Epilogue June 1886
The apple tree bloomed on the fourteenth of April.
Holly was there for it — she had been watching since the first signs in late March, the swelling of the buds, the specific way the tips of the branches changed color from brown to the first faint green, the daily difference that was almost invisible day to day and dramatic in aggregate, the way most growth was.
She had called James from the fence line when the first blossoms opened, and he had come from the south pasture where he had been working, and they had stood together under the apple tree and looked at what Harold Vance had planted in his first year of believing he would be here to see it fruit.
They were here to see it.
The south pasture had fifteen head of cattle on it, brought in at the beginning of April from a supplier James had negotiated with in March while Holly was managing the account work in Longmont. The cattle were the right cattle for the right price according to the plan, and the plan was holding.
The plan was always holding, more or less. The March version of the plan was different from the February version, which was different from the January version, which was the version that had contained the word wage in a place that had since been resolved. Plans were working documents.
The water system on the south pasture was underway — the infrastructure project she had modeled in January, the ten-year projection she had done for James's operation that had shown what the return would be, the case for what to prioritize.
They had started the first phase in March when the ground was workable.
The Longmont account work had produced what she needed in the gap months and was, by June, becoming more than a gap measure — the firm had offered her additional hours in April and she had negotiated the terms with the organized precision she brought to negotiations and had accepted, and the income was now part of the plan rather than a patch on it.
Nora had named the south pasture bull Harold, which she had announced at a Thursday quilting circle with the comprehensive assurance of a child who had made a decision and did not expect it to be overturned.
It had not been overturned. The bull was Harold, and his name was recorded in the property notebook along with the water system progress notes and the April apple tree entry and everything else that was building, week by week, into the record of a life in the right place.
* * *
The high pasture in June was the thing she had been waiting for since December.
She had climbed it twice in the winter and once in early spring when the snow was still thick and the view was the winter view, magnificent and spare. In June it was the summer version.
She climbed it on a Saturday morning in the middle of June, alone because James was at the south pasture and she had not told him she was going, which was how she went when she wanted to think rather than talk.
The high pasture in June was green in the way that high-altitude June was green, which was: apologetically, extravagantly, as though the pasture understood it had been under snow for five months and was now making a statement about what it had been doing all along.
She sat in the grass and looked at the valley below.
She could see both properties from here now — hers and James's, the fence line between them and the shared pasture opening and the water infrastructure beginning to be visible in the south section.
She could see the smoke from the Caldwell chimney to the north and the road to Pinecrest running past the Granger land.
She could see the apple tree from here. In bloom it had been visible even at this distance, a white cloud at the corner of the kitchen garden. In June it was the green of a fruit tree in full leaf, the leaves the specific dark green of apple, distinct even from this height.
She thought about Harold Vance, who had planted that tree and who had apparently been quietly proud of a niece in Kansas City who kept books somewhere and had a head for numbers.
She thought about the man who had shown up at her door on the second day with a bucket of kindling and the knowledge of how her stove worked, and who had come every morning since.
She thought about the account books that were, currently, the most organized and accurate they had been since Harold Vance had started them, and about the plan that was working, and about the something she hadn't thought of yet that had turned out to be everything.
She thought about her mother, who had made gingerbread with the specific molasses proportion and who had told her that if a recipe doesn't smell like what it is, you've made something inferior.
She thought about the gingerbread at every household in the valley at Christmas and about Clara Caldwell asking for the recipe and about the way the recipe would go on now, into this community, because she had brought it here.
She thought: I am exactly where I am supposed to be.
Not in the general sense of that phrase but in the specific sense — this specific valley, this specific high pasture, this specific green June day with the mountains being the mountains and the creek being the creek and the land below being the land that she tended and would go on tending.
From below, distantly, she heard James's voice — he must have finished at the south pasture and come looking for her. She could not hear the words but she knew the voice, knew it in the way you knew things that had become permanent, and she called back.
He appeared at the base of the high pasture slope, looking up, and found her in the grass, and the expression on his face from that distance was the one she had learned since the twenty-third day and had been learning more of every day since: the face of a man who had found his fixed point.
She stood. She started down the slope toward him.
The mountains watched. The apple tree was green in the kitchen garden below.
The high pasture was June green and the creek was running with the melt and the valley was exactly what it was and no less than what it was and she was in it, entirely and permanently and specifically, and the life was the life, and it was good.
～ The End ～
A Homestead for Holly · A Prairie Christmas Series, Book Three
Also in the Prairie Christmas Series:
Book One — The Snowfall Bride
Book Two — The Lawman's Christmas Gift
Book Four — The Doctor's Christmas Promise