Stranger's Gift (41 page)

Hester leaned on her shovel. “Look, we cannot just ignore what you did back there.”

“You don't have to make it sound like—”

“I'm not trying to make it sound like anything. I just think we need to talk about it.”

“Look, it was a kiss, all right? Okay, two kisses.”

“Yes, I know. The question is, why?”

“Why? You want me to analyze something that was completely—”

She straightened to her full height, which was still several inches shorter than he was. “I am going to assume that it was a spontaneous reaction.”

“Do you always have to make more of a situation than it really is?” Without giving her a chance to respond, he jammed his pitchfork into the suddenly yielding soil and headed back to the house. “I'll tell Arlen you're ready to go,” he called over his shoulder.

“Fine,” she snapped. “I'll be in the car.”

I
t took the MDS team only ten days to complete the work on John's house, and by the first week in October, the property was ready to be listed on the market. Hester couldn't help but marvel at the crew her father had put together—a small army of experienced carpenters along with an electrician and a plumber. At her father's subtle insistence and with his promise that he would make sure that John was busy elsewhere, she had asked Emma and Jeannie and their daughters as well as Rosalyn to help her paint the restored rooms and clean the entire house after the workers were finished. Margery had shown up to help as well.

“It's a beautiful house,” Jeannie exclaimed. “Wouldn't it make a perfect Rainbow House?”

“Not really,” Emma said. “It's too far from town. How are the homeless men and women supposed to get here? Besides, there's only one bathroom.”

As usual, Jeannie was undaunted by her sister's practical streak. “Well, it would make a great something. I hate seeing it torn down and yet another multistoried monstrosity going up in its place.”

“The packinghouse would be a good place to sort the donated fruit once we start collecting it, and we could even make the marmalade there if we got the right equipment.” Hester had been thinking about how perfect the space was for their project practically nonstop since she'd gotten the idea, but she only grasped that she'd spoken aloud when Jeannie squealed.

“It
is
perfect, and we have to find a place soon. I'm already getting calls from people wanting to schedule a date to have the volunteers come get their fruit.”

“Same problem,” Emma said as she stood back to check her daughter, Sadie's, work on the trim. “I thought we decided that because of people's discomfort with having homeless people in their homes, we were going to have them do the sorting and distribution and we were going to recruit young people to do the collecting. Again, how will people without any means of transportation get here?”

“I know, but …” Jeannie got no further.

“Emma's right,” Hester admitted. “Even if the place were available—and it isn't—how are we going to transport the volunteers out here to sort and pack?”

Margery snorted. “Well, now, it's going to be a while before John can sell this place. I don't care what that fast-talking realtor says. In the meantime, how about I run a little ferry service? Collect folks down at the marina in town and bring them here by boat on the days you need them to work?”

“Samuel could bring people in his camper,” Rosalyn volunteered.

Hester felt a prickle of excitement, but then she looked out the window and saw the realtor's F
OR
S
ALE
sign prominently posted near the water. There was a mate to the sign posted by the road and another pointing the way from Highway 41. Besides, John would never agree to let them use the packinghouse even on a short-term basis now that the property was on the market.
Would he?

“Hester could ask him,” Rosalyn suggested.

“Ask who what?”

“Ask John if we can use the packinghouse until he sells. It would buy us some time before we had to put the whole project on hold for lack of a proper space to handle the sorting and such,” Jeannie explained.

“He might just agree,” Margery mused. “He's changed some these last weeks, actually shown some indication that he's begun to realize this going-it-alone thing may not be his best move.”

“Do you want me to ask him?” Emma said softly. Emma was the only person who knew that John had kissed her. Her reaction had not been the shock that Hester had been expecting. Instead, she had asked, “Did you kiss him back?” And Hester had nodded.

“Thought so,” Emma had said with a smug little smile. But when there had been no further contact with John, Emma had adopted the pitying look that was now on her face whenever his name came up.

“I can ask him,” Hester said as she put the finishing touches on the wall she'd been painting. “But be prepared for him to say no.”

“Where is he, anyway?” Margery asked. “I haven't seen him all day.”

“I asked Dad to—”

“He went off with that realtor,” Jeannie said. “I don't like that guy. He's so…slick.”

“He's just doing his job,” Emma said. “And speaking of jobs, it looks like we have finished here.” She wet her finger with spit and scrubbed a speck of paint off Sadie's cheek.

“Ah, Mom,” Sadie protested, and all the women laughed. Then they heard male voices downstairs.

“Looks like here's your chance, Hester,” Emma said. “John's back.”

“Hey, John, come see what a woman's touch can do for this place,” Jeannie called.

John looked up the restored stairway, its carved wooden banister now gleaming with fresh polish, and saw the women gathered at the top.
All but her
, he thought. And then Hester stepped out of the large bedroom and joined the others. She was not smiling, but she met his eyes for the first time since the day he'd kissed her. On the other hand, she was wearing that expression that he'd come to know so well, the one she seemed to reserve just for him. The one that shouted,
Let's get one thing straight, mister
.

