Chapter 21
Jackie pulled off the road and into a dirt parking lot, with Winnie peering through the windshield for some sign that she’d arrived in the right place. So many people had canceled their PT that day, the clinic had closed at lunchtime and sent everyone home.
She’d immediately texted Ty to find out where he was working, and where she might be able to help.
We just found out that Tate and Clara Jean could use help at their produce farm, he’d told her. We’re done at Conrad’s place, and Mitch says he can fix up his dog enclosure himself. So we’re heading over there.
He’d sent the address, and Winnie now searched for an entrance to the one-story building that had come into view. “I’m sure here is fine,” she said to Jackie, the friend and co-worker she’d asked for a ride here.
“Are you sure?” she asked.
She caught sight of a cowboy walking along a downed line of something, and Winnie nodded. “Yes, I’m sure this is it.”
“I had no idea Wilde and Organic grew a lot of the produce they sell.”
“I just learned that myself.” Winnie smiled over to the other woman. “Thank you so much. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Watch your texts,” she said. “We might close the clinic again.”
Winnie nodded, grabbed her bag, and got out of the car. She strode toward the entrance of the building with all the confidence in the world, but when she stepped inside, she paused, her uncertainty coming back.
The building didn’t seem very deep, with another set of doors in front of her that led straight back outside. She could go right or left, down different hallways, and she went to the left when she heard voices coming from that direction.
Winnie wasn’t sure what she could possibly do, but she wore reliable shoes and had willing hands, and she supposed God had made do with a lot less than that in the past.
As she neared, she heard a man talking, but she didn’t recognize the voice. Then a woman said, “No, I think we should send people over here first, and get the orchards cleaned out while we have Colt to help.”
She came to a stop in the doorway and found several people in the tiny conference room, including Ty.
A woman stood by a whiteboard, and she wore jeans and a sweatshirt with the Wilde & Organic logo on the front and had her dark—almost pitch-black—hair up in a ponytail.
Her eyes switched to Winnie, and everyone in the room turned toward her too.
“Hello,” the woman said at the same time Ty scrambled to get to his feet.
“Hey, you found it,” he said. “Everyone, this is Winnie.” He smiled at her, but Winnie could see the pain in the lines around his eyes.
He’d probably been working himself too hard that morning, and Winnie immediately wanted to bring him under her wing, park him on the bean bag at her house, and take care of him the way he had her last night.
“Are you all right?” she whispered, her hand automatically seeking his as he drew closer.
“Yeah, I’m okay.” He took her hand and turned to face his friends at the same time. “You’ve met a few people here—JJ and Finn, for sure—at the wedding and the birthday party.”
“Sure,” Winnie said, smiling at the familiar faces. “Good to see you again.” She nodded at them, her smile firmly stitched in place.
“That’s Tate and Clara Jean up at the front,” he said. “They’re married, and they own this farm and Wilde and Organic. We’re here to help them.”
“Thank you so much for coming,” Clara Jean said, and she rushed forward and gave Winnie a hug.
“And you remember Colt and Conrad,” Ty said when Clara Jean stepped back.
“Yes,” Winnie said. “And Libby’s here too. Hi, Libby.”
“Hi, Winnie,” Libby said, and then everyone’s attention thankfully moved back to the whiteboard. A huge map had been affixed to it, and Clara Jean and Tate had clearly been going over the areas that needed to be cleaned up.
“I think we can probably split up,” Tate said. “And send a crew with Colt over to the orchards, and then a crew with me over to the netting. We’ve got to get that back up over our tomatoes and lettuce and onions.” He looked at Clara Jean with some sense of urgency, and she nodded.
“Winnie and I will go with Colt,” Ty said. “I’m used to running a crew at the orchard, and Winnie is a quick study.”
The rest of them quickly divided themselves, and before Winnie knew it, she led everyone out of the room.
Thankfully, Ty stayed right at her side and tugged on her hand to take her further down the hall instead of back toward the door she’d come in.
