Ruth Logan - A Hopeful Harvest

M ortgage. Electric bill. Car payment. Gasoline. Milk. Bread. Eggs.

That was as far as Liberty Creighton’s budget would stretch until the apple crop came in. She measured ingredients for the tank sprayer, added water and got ready to drive the aging tractor along the expanse of trees in Golden Grove, Washington. Recent rains meant additional spraying to guard against worms and disease.

Was she foolish to take this on to fulfill her late grandmother’s wishes to keep Gramps on the farm? Or was it an act of kindness?

She wasn’t sure, but she was on the cusp of her first solo harvest. Their winter budget depended on these final weeks and she and her five-year-old daughter had spent the last year in a town that used to scorn her. Maybe still did. That was their problem. Not hers. Except it still hurt, so maybe it was her problem after all.

She’d completed the Fujis and Galas when the calendar app on her phone buzzed a reminder. She stared at it, dismayed. Lunch with your best girl, twelve o’clock, Golden Grove Elementary!

She was a mess. She hadn’t bothered to shower or get dressed in regular clothes because somehow she’d marked her kitchen calendar for lunch with CeeCee tomorrow. Not today.

Maybe the app was wrong.

She knew better as she raced for the house. If she skipped the much-needed shower, threw on clean clothes and hurried to the school…

The clock said 12:05 p.m. when Libby flew back down the stairs. Gramps was snoring in his recliner. She wanted to tell him she was leaving, but she’d have to wake him and deal with his growing disorientation and there was no time for that.

She scribbled a quick note instead. “Lunch at school with CeeCee. Back soon.” She put it on his little side table. The table used to be cluttered with pills and random items. She’d reorganized it when she moved in and the order seemed to help Gramps’s cognition. He didn’t seem as confused with her there, managing things.

She dashed out the door, got in the farm truck and turned the ignition key. It started on the first try.

Thank You, sweet Lord!

She breathed the prayer as she headed for school, trying to ignore the dashboard clock. By the time she pulled into the parking lot, it was 12:19 p.m. She hurried to the door and hit the call button.

No one answered.

She pressed it again as precious seconds drained away.

The door buzzed. She went inside.

“Sign in here, please.” An elderly woman stood alongside the security desk inside the door. “And state your business.”

“Lunch with my daughter.” She spoke brightly as she scribbled her name in the log. When she spun to go, the old woman frowned and stuck out a hand. “Time in, please.”

Libby wrote the numbers 12:21 as quickly as she could, then rushed to the cafeteria. She homed in on the clatter of children and lunch trays. She darted through the first set of double doors and scanned the room.

Kids of all sizes were milling around. Adults were overseeing groups of tables, and while she knew CeeCee’s teacher, Libby had no idea who the lunch monitor was for her class. She moved to the right, toward the smallest children, and spotted CeeCee as the monitor called them to attention. “Mrs. Reynolds’s kindergarteners, time to take care of your garbage and recyclables and line up.”

She got to CeeCee’s side as her little girl stood up to clean her area. “Hey, girlfriend!”

“Mommy!” Pure joy lit CeeCee’s face. She threw her arms out and half jumped into Libby’s arms. “I knew you’d come! I knew it! I told everyone that my mom would never forget about me.” She turned back toward the gathering children. “Here she is! This is my mommy!”

The lunch monitor didn’t try to hide her frown or sound all that sincere. “That’s wonderful, darling. She can walk us back to the classroom. Won’t that be special?”

Her tone said it wasn’t all that special, and her sour expression indicated that Libby fell short in this woman’s estimation. Don’t let her push your buttons. Keep your chin in the air and own the moment.

Libby longed to take the woman down a peg. Clasp CeeCee’s hand and sign her out for the afternoon and make the whole day special to make up for her mistake. She couldn’t, though. She had work waiting, work that had been put off for too long already. On top of that, Gramps couldn’t be left on his own for long periods of time, so that meant she’d walk CeeCee to her class, kiss her goodbye and go back to her orchard chores.

“Mommy, thank you for coming!” CeeCee hugged her again, as if popping in for five minutes was enough.

It wasn’t, but she thanked God for her daughter’s understanding heart. “You’re welcome, darling. I’ll see you when you get home, okay?”

“’Cept you don’t have a home.” One of CeeCee’s classmates spoke up, a little girl. “CeeCee said you don’t have a home so she lives with her grandpa. Right?”

“No home, for real?” An adorable boy shot dark eyebrows up in surprise. “Then you can come and stay with us, CeeCee, with me and my dad. And my big sister! I would like that a lot!” Excitement widened his smile and Libby fell in love with him instantly.

“Except we do have a home.” She squatted low and made eye contact with the kids, including the girl who called CeeCee out. “With my grandpa on the apple farm. We moved here to raise apples and pears and plums and to help CeeCee’s great-grandpa get around.”

“But we didn’t have a home before, did we, Mommy? When we were in that other place and they made us move. Right?” There was no denying CeeCee’s earnest request for honesty.

An old ache hit Libby’s heart.

Should she admit they’d been homeless? Or gloss over it? Nowhere in the parenting books did the experts explain what to do when your abusive ex-husband bleeds money from your accounts and leaves you bruised and penniless without a roof over your head.

She wanted to brush it off.

She didn’t. She faced CeeCee and nodded. “We did have to move, didn’t we? And then Ms. Mortie called me to say Gramps and Grandma needed help. We headed up here the very next day. It’s cool how God worked things out, isn’t it?” She smiled at the class as the teacher came forward to direct them into the kindergarten room. “Just when they needed us, we needed them right back.”

“’Xactly!” CeeCee kissed her goodbye and skipped into the room, totally happy. She didn’t understand the scourge of homelessness.

Libby did.

But she would never again fall victim to a man’s deceit. She’d been foolish once. She would never be foolish again.

The wind came out of nowhere. One minute former army captain Jax McClaren was heading toward his solitary cabin in the hills, and the next, his pickup truck was broadsided by a gust of wind so strong that it thrust the heavy-duty 4x4 sideways.

He gripped the wheel, then fought to maintain his forward progress.

The wind had other ideas.

Military training clicked in. He reduced his speed, eased on the brakes and kept the wheel straight. The brakes created instant friction to help keep the tires under his control. Not the wind’s.

He edged his way back to the proper side of the road as another car approached, heading west. When the wind slammed again, he narrowly missed sideswiping the smaller car.

His phone chose that moment to indicate a weather warning. “Approaching low front,” advised the digitized voice. “Expect dangerously high winds.”

He could have used the warning ninety seconds earlier.

The wind played tug-of-war for control of the truck. He was between towns. He’d left Golden Grove after finishing a job for a kindhearted widow who liked to bake him cookies. He had every intention of heading back to his solitary cabin to soak up some peace and quiet. Away from people. Away from gratitude he didn’t deserve. Away from life.