He forced a smile and climbed the stairs. “Looks great,” he said, glancing around. “Thank you. I—”

“Oh, you can't see anything from there,” Jeannie said, taking his arm and leading him into the bedroom that had been his sleeping quarters before the hurricane. “Check this out.”

The walls had been painted a pale blue, a softer version of the color of Hester's eyes, he thought, and he glanced at her. The woodwork and ceiling were white, and the wood floor that Samuel and Zeke had sanded and restored was a soft blond. The whole effect was one of “Come on in and rest for a while.”

“This room alone would sell the place,” Margery said. “Some young couple looking to start life together.” She nudged his arm with hers. “Wait ‘til you see the nursery down the hall.” Subtlety had never been Margery's strong point.

“We should find you one of those old-fashioned white iron beds,” Jeannie said. “And a wicker rocking chair over there to look out over the garden and—”

“He's selling the place,” Emma reminded her. “He doesn't need to spend extra money on furnishings.”

“Well, I've always heard that a house shows better when it's staged properly with furniture and all.”

“Let's see the rest,” John said, heading down the hall to the other two bedrooms. The larger one had been painted a melon color with the same accents on woodwork and floor. “Nice,” he murmured and moved on to the smallest bedroom—a cramped, dark space that Tucker had used for storage and John had done little to change in the time he had lived on the property.

He stopped at the door, speechless. The women had transformed the space into a bright and welcoming oasis. Sunny yellow walls made the room look larger than he'd remembered. Simple lace curtains hung on either side of the single open window. It would indeed make a perfect nursery. The house that he had thought of only as a place to eat and sleep now had the feeling of
home
.

“I don't know what to say,” he murmured. “I can't thank you enough or think of how I will ever repay you for your kindness.”

“Oh, we'll think of something,” Jeannie said. He noticed how she directed this not at him but at Hester.

“Is anyone else starving?” Sadie moaned, and the women all agreed it was time to eat and headed back down the hall.

On the way they passed the tiled bathroom, where every inch had been scrubbed to a high sheen. A stairway led up to the attic, a cavernous space that could be converted to more living space, John thought. But as he followed the women downstairs and into the kitchen, he shook off any ideas he'd started to have about a real family buying the place. As the realtor had pointed out to him, vacant land on water was rare, and that rarity made it valuable, if he was willing to sell to a developer. He wondered if he could insist that the buyer name the development Walden. Or maybe a better name would be Steiner's Folly.

The women set to work preparing sandwiches for themselves and Arlen's team of workers, who were completing the landscaping outside. John had eaten his lunch in town with the realtor. He wandered outside and down to the packinghouse, where he knew he could have a moment to himself.

But he'd barely been there five minutes when he heard the side door open and turned to see Hester standing there in a shaft of sunlight. “John? Do you have a minute?”

“Returning to the scene of my crime, Hester? Could be dangerous.”

She stepped inside the building and let the door swing closed behind her. “I don't think kissing a person has yet risen to the level of criminal activity,” she said primly. But he couldn't help noticing that she kept her distance. Indeed, she moved away from him along the long worktable that ran the length of the opposite wall. He stayed where he was until she had circled the room and come back to stand near him. “I…we, that is, the planning committee for Rainbow House—”

He let out a relieved but disappointed breath. “It's always business first with you, isn't it, Hester?”

Her eyes flickered with irritation. “That's not…This is …”

“Just spit it out,” he said wearily. “I'll do what I can.”

Her eyes widened with what he could only describe as hope. “We would like your permission to use this space until you sell the property. The calls for our volunteers to go out and gather fruit are starting to come in, and we have no place to store and sort it, or make up the marmalade that we plan to sell—”

“Breathe,” he said, placing his hands lightly on her shoulders as she sucked in air. “Okay, now start from the beginning.”

Over the next hour Hester laid out the entire plan for how the program would work and how the packinghouse figured into the equation. As always, they debated various points and even argued over some of her ideas, but in the end he saw how it could work. Specifically he saw how it would benefit Zeke and the other homeless men and women he had met. But more than that, he began to see it as the perfect way to repay everyone who had given so freely of their time and talent to get his property restored and on the market.

“Okay,” he said.

But Hester thought he was only giving in, so she continued making her case. “Look, I know this can't be a permanent solution, but …”

“I said okay, Hester. You can use the packinghouse.”

It was such a delight to see the woman speechless for once that he couldn't help grinning at her. “Anything else?”

She turned to face him, studying his features for a long moment. She placed her hand on his cheek. “Thank you,” she whispered. And then she did the one thing he was totally unprepared for—she wrapped her arms around him and rested her cheek against his chest. “Oh, thank you so much.”

Tentatively he completed the circle of their embrace and rested his chin on the top of her head where her prayer covering met the center part of her hair. “My pleasure,” he said.