Second Time Around (Wildflower Valley #6)
Chapter 1
Chapter one
There’s a breath of spring in the mid-March air as I head through the woods with my youngest two, Jack and Rose, to meet our new neighbor. I haven’t laid eyes on him yet, but what Jack told me was enough to give me pause, although I’ve learned to keep an open mind about these things.
“He has guns,” Jack said with far too much relish when he spied our neighbor last week unloading his belongings from his trailer.
He’d bought the parcel of land next to ours, once owned by Allie and Bill Hoffenberger, before a mudslide completely devastated their impressive homestead.
They’ve gone back to California, and young Harrison—known to us as Obadiah—took up residence in the one-room cabin left behind, before hightailing it back to his cushy life in Boston just before Christmas.
My oldest daughter, Bethany, was slightly heartbroken about it all, but she’s since recovered and is back to dating another neighbor of ours, Ben Wilson. And now this new guy with the guns has moved in, and it’s time for me to meet him.
My husband, Josh, would normally accompany me on such a welcome visit, especially when the only salient fact we know about said neighbor is, as Jack said, that he has guns.
So many guns, apparently, Jack saw him unloading from his truck.
Well, hopefully he won’t aim them at us, but since this is the wilds of West Virginia, who knows?
Seriously, though, I’m hoping this guy is just well-prepared for the homesteading life.
Jack said he seemed friendly, and when Jack waved at him from the trees, he waved back.
My just-turned-thirteen-year-old son wasn’t quite brave enough to step out and say hello, so that’s what we’re doing now.
I’ve armed myself—pun intended—with various jars of jam and chutney, a loaf of homemade bread, and a pot of chicken stew as a way to welcome our new neighbor, guns and all.
We pick our way through the forest, the once well-trod path not quite so beaten down after the winter snows, and with us having no good reason to head over to the empty plot of land.
The tiny, bright heads of crocuses are pushing their way through the damp black earth, which seems kind of amazing considering that just a few weeks ago, when we were making maple syrup, there was a good foot of snow on the ground.
A red-breasted robin flits from branch to branch above us, and I glance at Jack, who impressed me with all his knowledge about robins a few months ago. “Jack, what’s that bird?” I ask, pointing to one with a strip of blue along his back.
He shrugs, seemingly indifferent. “I don’t know.”
Well, at least he knew about robins, I think wryly as we continue walking through the woods.
Homeschooling this last year has been a little hit or miss, but at least my kids have been learning something.
William, at sixteen, is about to get his GED a year early, although that’s been way more up to him than me.
As we approach the Hoffenbergers’ property, I feel a flicker of apprehension. Just how many guns was Jack talking about? And what kind of guns? Hunting rifles or more serious weaponry? Jack has been known to exaggerate, but if we’ve got some trigger-happy backwoods redneck as our neighbor…
I step out into the clearing hesitantly, keeping Jack and Rose behind me, just in case. The cabin, I notice immediately, has changed quite a bit since I last saw it looking dilapidated and abandoned a few months ago, its front door hanging off its hinges and moss growing on the roof.
Now it’s a veritable hive of industry, the door fixed and the moss cleaned from the shingles; there’s smoke coming from the chimney and a shovel and a rake leaning by the front door.
Our new neighbor has been busy. In the yard, I see that a smokehouse, an outhouse, and a woodshed have all been built, and he’s halfway through constructing a front porch, which for now comprises a few posts and half a floor.
As I take a step closer, the front door opens, and there he is, our new neighbor. He’s got a full head of unruly black hair and a bushy beard, and he’s wearing a plaid flannel shirt, canvas cargo pants, and work boots. He’s tall and burly and kind of reminds me of a bear. At least he’s smiling.
“Hi!” My voice comes out in something close to a squeak. “We’re your new neighbors.”
“I think I recognize you,” the man says to Jack, who ducks his head, shy for the first time in his life. “I’m Mike Landry.” He holds out one hand, and I balance my basket and crockpot on my hip to shake it.