They exited the building on the far end, and the good, rich scent of earth and green growing things filled Winnie’s nose.
“They lost a lot of topsoil,” Ty said.
“Yeah, this ground is terrible.” Colt toed at it as he came up beside them. “Look, you can see tree roots and everything.”
He wore an unhappy expression, and Winnie let him take the lead. Finn had come with them, and the four of them had to get over to the orchards, which took up the northern part of the farm.
“Tate said we can take this golf cart,” Finn said as Colt walked by it.
“Oh, right,” Colt said.
Winnie got in the back and slid over to make room for Ty beside her.
Finn and Colt piled in the front, and Colt started to drive them down a well-kept path.
Winnie realized as she rode that the farm looked like it had gone through complete upheaval, with bushes with bent branches, more exposed roots, plants broken off at angles, and what she could only describe as debris everywhere—equipment turned on its side, now-empty bags of fertilizer, overturned black trays that had probably held seedlings, and more.
Anything and everything that Winnie could imagine someone needed to grow produce and be a gardener looked like it had been put in a giant bucket, shaken up, and then dumped all over the ground.
She looked over to Ty, pure concern radiating from her. He wore his mouth in a tight line and only met her eyes for a moment before he went back to surveying the damage.
“I feel like a fool,” Finn said.
“What for?” Colt asked.
“This is way worse than I thought,” he said. “Clara Jean said they needed help with ‘a few things,’ but this looks like a tornado came through.”
“That’s because one practically did,” Ty said.
“Conrad’s place wasn’t this bad,” Finn said, and Winnie caught the frown on his face. “I’m really glad Mitch said that he can handle his own dog enclosures, because I underestimated this farm. I didn’t even put it on the list.”
“That’s not your fault,” Colt said. “Clara Jean and Tate know how to ask for help.”
“Do they?” Finn asked.
Winnie actually found it a fair question. A lot of people, in fact, didn’t know how to ask for help. She once again looked at Ty as he took her hand in his. She gave him a quick smile, and then Colt came to a stop at the edge of what was probably once a beautifully kept apple orchard.
He switched off the golf cart and got out. “All right,” he said. “Here are the ATVs Tate mentioned, and the trailers. Let’s get those hooked up, and then we’ll start clearing away the broken branches.”
He and Finn set about doing that, and soon enough, Winnie found herself behind Ty on an ATV while Finn climbed on with Colt.
After a few minutes, Winnie realized it would be far easier if she just walked alongside Ty as he drove.
And they did that, making their way up and down the long aisles of trees and filling the trailer with the organic debris.
When it got full, Ty would take it to the dump spot, and when he returned, he said, “Tate’s gonna go rent a chipper, and he’ll turn those trees into bark. He said any of us could have some. Do you need any at your house?”
Winnie thought about her front flower beds and back garden area. She’d moved to Three Rivers in May and missed the most important planting season, but she’d done a little bit of work on her yard throughout the fall. “Yeah, sure,” she said. “I’d take a load of bark.”
“Great,” Ty said. “I’ll have him put it in the back of my truck, and we can unload it when I take you home.”
“Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked. “You’ve been working hard for a long time. Are you really going to be able to unload bark at my house?”
“We can cover it with a tarp if I can’t,” he said. “It keeps.”
She nodded, and he leaned over a little closer to her. “You don’t need to worry about me.”
“No, I’m sure I don’t,” she said, suddenly feeling shy. She ducked her head. “But that’s what I do, Ty.”
He kicked her a smile. “I mean, I kind of like it, but it’s not necessary. I know when to quit.”
She wasn’t sure he did, but she didn’t want to argue with him either. He was a grown adult, and he could decide when he’d had enough and when he could do more.
“They’ve got a lot of trees,” Winnie said when Ty returned from the second unloading, straightening from where she’d been grouping branches together in Ty’s absence.
“Yeah, they sure do,” he said. “I mean, they grow produce for a whole grocery store, but I thought they bought a lot of apples from Colt.”
