Stranger's Gift (39 page)

“Well, it's not a done deal yet. I mean, he said that giving the money to Zeke is like trying to bail out a sinking boat with chopsticks. You know how Zeke does things, just gives everything away to this one or that, no questions asked.”

“Jeannie, what exactly did Malcolm offer?” She hated to dampen Jeannie's excitement with a strong dose of reality, but in this case it was important.

“I told you. He said giving Zeke the money was a waste and that he really liked what I was telling him about the project and …”
…from there you just naturally assumed the rest
, Hester thought, disappointment taming her initial excitement. “Jeannie, did he actually mention setting up a foundation?”

“No, that was my Geoff, but Malcolm certainly agreed that it was a way to go. I mean, there would be conditions, I'm sure, before he'd be ready to fully commit. He is a businessman, after all, and you know how they are—bottom line and measures of success and all—but I'll just assure him that you and Emma could get that all figured out.”

“What does Emma think?”

There was the slightest pause. “Well, I could tell that she was thinking about it. She probably plans to talk to you about it at your coffee tomorrow. Oh shoot, I'll bet she wanted to tell you the good news herself. Well, just pretend I didn't say anything, okay? Gotta run.” And the line went dead.

“Is everyone all right at the Messner home?” Arlen asked when Hester came into the kitchen. He and John were seated at the kitchen table drinking iced tea.

“Yes, fine,” she replied as she started pulling containers from the refrigerator to pack their picnic. “You know Jeannie. She gets something on her mind and can't wait to share it.”

Arlen smiled. “Yes. She's a delightfully positive person, always has been.”

John took the knife and the tomato that Hester was slicing and nodded toward the bowl of cold potatoes. “I can do this while you mix the potato salad.”

She tried to concentrate on listening to her father singing the praises of Jeannie and her husband, Geoff, but it was hard to do with John working alongside of her as if this was something they did all the time. Before long, images of the two of them working together became visions of them laughing together and then sharing meals and …

Stop it
.

She finished mixing the salad, then wrapped the chicken and packed the picnic basket. She was about to close the lid after John handed her the plastic bag filled with more sliced tomatoes than three people could possibly eat when he stopped her by holding the basket lid.

“I thought you said something about chocolate cake, but I don't see any sign of it in here. Frankly, I was really looking forward to that.”

Arlen laughed. “So am I,” he agreed as he retrieved the dessert from the counter and handed it to John. “Hester, your mind is too much on other things today.”

She could not argue the point, for between John Steiner's sudden reentry into her life and Jeannie's idea that Zeke's brother might actually help fund the Rainbow House project, she was definitely having trouble concentrating on anything.

“Okay, are we ready to go?” she asked and knew by the look that John and Arlen exchanged that she had sounded anything but cheerful. The truth was that Jeannie's news had been unsettling, even threatening.

N
either Hester nor her father was prepared for how much work John had actually been able to accomplish. “If you did most of this work with a broken wrist, it would be quite interesting to see what you could do with two good hands,” Arlen said.

Uncomfortable with compliments—even subtle ones—John directed their attention to the packinghouse. “Zeke was able to finish the trim and gutters when he was here yesterday. This building is in better shape than it was before the hurricane hit, thanks to Zeke and Samuel.”

“And so we can concentrate on the house,” Arlen said as the three of them sat on a blanket that Hester had spread on the ground and shared the picnic dinner. Arlen poured lemonade from the thermos and passed the cups around. John laid a two-by-four across the center of the blanket to keep it from blowing in the cooling breeze.

“Instant table,” he said, setting his cup of lemonade on it. Arlen followed suit, and then John picked up Hester's cup from its unsteady resting place on the ground and added it to the lineup.

For reasons she didn't want to explore, Hester found herself studying John's hand. It was large with long fingers. His nails were clipped short, and calluses had hardened the skin on his palms. The backs of his hands were sunburnt to a permanent russet, and the coarse hair that covered his forearm glinted golden in the afternoon sun. His hands, like the rest of him, were strong and solid. And yet she felt certain that his touch would be gentle, even tender.

Now where did that thought come from?
“Another piece of chicken, Dad?” She forced her thoughts away from the man who was suddenly sitting far too close to her and who seemed to be watching her every move.

“Not for me.” Arlen patted his stomach and grinned. “I need to save some room for that cake.”

“John?” she offered without meeting his gaze.

“No, thank you.” The words came out as if she'd startled him, as if he hadn't really been following the conversation at all. He got to his feet and offered a helping hand to Arlen. “How about we take a walk through the house, and then maybe we can discuss those terms I mentioned in my letter,” he said.

“MDS does not place restrictions on our work, John. We give of our talents freely to those in need.”

“I'm afraid I can't accept that,” John said. “I insist on paying.”

The two men stood at an impasse for one long tense moment, and then Arlen smiled. “Why don't you give us the tour and then we can talk more over a piece of Nelly's chocolate cake.”

Hester could not help but be impressed with the tidiness of the downstairs rooms where John was currently living. The kitchen was sparsely furnished with a single chair and the heavy oak table that Hester remembered from the night she'd come to get him to leave. An assortment of mismatched dishes lined the shelves on each side of the porcelain sink. The countertops were bare of the usual assortment of small appliances and such that cluttered the counters in Jeannie's large kitchen. Hester suspected that if she opened any of the three drawers, she would find the utensils lined up perfectly inside.

