A Season for Tending: Book One in the Amish Vines and Orchards Series

by Cindy Woodsmall

  Throughout her whole life, she’d needed her family. Now they needed her. And she’d stay to see them through this upheaval, however long that took. But only until then.

  FORTY-FOUR

  Standing in a neighbor’s home, Jacob’s hands trembled a bit as he nailed another header fastener into place. He hated doing carpentry work. It turned him inside out, but he had no choice.

  Eli passed him another bolt. “How come no matter what each support beam needs in the way of metal fasteners, we use triple that amount?”

  Jacob ignored him and finished securing another joist. They’d spent day after day helping secure the underpinning and load-bearing walls in damaged homes.

  Eli stepped back, admiring their work. “There is nothing pretty about it, but it sure does give new meaning to the term support system.”

  Jacob climbed down from the makeshift scaffolding. If he’d known eighteen months ago that coming home would lead to this type of work, would he have returned? He slid his hammer, ratchet wrench, and two sockets into his tool belt. “Let’s wrap this up with a minimum of conversation. We need to go.”

  Rhoda, Leah, and Landon were at the summer kitchen, canning as many apples as could be plucked from fallen trees or scavenged off the ground. The ones that weren’t any good for canning, Rhoda used to make mulch.

  No one had time to eat or sleep properly, let alone talk. The critical needs were too great. Many of their Amish neighbors had suffered similar fates, needing work done so they could move back home or be safe in the homes they refused to leave.

  Few Amish had homeowners’ insurance. Most were uninsured, or they belonged to a co-op run by the Amish. The owners of the house Jacob and Eli were working on were from the same district as the Kings. They were good people who wanted the brothers to stay for dinner and spend the evening talking.

  Jacob shook hands with the couple, assuring them they were safe. They thanked him over and over. “You’re more than welcome. Glad to do it.”

  While they talked, he backed out the door, nodding for Eli to do the same. “Ya, it was quite the storm.” He carried his toolbox to the rig, talking as the homeowners followed him. The idea of his Daed letting slip his newfound fear concerning Rhoda had weighed on Jacob all day.

  The man put his hand on Jacob’s shoulder, his eyes misting. “You sure you can’t stay for dinner?”

  Jacob had witnessed as many misty eyes and sobbing folks this week as he had when … He refused that thought, angered by the memories the tornado had unearthed. Everyone’s emotions were raw, and the rebuilding had only begun.

  “I sure do appreciate the invite.” Jacob set his toolbox behind his seat and climbed in. “But we need to go.”

  “You tell Samuel we’re praying for him.”

  “Sure thing.” Jacob eyed Eli, who was taking entirely too long to get into the carriage. “Kumm,” he muttered.

  Eli removed his tool belt and laid it on the seat before getting in. He hadn’t even closed his door when Jacob tapped the reins on the horse’s back. He waved to the couple and smiled.

  “In a hurry?” Eli closed the door as the rig picked up speed.

  “I thought we’d be back home hours ago.”

  “You sound edgy and impatient, a lot like Samuel lately.”

  “Maybe if you wore his shoes, you’d sound like this too.”

  “I don’t know what has you most out of sorts—having to do this type of construction work or worrying about what Daed might say while you’re away from Rhoda.”

  Both had him edgy, but at least Daed had given his word that he’d keep his thoughts to himself. Jacob loved him, but his thinking that Rhoda had brought them bad luck was ridiculous.

  Eli half shrugged. “It is a little eerie that we’ve witnessed two uprooted crops since we’ve known Rhoda, and she had a stake in both ventures.”

  “That’s nonsense, Eli, and you know it.”

  “Ya, you’re right, I guess.”

  He guessed? Jacob wished Daed would stop talking nonsense. He was tempted to tell Daed that Rhoda had saved their lives, but he’d promised to keep that between him and her.

  Eli propped his elbow on the window. “You think Samuel felt up to going to the orchard today?”

