A Stranger's Gift (Women of Pinecraft)

by Anna Schmidt

  John sighed and set the shovel aside. “I’m trying to pay you a compliment, Hester. I guess I’ve been living like a hermit for too long, but I’m trying to tell you that when I see you in situations like that, like this, I realize why I can’t seem to stay away from you.” He held out his arms to her.

  Silenced by the feeling of joy that seemed sure to overwhelm her, she walked into his open arms and rested her cheek against his chest. And for the first time in a very long time, she felt as if she had found the safe harbor that she had always thought she would find only in her work. “Thank you, John,” she whispered. His answer was to tighten his hold on her. Then as she lifted her face to his, she heard Agnes Crowder calling her name.

  “Hester, come quick. Sister has taken a terrible fall.”

  Chapter 25

  Together Hester and John followed Agnes back to the Crowder house at the end of the cul-de-sac. They found Olive lying in the middle of the kitchen floor surrounded by shards of broken glass and an overturned stepstool. Her arm and hand were covered in blood, and her coloring was almost ghostly.

  “Olive,” Hester said as she grabbed two kitchen towels and folded them into a compress then knelt next to the injured woman.

  “Stupid,” Olive murmured, her eyes rolling back until only the whites were visible.

  “Stay with us now, Olive.” She was relieved to see that John was already on the phone, giving the ambulance directions. Agnes stood in the far corner of the kitchen, twisting her apron into a knot as tears streamed down her cheeks. “Agnes, do you have a first-aid kit?”

  Agnes looked to Olive as she always did.

  “Under the bathroom sink,” Olive instructed, and Agnes scurried off to fetch it.

  John hung up the phone and found a broom. He was sweeping the pieces of glass away from Olive when they heard the distant wail of sirens. Olive struggled to sit up.

  “Stay where you are, Olive. We need to get this bleeding stopped and make sure you have no other injuries.”

  “Bossy as always,” Olive snapped, but she did as Hester ordered.

  By the time the EMTs rushed into the house, Agnes had brought the first-aid kit and Hester had the bleeding under control. She moved away and let the medics do their work, hiding a smile when they started shouting questions at Olive.

  “Please lower your voices,” Olive demanded. “We are not at a sporting event, and I do have neighbors that I do not wish to know my business.”

  The fact that there was an ambulance outside her house with its red lights whirling like a lighthouse beacon did not seem to enter her mind. But when the paramedics tried to help her to her feet and into a chair, it was Olive who cried out in pain. In the end it was decided that Olive should be taken to the hospital for X-rays to determine whether or not she might have fractured her hip.

  “I’ll come with you,” Hester said.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Olive said. “These young people are perfectly capable of handling the situation, Hester. Agnes, bring my purse and come along.” But just as the medics were preparing to load the gurney into the ambulance, Olive grabbed Hester’s hand. “Thank you for coming,” she whispered. “Agnes was so very frightened.”

  Hester saw the fear that she had chosen to attribute to Agnes in Olive’s eyes and knew that this was as close as she might ever get to receiving Olive’s approval. She squeezed her hand. “I’m just glad I was able to help.”

  As they watched the ambulance drive away, John put his arm around Hester’s shoulders. “You okay?” he asked.

  She stepped away, suddenly aware that anyone observing them might take his comforting gesture for a sign of courtship, and in their society, that was not the way things were done. “I’m fine, but do you mind, though, if we skip the gelato tonight?”

  “Not at all. I’ll walk you home.”

  “Actually, I thought I would stay here and clean up the mess so they don’t have to come home to it later.” In spite of her concerns about the prying eyes of neighbors, she stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. “Thanks for helping with the garden,” she said, “and this.” She waved a hand to indicate the Crowder house, its back door still wide open and every light blazing.

  “How about I help?” John said as he followed her back inside.

  John was falling in love with Hester Detlef. The admission hit him like a thunderbolt as he peddled back to Tucker’s Point later that evening. “Great timing,” he muttered. “You finally find the perfect woman, and you have nothing to offer her. No visible means of support. No home, or at least not for long. No prospects for the future.”

  Of course once he sold the property, his prospects for a financial future would be decidedly better, but he had never stopped to look beyond the day when Peter York would present him with a buyer. If he and Hester were to marry, where would they live? What would he do to earn a living? He could work for Margery, but what did he know about fixing boats or running fishing charters? He knew how to work the land and make things grow, but this wasn’t exactly farm country, and the idea that Hester might be willing to leave her father and the community of friends she had built in Pinecraft was ludicrous.

  Marry? Talk about a ridiculous idea. Where did he get the arrogance to believe that she would even consider such a thing? That she returned his feelings at all? A couple of kisses? Some tender moments in her garden and later tonight when they’d gone to help the Crowder sisters?

