Seasons of Tomorrow (45 page)

“Nope.” Rhoda backed up her horse, causing the second one to back up as well. “With me. Same horse.”

Samuel made a face. “But you brought two.”

She leaned in, flirting with him while patting the horse. “The same horse, Samuel King. The other one is for Jacob.”

Samuel gazed up at her. “Then you’ll have to get down. I can’t mount a saddle-less horse with someone already on it.”

Rhoda grinned and extended her hand to him. “I’ll pull you up like you do for me when we ride together.”

“Great idea, except I weigh a lot more than you. We’ll both land on the ground.”

Jacob passed the clipboards to Rhoda. “Here.” He clasped his hands together and held them for Samuel to use as a step. With Jacob’s help Samuel mounted the horse, and Rhoda and Samuel chorused a
thank you
.

Jacob patted the horse. “It seems to take the three of us to get you two on a horse riding off into the sunset.”

The words brought him no pain. In fact, he smiled. Whether he and Esther worked things out or not, or if he remained single all his life, Jacob knew Rhoda was not the one for him.

As Samuel reached around his wife, she passed the reins to him. Jacob pulled his phone out of his pocket, tapped in the missing words to his joke, and hit send. He would stay out here for a bit and send texts that would never arrive. It was therapeutic.

“Jacob.” Rhoda disrupted his focus.

“Ya?”

“Get on your horse and go home.”

“I will.”

“Now, please.” Rhoda tossed a piece of wadded paper at his chest.

“Go away. I’m taking a break.”

“Uh, Jacob King.”

His sister-in-law’s voice was starting to grate on his nerves, but he looked up.

Rhoda smiled. “You’re going to make me say it, aren’t you?”

“Probably. What’s up?”

“A young lady is waiting at the house for you.”

“What?” Jacob dropped his phone. “Who’s waiting?”

“Well, I didn’t meet her. Leah told me as I was heading this way. It’s an odd name.”

“Oh.” Disappointment settled into his heart as he grabbed his phone. Esther’s name was common, like Jacob’s. He mounted his horse. Whoever was here, maybe another applicant, he needed to go back.

“I think Leah said it was Shark Bait.”

Jacob’s heart thudded. “You could’ve said that sooner!” He slapped the reins, and the horse jumped into action.

“She came to see you,” Samuel yelled. “She’s not going to run off before you get there!”

His brother’s voice barely registered.

One fact was louder right now than all the silence over the last six weeks: Esther had come to Maine!

THIRTY-EIGHT

Astride the horse and watching Jacob ride toward home, Rhoda snuggled back against her husband. “I think he’s in love.”

“I agree.” Samuel kissed her cheek.

Rhoda angled her head, inviting more kisses. “But it seems to be taking a while for them to work out the kinks.”

“Should such a remarkable event happen without time and effort?”

That was similar to what Samuel had said to her on their wedding day, and she grinned, recalling another heartwarming thing he’d said. She took a deep breath. “It doesn’t matter whether it begins precisely on time. Only that it begins.”

“Exactly.” Samuel brushed wisps of hair from her face. “Jacob and I were talking, and the price that canning facilities are willing to pay for apples this year is really good. We could send about half our apples there and make a great profit from them, and we’ll make a better profit on the rest that you can.”

“What would be the purpose behind doing that?”

“So you don’t have to work as hard.”

“Ah. Is the honeymoon over?”

“I certainly hope not. Why would it be?”

“This new plan would keep me out of the field and kitchen as much. So are you tired of seeing me every moment of every day whether we’re having a meal or working?”

“That is never going to happen. But we have this business on its feet, and now it’s time you got off yours just a bit more.”

She stared at him. Sometimes it was as if he could read her mind. Even though they had been married only a little more than three months, she was a bit surprised she wasn’t pregnant yet. Still … as she prayed about it, she realized that the stress of the last couple of years and how thin she’d become because of it was the issue.

“Look.” Samuel took the reins from her. “When I first approached you about helping Kings’ Orchard in Pennsylvania, you were only going to provide part-time help in spring and summer with your expertise on nutrition and then help full-time during the canning of the fall harvest. Neither of us ever intended for you to work as hard as you have the past two years.”

This plan had been his goal from the start. “You want my work schedule such that we’re all squared away when we start having babies.”

With less hard work and gaining a little weight, she would be pregnant by this time next year. She knew that as fully as she knew Samuel was meant to be her husband. And she also knew they would juggle their children’s needs during the harvest and love every minute of it.

Samuel kissed her neck. “I’m a planner, and I love my wife. What can I say?”

She shifted so she could see him. “You can tell me that second part again.”

“I love you, Rhoda.”

“It’s a good thing. I’d hate to have to kick you off this horse. Listen, about that family of ours, I have a plan.”

He clicked his tongue, and the horse started for home. “Is it one I’ll like?”

“Definitely. Now that so many stresses are over, I think I should aim to put on a little weight … and then I’ll come up pregnant.”

“I don’t think eating is what causes pregnancy.” He headed the horse toward the barn.

“Hush it. I’m telling you my plan. Remember when the frost came our first spring here and you went by a store and brought huge slices of different cakes for us?”

“I’ll never forget that.”

“You buy more of those at least once a week, and we’ll eat cake by candlelight in our suite until I’m at my goal weight.”

“Done.”

“You’re much easier to get along with than you used to be. Are you henpecked or what?”