  Most of the trees were a twisted, mangled wreck. “I hope not. I think we have a few days left before he’ll try that. But we’ve got to have another meeting and come to some decisions about what to do. Once he sees the destruction, I want to give him a concrete plan and some hope.”

  Rhoda needed that too. She was ready to throw in the towel. All she wanted to do was wrap up her work at Kings’ Orchard and go home to be with her family. He didn’t blame her. Losing two businesses in one summer was too much.

  Oddly enough, Landon was the voice of reason. Jacob hadn’t been able to say anything that made a speck of difference in Rhoda’s mind, not yet anyway. But Landon wanted to take everyone to Maine to look at a farmhouse sitting on an abandoned apple orchard, complete with several greenhouses.

  Jacob pulled onto their driveway. “Eli, what do you want?”

  He shrugged. “To undo what the tornado did.”

  Jacob drove to the doorway of the barn and stopped. “And we can, but it’ll take money and at least five years to replant all the trees and have apples bearing enough fruit to be profitable again.”

  “That’s not what I meant.” Eli got out.

  Jacob wished he knew what to say to Eli. And Rhoda. And Samuel. And his parents. And himself. “It is what it is, Eli.” Jacob went to the horse and began removing the harness. “And I understand how you feel.” Jacob woke during the night in a cold sweat. The tornado damage was enough on its own, but it’d dredged up memories he struggled to cope with. “There’s really only one question, Eli: what to do from this point forward.”

  “You’re all for this idea of Landon’s, aren’t you?”

  Jacob led the horse into a stall and put feed in the trough. “I’ve looked at the figures. This plan will work if we all do our share. Otherwise, we’ll lose the farm and still not have a way to make a living.”

  Eli took a burlap sack and began wiping the horse down. “We don’t have the money to buy it.”

  Jacob removed the wire from a bale of straw and spread it around in the stall. “It won’t be easy, but I’ve been working the numbers. Through the co-op we get some compensation for the damage to our place. If we take that, plus pull every cent we can from the operating funds, what each of us has put back, and what we can borrow, we can make it work. Samuel knows trees like I know numbers. If anyone can get the orchard in Maine healthy enough to produce a decent crop next year, he can. It’s the only way to cover the taxes on our place and keep food on the table during the years it’ll take to replant and reestablish Kings’ Orchard.”

  Eli laid the now wet burlap sack across the wall of a stall. “If you’re that sure this is the only way to get on our feet again, count me in.”

  “Excellent.” Jacob dusted off his hands. “Five down—Landon, Leah, Daed, you, and me. Two to go.”

  Eli came out of the stall and latched it. “Rhoda’s been clear. She’s not leaving her family.”

  They walked toward the barn door. Leaving Pennsylvania wasn’t Rhoda’s only obstacle. If only he knew what the real problem was.

  Eli paused. “And you really think Samuel will consider establishing Kings’ Orchard elsewhere?”

  “When reality sinks in, he’ll know we don’t have a choice. But right now my goal is to get him and Rhoda to agree to go there and look.” Jacob tucked his shirt in better. “I’m going to find Rhoda now. You see how Samuel’s fared today.”

  Jacob went into the summer kitchen. Landon had a white apron tied around his waist as he peeled another apple. He had mounds of them peeled in a gigantic bowl in front of him. Leah stood next to him, slicing apples.

  “Where’s Rhodes?”

  Leah looked up. “Orchard, gathering apples, but I think she’d like to be left alone.”


  “She go on foot or horseback?” Jacob would leave her alone if she indicated she needed that.

  “On foot.”

  He figured she’d be near where Samuel was injured. That area seemed to draw her of late. He strode in that direction until he spotted her.

  She had a burlap sack in one hand, and as she picked up each apple, she seemed to speak to it before putting it in the sack. Was she talking to herself or praying?

  Regardless of her many ways that he didn’t understand, he loved her. “Hey, Rhodes.”

  She looked up and smiled the lost, sad smile she’d been wearing since the tornado came through. He trotted up to her and took the heavy sack of apples from her. “We need to talk.”