  “You are seriously losing it, dude,” he said, quoting one of Zeke’s favorite lines as he trudged up the steps to his house and went inside. He drank a glass of cold water and then headed for the small room off the kitchen that he had set up as his bedroom until the second floor could be restored. His Bible now rested on the small nightstand next to his single bed. He picked it up, but instead of opening it, he held it to his chest and closed his eyes.

  “Lord, I have come to a crossroads and don’t know which way to turn. In my life I have turned away from others so many times—and maybe in doing that I was also turning away from You in spite of my daily prayers and devotions. I am asking now that You show me the way.” He found himself thinking of a joke that Margery had told him one evening as they sat together after sharing one of her suppers.

  “There’s a hurricane and this guy’s house is totally flooded out,” she’d said. “He’s on the roof, and the water is still rising. A neighbor comes by in a rowboat and urges him to get in. ‘No, God will rescue me,’ he assures the neighbor. Then a FEMA crew comes by in a pontoon. Same thing. Finally a helicopter hovers overhead, and he sends that away as well.”

  “Not funny so far,” John had muttered.

  “So the guy drowns and gets to heaven. When he goes before God, he’s really upset. ‘Why didn’t you save me?’ he demands. And God says, ‘I sent you a rowboat, a pontoon, and a helicopter—what were you waiting for?’ “

  He could still hear Margery’s laughter as she slapped her knee and announced, “That one cracks me up every time.”

  John opened his eyes and thought about how God had sent him Margery and then Hester and her father and then Zeke. Each of them had changed his life over the last several weeks. He thought about Samuel showing up that day and leaving him the camper. He thought about Grady Forrest and his aunt Liz. “What were you waiting for?” he wondered aloud, truly getting Margery’s message for the first time.

  That night he slept better than he had in weeks. He had no solutions to his problems, just a new confidence that things would work out if he was wise enough to heed God’s signs. He was up with the sun and had coffee brewing by the time Margery brought the workers to start their shift in the packinghouse and the Mennonite women began arriving to take over his kitchen to stir up more jars of marmalade.

  But Hester was not with them.

  “She had a meeting, and then she was going to the hospital to check on Olive,” Rosalyn told him. “Her hip was broken after all. She’s going to need surgery and then a lot of rehab therapy. She is not a happy person, an
d Hester is trying to do some damage control.”

  John was on his way to the packinghouse to see if he could be of help there when he saw a car coming up the lane. He waited for the vehicle to come to a stop and for the driver to emerge, a man who looked to be in his late forties and whose car and clothes left no doubt that he was a man of means. But when he saw John, he smiled and moved toward him with an outstretched hand. “Mr. Steiner? Malcolm Shepherd—Zeke’s brother.”

  The resemblance was startling. This man embodied what Zeke would look like if he cut his hair and put on twenty pounds. “Hello.” John accepted the handshake. “I’m not sure if Zeke’s here yet.”

  “I didn’t come to see my brother, John. May I call you John?”

  John nodded and waited.

  “I understand your property is for sale.”

  “That’s right.”

  “How about showing me around?”

  “You’re interested?”

  Malcolm laughed. “I’m a businessman, John. I hear about a prime piece of land on water and I’m curious.”

  “You called Peter York, the listing agent?”

  “Nope. Thought I’d deal with you directly. If you and I work something out, then we can get York involved.” All the time he was talking, he was looking around. “So do I get that tour or not?”

  Over the next hour John walked his property with Zeke’s brother. Malcolm asked a lot of questions and showed little interest in the house itself. But instead of being turned off by the presence of homeless people sorting fruit in the packinghouse or a bunch of Mennonite women cooking up marmalade in the kitchen, he seemed to find both processes fascinating.

  “What’s the marketing plan?” he asked Rosalyn as he watched her funnel warm marmalade into jars and then set them aside to cool.

  “We’ve got orders from several businesses in Pinecraft, and we’ve secured a space at the farmers’ market, just in time for the snowbird migration,” she said with a smile.

  “You might want to think about mail order—a website,” he said, more to himself than to Rosalyn. Then he smiled and nodded toward the coffeepot. “John, could I trouble you for a cup of that coffee—black?”

  “Sure.” By the time John had poured the coffee, Malcolm was sitting out on the porch.

  “You do know that you’re sitting on a gold mine here in terms of land values,” he said as he sipped the hot coffee.

  “That’s what Peter York tells me.”

  “So if you find a buyer, and you will—it’s only a matter of price—what happens to all of this?” He gestured toward the packinghouse and then back toward the kitchen.

  “They understand it’s temporary,” John said.

  Malcolm was quiet for a long moment. And then he said the words that John knew could change everything. “What if it didn’t have to be?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I don’t know what my brother has told you about our family, John, but we’ve done all right for ourselves over the last several generations. Of course, you wouldn’t know that looking at Zeke. Believe me, I’ve tried to help him out, but he takes the money and just gives it away.”