In one narrow room that they passed on their way from the kitchen to the living and dining rooms, he had placed a single bed and small dresser. Hooks on the wall across from the window held the clothes that he wasn't currently wearing. The single window was unadorned. The bed was made up with spotless white sheets, a single flat pillow, and a blanket folded across the foot. It was the bedroom of a plain man, an Amish man. It was the room of a man who was no longer fighting against his roots.

Hester forced her attention to the living and dining rooms. The dining room was bare of any furnishings at all save an ornate chandelier that hung from the center of the ceiling and seemed incredibly out of place. Across the hall, the living room was almost as devoid of furnishings. A bookcase next to the old woodstove caught her eye because the wood was new and there was only one book on the otherwise-empty shelves. She moved closer, unable to suppress her curiosity.

Walden: Life in the Woods
.

John and her father were still standing in the front hallway while John pointed out the carving on the banister that led up to the second floor. There was another far less ornate stairway in the kitchen, John was telling Arlen, or there had been until it had collapsed under John's feet the night of the storm.

Hester picked up the book. As she had told John, she had read it when she attended college, but for her it had been little more than another assignment to be completed. Clearly for John it held a great deal more significance. There was a small yellow paper marking a page. She let the book fall open and moved the bookmark in order to scan the two facing pages, trying to guess which passage had resonated with him. And the words that caught her attention just before her father called out to her and she closed the book and replaced it on the shelf were “we change.”

“Hester, did you ever see such fine workmanship?” her father was saying as he examined the front door. “Even warped as it is,” he added as he ran his fingers over the wood. Her dad had always admired the talent of other carpenters, especially those who had lived well before his time.

“It is beautiful,” she agreed.

“Was,” John corrected.

“And will be again,” Arlen added. He turned his attention back to the stairway. “Is it safe to go up?”

For an answer John led the way. The treads of the stairs were bare wood, and his heavy work boots echoed on each step. When they reached the top, Hester understood why the sound had been so pronounced. An entire wall of the second story was gone, exposing what had been a large bedroom and bathroom to the elements. Wallpaper hung in tatters from the walls that remained intact, and they would need to be stripped, then scrubbed down and whitewashed. The wood floor was gouged and scarred in places.

John entered the first bedroom and pointed to the large banyan tree outside. “A third of the tree broke off and landed inside here. It took Zeke and me an entire day to get it cut up, but it left its mark on the floor, I'm afraid.”

Arlen examined the damage and said nothing.

“There are two other small bedrooms on this floor. They suffered water damage, and the storm blew out the doors and windows, but at least the walls are there.”

“Excellent,” Arlen said, more to himself than to either of them. Hester knew that he was already making a mental list of what would be needed, muttering to himself as he moved around the space, “Electric, water, plaster, paint. First the exterior wall…Is there an attic?”

“There was.” John pointed to the opening where the roof had been ripped free of the rafters.

“Das ist gut,” Arlen said as he removed a small notepad and the stub of a pencil from his pocket and made some entries. “This is the extent of it?” he asked, looking up at John.

“Pretty much.”

Arlen smiled and touched the sleeve of John's shirt. “Then you are blessed.” He started back down the stairs while Hester and John exchanged a look that shouted,
Blessed? Is he kidding?

“Let's have some cake, and you and Dad can talk,” Hester suggested as she followed her father back to the first floor.

John offered Arlen the only kitchen chair, then brought in two folding chairs from the porch. Hester cut slices of the cake and placed them on the three plates that she found on John's kitchen shelf. He took forks from a drawer, and she saw that she was right in thinking the utensils would be lined up precisely inside.

Then over large pieces of that chocolate cake washed down with the last of the lemonade, the two men talked over the details of what would be needed to renovate the house. Hester had sat in on dozens of such conversations with her father over the last several weeks, and knowing she would have little to add to the discussion, she finished her smaller slice of cake and then wandered back outside.

We change
, she thought as she walked along the property, remembering how it had looked the first time she had come here after the hurricane. All around her was evidence of how that fierce storm had changed the landscape, open spaces where before there had been lush tropical plantings, barren land where there were now stubs of the grove of fruit trees that had flourished there. The pier that had been indefinable that morning had been replaced, using reclaimed materials that she assumed either Samuel or Zeke had provided.

The sun was high, so she sought the cooler shade of the old packinghouse. Outside, the walls had been painted a deep forest green and the flat roof was marked by three ventilation fans housed in metal cupolas. She walked up a short ramp to see the inside where the original conveyer belt made up of a series of rusted metal rollers had remained intact, along with the rough-hewn work counters where once Tucker's employees had sorted fruit for distribution throughout the region.

She walked the length of the long building, her fingers skimming along the equipment as an idea began to take shape. A major piece of the puzzle that was the Rainbow House project that no one had yet solved was that of where to sort and wash the fruit once it was collected. It would need to be packaged or processed, and the resulting products would need to be stored until they could be distributed.

As she walked through the packinghouse, she was barely aware that along the way she was mentally designating the very spots where each step in the sequence could take place. And when she stood in the doorway at the far end of the building and closed her eyes, she could see it all—volunteers working at various stations, their chatter and laughter echoing as they worked. Crates of fruit stacked up and sorted and ready to be turned into marmalade or delivered whole to food banks around the city. Over there a large cookstove and the supplies necessary to make and bottle the marmalade.

“It's perfect,” she murmured aloud as she rummaged in her pocket for a piece of paper and pencil. “We'd have to replace the conveyer belt, but otherwise it's exactly what's needed.” Now all she had to do was to convince John of that and stop him from selling the place.