  “Not again, Jacob. I’m too tired.”

  He took her by the hand, and they meandered to a nearby fallen tree and sat. She seemed distracted as he once again shared his thoughts about going to Maine, but he continued, explaining his reasoning.

  “I can’t.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’ll end badly, just like this has. I knew it would.” She placed her hand over her heart. “I knew it when Samuel first asked me, before I met you.”

  “First off, this isn’t the end. Second off, you saved my whole family. How is that a bad ending?”

  She didn’t answer. It’d been like this between them for days, and he didn’t know how to reach in and pull out the real Rhoda. Had she picked up on Daed’s attitude?

  He shifted the sack of apples and released it. “The destruction and aftermath have been hard, and you’re not feeling like yourself. Maybe you never will. But what’s really bothering you?”

  After a long pause she folded one hand inside the other. “Ever since Emma died, I see her, sort of. I hear her inside my head, and she warns me of things.”

  Chills ran up his spine. He’d never believed in such things before, but he knew that Rhoda didn’t exaggerate or lie. “What kind of warnings?”

  “A word or two usually. The day of the storm, when I was unsure if my imagination was running wild or if my intuition was telling me what was about to happen, she screamed at me, Save them!”

  Jacob knew the world they lived in, the bodies and minds that made up who they were, was more than any person could understand. How could he look at a garbled mess of numbers and untangle it with a glance? It wasn’t him, not really. It was a gift that worked whether he wanted it to or not. “I think I like your sister.”

  Rhoda licked her lips, keeping them drawn in as tears filled her eyes. “Ya, me too. If I’d responded sooner the day she was shot, she’d be here.”

  “Tell me about that day.”

  She did, and he asked questions as she went along.

  “A random robbery.” Rhoda stared at the clouds. “All those two young men wanted was what was inside a cash register drawer—the lifeless nothing of cash. Someone said afterward that it was probably to buy drugs. Emma startled them by coming in when she did, and they shot her.” Rhoda stared at the sky, and he waited, unwilling to rush her. “If I’d gone with her that morning any one of the numerous times she asked, she would’ve been safe at home before that burglary.”

  “That’s hindsight. Of course it’s clear now what you should’ve done. If you’d had any idea that waiting until later in the day would cause her harm, you’d have been at the store when it opened. You can’t blame yourself for not knowing that before it was too late.”

  “Ya, I can. Not only did I put her off until she struck out on her own, but after she left, I began to sense what was going to happen, and I still ignored the warning and kept tending to my garden.”

  “How long beforehand did you know what was going to happen?”

  She explained each detail, and finally he knew what she didn’t.

  “Rhodes, there wasn’t time for you to get there. The distance from your place to the store, whether you ran, bridled a horse, or hitchhiked, was too much. There wasn’t time.”

  “Then why would I pick up on it if I wasn’t supposed to stop it?”

  “I don’t know. Sometimes when I’m at the bank or in a store and people around me are talking about their accounts, I know all sorts of information about their financial life that no one else would pick up on. Why? I’m not meant to counsel them, to walk up and start giving advice. I have a bizarre gift, and it operates at the oddest times.”

  “I’ve heard her voice so much since the storm, telling me, ‘It’s time.’ ”

  “Time for what?”

  “I never know for sure, but I think she’s saying it’s time to go home.”

  “The words aren’t connected to anything specific?”

  “Not that I’ve been able to figure out. She said it before Rueben found a way to pressure my Daed into removing my herb garden. And she’s saying it now.”

  “As if it’s a warning of some type.”

  She nodded.

  “But it’s an unknown variable. You’ll never know what it means because there isn’t enough information.”

  “What?”

  “When Samuel began talking to you about the orchard, he mentioned how many acres we had and how many trees per acre and how many apples grew per tree in a season. Every piece of information had a number or an approximation to it. But he couldn’t have shared any figures with you if he hadn’t known how much land we had or how many trees or how many bushels of apples a tree produced.”

