Steven calls the barn office with routine updates. He’s never called your cell, has he?”

“No. But if he’s trying to reach us while we’re in the field, this is how he’d do it.” Jacob hit redial, but before anyone picked up, he had an incoming call. The hospital. He pressed accept. “Hello.”

“Jacob. Steven here. We finally have a bit of good news! Phoebe’s lungs are clear! Her heart rate, blood pressure, and oxygen levels started improving yesterday. She’s doing well enough that they’re no longer looking at taking the baby this week. She’s thirty-two weeks, and they’re hoping to get her as close to thirty-four weeks as possible, which is really important for lung maturity and improves the baby’s chances of thriving.”

“That’s great!” Jacob raised the phone, waving his arms. “Guys, kumm. Good news!” Joy danced through him, and he saw it in the steps and faces of everyone hurrying toward him. He returned the phone to his ear. “I’m putting you on speaker. Say it again, Steven.”

As Steven repeated the good news, they whooped and hollered and hugged one another—though Jacob avoided an awkward hug with Rhoda. But his brother grabbed him by the shoulders, and Jacob embraced him. Their joy for the Bylers seemed beyond what could be expressed.