“I’m not any different. You’re just nicer these days. When we first met,
you
were the problem. Not me.” He directed the horse into the barn.

“Keep it up, and after
you
go to the store to buy us cake, I won’t share it with you.”

“I apologize.” He came to a halt and dismounted and then helped her down. “But …” He towered over her, smiling.

He stared at her lips as if he hadn’t been married to her for more than three months. When he kissed her, the warmth of his mouth on hers made her long for the night when they’d go into their suite and share cake and cold milk by candlelight and swap stories while laughing until their sides hurt—and enjoy all the desires God had intended.

Jacob rode into the area between the barn and house, looking for Esther. What did her coming mean—that she wanted peace and friendship again, or was she ready to think about their dating? If she could admit that their feelings went beyond being friends, he would accept whatever decision she’d come to.

For now.

But she had to own up to what was in her heart for him. Their relationship didn’t have to fit any of the ideal situations he’d texted about. Actually, it was a good thing she couldn’t read those texts, or he’d have scared her off permanently. He’d written about his dreams of starting his own construction company, of traveling to various states for months out of each year, of buying some old homes near wherever their home was so he could fix those up during the winter months when new construction jobs were scant and slow. What woman would want to marry a man who didn’t intend to be home but half of the year?

He spotted her walking the pathways between groups of equipment, and he dismounted. An Amish youth, maybe seventeen years of age, hurried toward Jacob, his hand held out. “May I cool him off and put him up for you?”

“Sure. Thanks.”

“Oats?”

“And a rubdown and fresh water.”

“Right away.”

Jacob smiled. Amish or not, he could get used to having help when on the farm, and he knew that as a King son who received a percentage of the profits, he’d need to return for a few weeks each year. Actually, he looked forward to it.

Esther looked up, and Jacob closed the gap between them. “This is a surprise.”

Her hesitant smile was charming. “I can’t believe I’m here.”

“I’m glad you are.”

“My concern is you won’t feel that way when you realize what I’ve done.”

“What does that mean?”

She glanced at the people nearby.

Jacob looked at the lane that led to the main road. He’d never walked that while talking. “Kumm.” They meandered that way, and soon they were side by side where no one could hear them.

“It took some effort, but Dora is no longer angry with me. She believes my account and forgives me.”

“I’m glad, but what I really care about is understanding why you’re here.”

She stared down at her hands, flicking her thumbnails together. “Which do you want first, a confession of my sin or the reason I find it so ridiculously hard to trust men?”

He was sure that having a constant influx of pregnant girls, each of whom had thought the father of her child loved her, had a lot of negative influence. “I can appreciate some of why you feel the way you do about trusting a man, but I’d like to understand more.”

They meandered in silence, and he knew she was struggling to talk.

“Okay.” Her rosy cheeks rounded as she blew air from her lips. “My Daed passed when I was eighteen, and I’d been taking care of him night and day for three years.”

“Did you get to date or go out with friends during that time?”

“Not once. I spent those early rumschpringe years living in the Daadi Haus with my Daed, being his nursemaid and shielding my siblings from the worst of it. I protected Mamm too, actually. She couldn’t cope, so I did. It had some good aspects to it. Slowly his gruff side faded. As the illness grew stronger, he grew kinder and more grateful.” She shrugged. “I’m sure some of it was the amount of morphine he was taking. But when he was gone, I discovered that life had passed me by.”

He was also sure that her Daed’s rougher side already had her a bit leery of men. “I’m sure you felt like a colt released from its stall.”

“Maybe. But whatever I felt, I soon discovered I was fresh, innocent prey to a handsome young man who was several years older than me.”

Jacob had made plenty of mistakes himself, but knowing that did nothing to temper his immediate desire to flatten the guy.

“Over the next several months, I fell madly in love. And when he had my emotions hooked, he started pushing for physical contact. I longed to forget the years of isolation with my Daed, to feel alive and beautiful.”

“Of course you did.” Jacob held out his hand for hers.

She stopped and looked at his hand and slowly lifted her eyes to his. Tears welled, and she shook her head.

“Esther, I have no stones to throw.”

“And I have no companionship to offer, at least not until you know everything.” She slid her hand into the hidden pocket of her apron and jiggled the fabric. “Every single thing.”

What could possibly be in that pocket—a diary or pictures or a letter of some sort? Whatever it was, he thought she was too hard on herself and too suspicious of potential suitors.

He grabbed his suspenders, and they began walking again. The thing he now understood about relationships was they didn’t have to be like new construction, exciting and fresh. They could be as worn and used as the treasures he and Esther had collected from that broken-down house. He could look at each item for the richness it had and appreciate the character of dents and chipped paint.

She brushed back a string to her prayer Kapp, making the string fall
behind her shoulder. “A group of single Amish men used to gather at night in the lot behind Bailey’s store. It was easy to get to and had outdoor furniture to sit on, and no one could see them from the street. They could smoke and drink there without fear of burning the place down. But they started leaving their beer bottles and such, so Bailey intended to catch them and talk to them about it. If they were of age to drink, he didn’t care if they used the area. But he wasn’t going to come in every Monday needing to clean up their mess of fast-food trash, beer bottles, and cigarettes. Catching them proved difficult because they didn’t go there until they’d taken their dates home. So one night he slept in the back room of the shop, and when he woke, he thought he heard Peter bragging about his plans for me.”