“They do,” Colt said as he pulled up beside them. “My orchards are at least fifteen times this big.”
Ty grinned at him. “Yeah, I guess they are.”
“Tate texted and said he needs more hands over with the netting,” Colt said. “Finn and I are gonna go over there. Are you guys okay here by yourselves?”
“Yeah, we’ll be fine,” Ty said. “I’ll just take Winnie to help me unload, instead of letting her rest in the shade.” He grinned at her.
Winnie rolled her eyes. “Yeah, because that’s what I’m doing in the ten minutes you’re gone.”
Finn grinned at them. “Well, you guys have a good system going. Just do what you can. There’s days and days of work ahead.”
Ty nodded, and Finn and Colt did a wide U-turn and headed back the way they’d come.
Winnie bent and picked up another fallen tree limb and muscled it into the trailer.
Ty went behind her and picked up the smaller ones, and she noticed him bending less and less at the waist and just grabbing onto branches that poked up high enough for him to grab without having to lean over.
She said nothing, but when the trailer reached maximum capacity again, she hurried in front of him. “I’ll drive over to the drop point.”
“You sure?” he asked. “You’ll have to unload it. Colt was helping me with that.”
“I didn’t put anything in that I can’t take out,” she said.
He had done branches and limbs smaller than hers. She turned back to him and put her hand on his chest. “I know you don’t want me to worry about you, but that doesn’t mean I know how to just turn it off. So I want you to rest while I’m gone.”
He hooked his arm around her waist and pulled her close. “All right,” he whispered when she’d expected him to argue. “I’m glad they closed the clinic today.”
“Me too,” Winnie murmured just before he pressed his lips to hers.
She could really get used to this kind of attention. Kissing Ty so openly, where one of his friends might come along and see them, made this kiss a little more thrilling in a different way than her passion-filled, almost desperate first kiss with him yesterday.
He pulled away. “But I don’t know where you expect me to rest out here,” he said. “It honestly might be nice just to ride on the four-wheeler with you.”
“Okay,” she said, looking up to meet his eyes.
“You think you can drive that thing?”
“Yes,” she said. “Do you think I can’t?”
“I think you can do anything you want, Winnie.” He didn’t smile as he said it, keeping the moment between them serious and meaningful.
“This way I can give Tate my keys too,” he said. “And he can move my truck and load it with the bark.”
Winnie nodded and tucked herself back into his arms. “Things just feel sort of blue,” she said. “Like, I don’t feel happy, but I don’t feel unhappy. I just feel…blah.”
“Yeah,” he agreed.
“I’ve never seen an aftermath this up close and personal,” she said. “And I guess it’s just hitting different.”
“That’s allowed,” he said. “But I’m a little surprised. You work with patients every day who have to deal with the aftermath of something similar to this. I mean, look at me.”
“Yeah, I know,” she said. “But usually by the time they get to physical therapy, they’re months out from the event. They’ve had surgeries, their pain has receded quite a bit, and they’ve had time to accept what’s happened. This was only about twenty-four hours ago. And I don’t know…it feels raw.”
She stepped back and looked around. “The earth still feels like it’s suffering a little bit.”
She didn’t quite know how else to explain it, but she eased back to Ty’s side and said, “I’m glad they closed the clinic, because I just want to be here with you, and it feels good to help others get cleaned up.”
He nodded toward the four-wheeler. “Well, let’s get this load back, then.”
Ty climbed onto the four-wheeler first, and then she swung her leg over and sat in front of him.
He wrapped his arms around her and scooted right up behind her, his chest pressing against her back.
She smiled as he laid his head against her shoulder blade and murmured, “Yes, I can definitely rest right here.”
Winnie had never felt so close to another person as she did to Ty in that moment, not even Carver, who she’d been engaged to.
There was simply something about Ty that, when he opened up, a real connection was made.
Winnie loved having him close to her—physically and emotionally—like this, and she found herself praying as she bumped over the well-kept roads to the drop point that she and Ty could continue getting to know each other and build a true, lasting, loving relationship.