Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
“Iwas so excited about having a roommate and friend to do stuff with, and you no sooner get here than you’re leaving. I hope it’s okay for me to be disappointed,” Sunny said as they walked arm in arm toward church.
“Of course. I’m disappointed too, in a way.
But in another way, I’m so excited about how God worked this out.
He took all of the bills and worry off my shoulders and allowed me to continue to live on my farm, rent free, the place I’ve always loved.
I…guess it shouldn’t surprise me the way the Lord worked things out, but it does. ”
She was so focused on how good God was that she didn’t notice Mrs. Tucker until Mrs. Tucker stopped on the sidewalk right in front of them, her hands on her hips, the ever-present clipboard gripped in one of them.
“Good morning, ladies,” Mrs. Tucker said, and beside her, Summer could almost feel Sunny groan.
“Sunny, I wanted to see if you would be willing to donate six dozen muffins for our Thanksgiving breakfast?”
“Wow. That’s this Thursday.”
“I know it’s last-minute notice, but we thought we’d be able to get them from Nora’s bakeshop down in Whisker Hollow, but the Baplodist church there imitated our idea, and they’re having a Thanksgiving breakfast, and Nora is already booked up.”
Summer bit back a smile. Sunny and Nora were good friends, but there was a friendly competition between the two of them. All Mrs. Tucker had to do was mention Nora’s bakeshop, and Sunny was all in.
“Of course I’ll donate them. Does it matter what kind?”
“We’d like two dozen pumpkin, three dozen blueberry, and one dozen bran.” Mrs. Tucker was obviously prepared for that question.
“I need to write that down,” Sunny said, grabbing her phone out and repeating the breakdown, making sure she had it right.
As Summer started to walk away, Mrs. Tucker said, “Just hold on there a second. I have a question for you too, Summer.”
Summer stopped, thinking that she had almost gotten away. She just needed to be a little faster the next time.
Mrs. Tucker waited until Sunny had the order down before she turned to Summer.
“I hoped that you would be able to donate your horses to the tree farm on Mondays starting after Thanksgiving. The church is sponsoring a little Christmas booth that Noah Tripp, the owner of the tree farm, has approved, and we were hoping that you would be there with your horses giving carriage rides to try to draw in a crowd. He has a carriage, but he sold his horses many years ago, as I’m sure you’re aware. ”
Cricket and Bunny were both great buggy horses as well as riding horses, and she would have them back in time. What she found more interesting than anything was that obviously Mrs. Tucker was losing a step, since she hadn’t heard that Summer had sold them.
“I can do that on Mondays. They’re slow days for me with my therapy, and the one appointment that I typically have can be moved.” If they came back. She had gotten her horses and arranged things with Sunny, but she hadn’t been able to get a hold of all of her clients.
So far, she only had about a quarter of them back on her schedule.
She was not going to allow that to worry her.
She kept reminding herself that she no longer had a farm to pay for.
She could afford to work less, if she needed to.
All she needed to do was make enough money to feed her horses and hopefully have a little extra so that she could give Gilbert money for rent, even though he didn’t want her to. She just couldn’t live there for free.
Of course, she had to buy groceries too, which she knew would be a lot more than she was used to spending, since she didn’t typically cook for growing kids and a man.
“All right. I’ll depend on you from now until Christmas to drive the buggy on Mondays.” Mrs. Tucker blinked several times, and looked around, then she lowered her voice. “There’s a nasty rumor going around that you had sold your horses, but I knew it wasn’t true.”
Summer wasn’t quite sure what to say about that.
It was true, but it wasn’t true anymore, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to stand there and explain it all to Mrs. Tucker, who was surely going to announce it to the entire town.
She supposed the longer it took for everyone to figure out that she was living on the farm she used to own, and staying in the house with Gilbert and his three kids, the better.
Mrs. Tucker soon found someone else she needed to talk to and hurried off, leaving Summer and Sunny standing, bemused, on the sidewalk.
“Well, I didn’t see that coming. I should have been watching a little better.”