“Abby Bryant, and these are my two youngest, Rose and Jack.”
“How long have y’all been living here?” Mike asks, rocking back on his heels as he gives us all a friendly but assessing look.
I have the sense we come up slightly wanting, as though we’re not as hardy as he’d hoped.
To be fair, he wouldn’t be wrong. We’ve all become more resilient and resourceful since moving to Wildflower Valley, West Virginia, but the cushy suburbanite vibe hasn’t left us completely.
“Coming up on a year,” I tell Mike Landry. “We moved here from New Jersey to try our hand at sustainable living.”
“Sustainable living, huh?” he asks, sounding skeptical.
“Well, we’re not there yet,” I say quickly. I have a sneaking suspicion he’s had a gander at our homestead and decided we’re amateurs, which, to be fair, would be the truth. “Working our way slowly toward that goal,” I explain on a laugh.
“Ah.” He nods in understanding. “Well, the first thing you need to do, of course, is to be energy independent. That is, if you’re serious about going off the grid.” He gives us a meaningful look, as if he doubts our commitment.
“Ah, well…” Of course, in the homesteading world, there are plenty of hardcore acolytes who manage to live completely off the grid—they have their own well, electricity supply, and manage to source all their food themselves.
They make their own clothes and laundry detergent; they don’t even buy so much as a lightbulb.
They basically live as if they don’t need money.
We are not those people. Not yet, and if I’m honest, almost certainly not ever.
“Are you hoping to be completely self-sustaining here?” I ask, and he snorts in a well-duh kind of way.
“That’s the plan,” he agrees. “Getting there.” He nods toward his various building projects.
“Next up is a well and solar panels. And I’m going to be adding onto the cabin, of course.
My plan is to be completely self-sufficient by the end of the summer.
Because,” he finishes, his voice turning ominous, “you never know what’s coming.
Or really, you do, but most people don’t want to face the reality of what’s heading toward us. ”
I realize, somewhat belatedly, that I may have met my first honest-to-goodness prepper. “Well, yes,” I say after a moment. I heft the basket of jars and the crockpot; my arms have started to ache. “Can I bring this inside?”
“Those are for me?” He sounds so surprised, I can’t help but smile.
“Just a way to welcome you to the neighborhood.”
“That’s very kind of you.” He relieves me of both and then ushers us toward the cabin. “You want to come in? I was just about to have some blue spruce tea.”
“Blue spruce…” Jack whispers, sounding horrified, while I give both him and Rose a severe look.
“Thank you, that’s very kind,” I tell Mike. A year in West Virginia has taught me it’s just as important to accept hospitality as it is to offer it. Maybe even more so.
As I step into the cabin, I am happily surprised at how homey it is.
The earthen floor is covered with bright rag rugs, and there is a rocking chair pulled up close to the fireplace.
A double bed takes up one corner, piled high with patchwork quilts, and in the other corner, there is a hutch filled with crockery, as well as a cook stove with a pipe going through the roof and a barrel for water.
The only other furniture is a table with two rickety chairs.
I feel like I’ve stumbled back in time until I turn to take in the corner by the door and see a gun rack with at least a dozen rifles, some of them looking seriously high-powered.
I swallow hard.
“Can’t be too prepared,” Mike says without a shred of self-defensiveness as he follows my widened gaze. “Now, how about that tea?”
Rose, finally overcoming her shyness, ventures toward the stove where a pot of water is boiling, with a handful of pine needles thrown in. It looks like something the kids might have made in their play kitchen outside when they were little, and the smell it emits is quite… woody.
“Is that the tea?” she asks dubiously, and Mike chuckles.
“It sure is, missy. Packed full of vitamin C. Keeps off a cold like nothing else, and with a little honey, it goes down nice and easy. It’s been steeping for a while now, so we should be good to go in just a few minutes.
” He goes to the hutch and takes down a few enamel mugs before glancing at me askance.