  “Zeke’s a good man,” John said and couldn’t help the note of warning that crept into his voice as he defended his friend.

  “He’s salt of the earth,” Malcolm agreed. “I wish …” He stared off toward the water for a long moment. Then he set the coffee cup on the porch railing and gave John his full attention. “Hester Detlef came to see me this morning. She can be quite persuasive, not to mention single-minded when it comes to something she’s passionate about.”

  “Yes, that’s true,” John agreed. “She means well.”

  Malcolm stood up suddenly and walked to the edge of the porch, looking over the land. “Here’s what I’d like to do. I’d like to buy your place and set up a foundation for Rainbow House right here. The house could function as the headquarters for the organization, and in time we can find a decent place in town for a shelter and soup kitchen, maybe a clinic. What do you think?”

  It was Hester’s dream come true, so what did it matter what he thought? If he could help make this happen for Hester—for Zeke …

  “I think you’ve got a deal,” he said, and this time he was the one offering his hand to Malcolm to seal the bargain.

  “Okay then, I’ll get in touch with this York fella so he can draw up the paperwork,” Malcolm said as he shook John’s hand firmly.

  “Don’t you want to know the price first?”

  Malcolm grinned. “Already checked all that out on the Internet. Nice meeting you, John. Zeke’s told me a lot about you. I want to thank you for watching out for him.”

  “He’s done far more for me than I ever could have done for him,” John said. He was thinking more about the hours of conversation and companionship that Zeke had provided than any physical labor his friend had contributed to restoring the place.

  “We’re going to need a director to oversee the whole project,” Malcolm said. “Somebody with experience in running things, managing budgets and such.”

  Hester, John thought.

  “Ms. Detlef suggested that you might want to apply for the job,” Malcolm added as he walked to his car. He glanced back at the house. “No reason you couldn’t turn that upstairs into living quarters and have the foundation offices and kitchen and such on the first floor.” He got in and took one more look around and then grinned at John. “Thanks, John. I’ll be in touch.”

  John watched the convertible drive back down the lane and disappear. Had he imagined what had just happened?

  “What was my brother doing here?” Zeke asked, coming up beside him.

  “You were here all the time?” John asked.

  Zeke shrugged. “Sometimes Malcolm can be a little much to take,” he said. “I like to keep a low profile until I know what’s on his mind.”

  “He just bought this place.”

  Zeke’s expression reflected disappointment, anger, and sadness in rapid order. “Sorry, man,” he said softly as he clutched John’s shoulder. “I know it’s what you need, but I always felt it wasn’t what you wanted.”

  “He’s buying it for you, and the others. He’s going to set up a foundation for Rainbow House. Hester talked him into it.”

  “You mean, he’s not going to shut us down and rip the place apart?” Zeke was incredulous.

  “It’s all staying just the way it is,” John told him. Almost before the last word was out of his mouth, Zeke had taken off, running toward the packinghouse. A moment later, John heard shouts of joy echoing across the yard.

  He thought about going back up to the house to tell Rosalyn and the others the good news, but he knew that Zeke would take care of that. There was only one other person who deserved to know what had happened as soon as possible. John mounted his bike and headed for the hospital.

  Hester had finally succeeded in persuading Agnes to leave her sister’s bedside and go home to get some much-needed rest by promising that she would stay with Olive until Agnes returned. Since Olive was dozing, she busied herself searching the classifieds for possible alternate locations for Rainbow House. Malcolm Shepherd had finally agreed to drive out and look at John’s place, but that was as much of a commitment as he was willing to make. And as her father had reminded her, he was an outsider and a businessman. What was in this for him?

  She circled one property on the north end of the city, but then saw the asking price per square foot and knew that the rent alone would eat up any profits they might acquire. She sighed and refolded the paper to show the next column.

  “What are you doing?” Olive demanded, although her voice was little more than a croak.

  “We need to find a new space for the Rainbow House project, someplace we can sort and store the collected fruit at the very least.”

  “I thought John Steiner was letting you use his place.”

  “He is, but he’s trying to sell his property, and, well, not everyone is as accep
ting of…some people as others are.”

  Olive received this news with a snort. When she fell silent, Hester assumed she had dozed off again.

  “You’ve been spending quite a bit of time with that young man,” Olive said after a moment.

  “I—”

  “Has he kissed you yet?”

  Hester was so surprised at the question coming from this woman that she automatically gave the answer. “Yes.”

  Another snort. “Thought as much. I saw the two of you out there in the garden the night I fell. So where is this going?”

  “Going?”

  A long, dramatic sigh. “Are you in love with the man or not?”

  “Really, Olive …”