“Mrs. Tucker has a tendency to do that to people. I don’t know how someone of her size sneaks around as easily as what she does.”
“You said that so much better than I could have,” Sunny said with a giggle.
They hooked arms again and continued on their way to church, smiling and chatting, and since now Sunny had six dozen muffins to make in addition to everything else, Summer told her that she would help her if she could.
As she was trying to figure out her schedule for the week and when she could come in to help bake, she heard the bells then saw the sleigh/wagon pull up in front of the church.
It was easy to pick out Gilbert’s three kids as they bounded off the sleigh, but it was a little while until she noticed Gilbert standing halfway up the walk. And when she finally saw him, she realized that instead of watching his children run to him, his eyes had caught on her.
He smiled as their gazes met, and she returned it, nodding a hello.
Funny that her heart started beating an irregular rhythm and she suddenly felt like she was out of breath.
“So…that will work?” Sunny asked, and she ripped her gaze away from Gilbert. Why did he have that effect on her?
“Yes. Tuesday morning should work just fine. I only have a quarter of my clients back, and I’ll just make sure I tell them this Tuesday doesn’t work for me.”
“I don’t want you to lose work because you’re helping me.”
“You were willing to take me in, on such a short notice, and then have me work for a few days and I quit immediately, and you’re not angry about it. Of course I’m going to help you. You couldn’t have been nicer to me in any way.”
Sunny just grinned. “That’s what friends are for.”
That made Summer’s mouth turn up, and she almost forgot about Gilbert. Except, they happened to meet at the steps, getting there at the same time.
Sunny squeezed her arm, nodded a hello to Gilbert, and then hurried into the church on the heels of Gilbert’s children. Leaving Gilbert and Summer standing at the steps, which were suddenly deserted.
“Good morning,” he said, his voice sending shivers down her spine.
She tried not to allow that to show as she nodded serenely. “It’s a beautiful morning.”
“It sure is. It’s been so warm this whole fall, we’re going to get spoiled with all this nice weather.”
“We sure are,” she said, thinking about how good God had been to her. He had definitely been spoiling her.
“I wanted to offer to help tomorrow, if you have anything you need to move.” He lifted his shoulder and looked a little sheepish. “It looks like you left most of the things that were in the house, but surely you took some things, and I just wanted you to know that I would be available.”
“Thank you. I appreciate the offer, but everything is still in my car pretty much, other than the clothes I needed to wear. Sunny didn’t have room for it, and I didn’t know what to do with it.”
“I really miss the plants that were in the kitchen.”
Really? She had almost left them, but then she didn’t want to leave more responsibility, because while plants were fairly easy to take care of, they did require watering and occasional pruning.
“I’ll definitely bring them back,” she said easily.
How much information did she need to give him? Should she tell him that she was going to be at the tree farm every Monday after Thanksgiving between Thanksgiving and Christmas?
Maybe that was something they could talk about eventually, but an awkward silence descended and she found herself talking just to fill it.
“My horses are coming back, although I guess I told you that in the text.” They had had such an easy rapport when they spoke at the festival. Why was it so weird today?
Maybe it was because she realized after talking to him that they had so much in common, and she actually admired him. He was handsome and kind and articulate, and she saw him as a man, rather than…someone who had lost his wife.
“The stables are empty and waiting on them. I was going to fix some fence, so the pastures will be ready for them as well.”
She couldn’t help the widening of her eyes.
He didn’t need to do that. He wasn’t using the pastures at all, and the only reason that he’d be fixing the fence would either be for the aesthetic effects or because he wanted to help her.
After talking to him, she guessed the latter, because that was just the way he was.
“Wow. Maybe I can come and give you a hand with that fence. Once I unpack my car, I don’t have anything else planned for the rest of the day. Although Tuesday I just told Sunny I would give her a hand with some muffins she has to make.”
“All right. That sounds good to me. We’ll plan on fixing fence on Monday around ten o’clock or so?”
“Yeah. That sounds good.”
“Perfect. That gives me a chance to check in with my business and make sure everything’s going okay there.”
She nodded, and he said, “I guess we should go ahead in.”