  He stood. “It’s time to clean up the mess left by the tornado. It’s time to punch Rueben Glick’s lights out. It’s time to stop worrying over what all you’ll get wrong and just live. You see into people at times. Look into yourself and finish the statement: ‘It’s time …’ ”

  She stared at him. Had he sounded like a madman? Her eyes scanned the orchard before she stood. A smile crossed her face. “I think I know.”

  “I’d love to hear it.”

  “It’s time to stop.”

  His heart pounded. That’s not the answer he wanted to hear. She looked so weary, much as he had when he finally stopped trying to fix his mess of a life among the Englisch and come home.

  She bent and picked up an apple from the ground. “It’s time to stop worrying what Emma means.” She brought the apple to her nose and smelled it. “It’s time to let go of my guilt and enjoy whatever small joys the day brings. It’s time to do whatever it takes to live and love and help those around me when the opportunity comes.”

  “Is it time to at least look at the apple orchard and farm in Maine?”

  She held out her hand. “It’s time.”

  This is what Jacob wanted, a way to build hope in all of them, however small or however much work it would take. Hope for a better tomorrow is the only way he knew how to get through today.

  And once Samuel saw his orchard, he’d need that too.

  FORTY-FIVE

  Samuel woke, groggy, as snapshots of memories floated through his brain. Lying on a twin bed in the summer kitchen. Rhoda beside him, promising him he’d be fine. And despite the pain and anguish, he’d believed her.

  He remembered Jacob carrying him to the truck and then waking up in a hospital bed. He remembered being released days later. Various memories, disconnected segments, all giving him distorted images of his life. He was weary of floating in and out of some half-conscious, drug-induced state.

  Enough was enough. He wouldn’t take any more pain medicine. He needed to be fully awake and alert, and he’d find a way to cope with the pain.

  He tried to pry open his eyes and place his surroundings. He managed to catch a glimpse of the room he was in and saw a young woman sitting on a couch nearby, but he couldn’t make out her face. His mother towered over him.

  Now he remembered. He was on a bed in the living room.

  Mamm smiled down at him. “That’s it. Time to wake up, take your medicine, and get some nourishment.”

  He opened his eyes. “No more meds.” In a rush he bolted upright, searching for Rhoda. Was she safe? Samuel pushed the she
et off him and sat upright. His leg was covered in bandages.

  “Whoa, easy, young man.”

  His head swam. The tornado was gone, long gone, but he couldn’t lie back down. “Where is everyone—Rhoda, Leah, Jacob, Eli?”

  “Not far. Everyone is helping around here.”

  Relief took the edge off his panic. “What day is it?”

  “You ask the same question every time you wake up.” Mamm smiled. “Wednesday, September seventh. The doctor cut your pain medication in half yesterday. He said you’d be more awake today, might even remember some of what has happened since you had surgery.”

  “Rhoda’s family?”

  “They’re all fine. You’ve spoken to her several times this week. Their house wasn’t touched.”

  He relaxed a bit. He did remember that. But his mind was playing tricks on him, blending his dreams with reality. “And Catherine?”

  His mother looked across the room. He blinked several times, trying to focus.

  “Hi, Samuel.”

  “Catherine.” Bits of conversations he’d had with his siblings returned to him. “Jacob said your family fared well.”

  “We’re good, much better than you’ve been.”

  Samuel glanced around. Large blue tarps covered the gaping holes in the house. “Is it safe to be in here?”

  Mamm passed him a bowl of soup. “Ya. Jacob and your uncle Mervin’s construction crew worked while you were in the hospital and put new support beams in.” She pressed her hands down her apron. “Well, I’ll leave you two alone.”

  He ate his soup, wishing the disorientation would go away.

  Catherine moved an ottoman to the side of his bed and sat on it. “I’ve been so worried about you.”

  An ache the size of the gaping hole in the house opened within him. But it wasn’t for her—or them. What was it? He set the soup on an end table. “I’ll be fine.” Why hadn’t she come to see him before his injury? “But I’m not up to talking about anything right now.”