“Now, I hate to be presumptuous, but I feel I have to ask… are you expecting?”
“Oh.” I touch my growing bump self-consciously; I’m seventeen weeks pregnant and have come to accept the reality of my blessed state only recently. “Yes, I am.”
“Because blue spruce can act as an abortifacient,” he states seriously, “and I wouldn’t want that on my conscience. You can have some of my rhubarb and rose hip cordial instead, if you like.”
“Oh… thank you,” I say, a little startled by this heretofore unknown fact.
Clearly, Mike the Prepper is an experienced naturalist. Jack throws me a pleading look, and I know he’d rather have the cordial too, but I give him the kind of forbidding look that says as plainly as if I’ve said it out loud—no dice. Blue spruce tea it is for my two.
Mike pours out the tea without straining out the spruce needles, so what my children get is what looks like a cup of dingy water with a few pine needles floating in it.
Rose throws me a panicked glance, and I smile back beatifically as I accept a glass of ruby-red cordial.
I take a sip—it’s both tart and sweet. Delicious.
Meanwhile, my children are staring morosely down at their mugs of hot tree.
“So, Mike, where are you from?” I ask.
He’s pulled the rocking chair up to the table, along with a sawn-off tree trunk that serves as a stool, so we all have seats. I take the rocking chair at his insistence, and Rose and Jack take the chairs, while Mike perches his large frame on the tree trunk.
“Where I’m from?” He scratches his jaw as he takes a reflective sip of tea.
“Well, all over, mostly. I was born in Kentucky, but my dad was an army man and a mechanic, and we moved around a lot. Indiana, Mississippi, Texas, Oklahoma, a short spell in Montana…” He subsides, shaking his head ruefully.
“To be honest, I don’t know where I’d call home. ”
“Where did you move from?” Rose asks practically.
He smiles, the curve of his lips creasing in a way that makes him seem like a big, cuddly teddy bear, despite the inescapable fact of the gun rack behind me.
“Well, now, missy, I moved from Richmond, Virginia. That’s where I was last, working as a carpenter.”
“Why did you move?” Rose asks. “Did you not like it there?” She is eyeing Mike Landry with the wide-eyed curiosity of a child, and fortunately, he doesn’t seem to mind.
“Why did I move?” he asks. “Well, I liked it there just fine, but I always had a hankering to live a simpler life, do things for myself, the way I can here.” He glances at me, his bushy eyebrows raised. “Isn’t that why y’all moved?”
“Yes, it is,” I agree, shooting Rose a slightly quelling look. I don’t want to come across as too nosy, not on our first meeting… and especially not with all those guns.
“And,” Mike continues, seeming to warm to his theme, “truth is, little missy, I think the world’s going to you-know-where in a handbasket.
There’s going to be a food shortage, and an electricity crisis, and maybe a civil war, mark my words, if not in the next year, then certainly in the next five years, and I want to be ready for it when it comes.
No sense getting caught with your pants down, if you get my meaning. ”
“A war?” Jack says, perking up. He sounds equal parts incredulous and interested.
“Your pants down,” Rose repeats, and giggles.
Mike chuckles, and as nice as he is, I think this is probably our cue to leave.
“Well, thanks so much for the tea,” I say brightly.
“And the cordial. Delicious!” I set my glass on the table.
“But we should probably be getting back.” I’d considered inviting our new neighbor to dinner before I met him, and as friendly as he seems, I’m not sure I want someone going on about the apocalypse in our home.
We’ve got enough to worry about already.
“If you need anything,” I add as I stand and nod to Jack and Rose to do the same, “do let us know.”
“Oh, I won’t be needing anything,” Mike assures me with an indulgent chuckle. “But thank you kindly all the same.”
I nod once, noting that neither of my children has taken a single sip of their spruce tea, then edge toward the door. “Well, nice meeting you!” I practically chirp, and then we are outside in the fresh spring air, heading back toward home, where normality still reigns. Sort of, anyway.