Chapter 7 Ella
ELLA
Ella kept herself as busy as she could over the next few weeks. But she still couldn’t help noticing Dalton.
She noticed his special attention to her dad, asking his advice every night on different aspects of the harvest.
She noticed the way he tried to shield her mother from manual labor of any kind, throwing himself into every task as if he wished he could multiply himself do it all and just send Ella and her mother back to the house to rest.
She noticed the way he spent extra time with Dove, making up funny stories for her and pretending he was too full for dessert whenever they had her favorite chocolate ice cream, so she could have his scoop.
And of course, Ella couldn’t help noticing the way he treated her.
The day they had shared in town at that first farmers market had clearly meant something to him. He’d asked her to walk around with him each Saturday since. The moment the line at their booth was gone, she knew to expect the question.
And as much as she’d also enjoyed that day, Ella just couldn’t bring herself to say yes to another.
It hurt to see the hope in his brilliant blue eyes dim again and again, but she just reminded herself of her husband and managed to shake her head.
Lee had been a ball of energy since the day she met him. The man had been filled with a joyful spirit that had him ready to socialize at any chance he got. To Lee, solitude was the worst thing he could imagine, and he made sure to fill his days with the company of family and friends.
And he certainly wouldn’t have wanted Ella to be alone. He’d even told her as much when he got sick, though she’d told him at the time not to be silly.
You’re too young, Ellie, he’d whispered, scrabbling for her hand in the darkness of the bedroom that had become more like a hospital room. Don’t lock yourself away. Get out there and live when this is over. Live enough for both of us. Do it for Dove. Promise me.
She had promised that she would think about it, if only to calm him. Though during those dark days, she couldn’t imagine ever loving anyone again.
But it wasn’t her doubt or her sense of loyalty holding her back now, not really.
It was what came after Lee passed that made her think she couldn’t be with anyone again.
The guilt she felt now about that time weighed on her heart as heavy as the harvester. She knew no matter what happened or how she felt, she couldn’t love another man the way she’d loved Lee. And in the end, even the way she’d loved him hadn’t been enough.
So, she kept her head down and her guard up, and figured it would all be a lot easier once this annoyingly kind and frustratingly handsome houseguest moved on.
“Boxes are coming today,” Mom told them all one morning at the breakfast table.
“Wow, already,” Dad remarked, shaking his head with a smile. “Time flies when you’re having fun.”
He glanced over at Dalton, who was shoveling a mountain of scrambled eggs into his mouth.
The two of them had compromised, and they made breakfast together most mornings.
Ella came down early from time to time and heard Dalton grilling her father about one farming task or another.
When Dad really got to talking, he’d usually pull up one of the stools from the counter and sit without realizing he was doing it, sketching things out or jotting down notes for Dalton with the pad and paper they kept by the old landline phone.
No one else would have noticed, but Ella had made such a study of Dalton Tyler that she recognized satisfaction in the way his jaw relaxed a little the moment her dad sat down.
He’s doing it on purpose, she realized the third time she saw it happen. He’s tricking him into sitting down. He probably does this every day.
“What are the boxes for?” Dalton asked.
“They’re for the sweet potatoes,” Dove piped up. “That’s how we pack them up.”
“We store some and we ship the rest,” Mom added. “And once that’s done, the season is over.”
“What do you do then?” Dalton asked.
“Oh, some prep for next year,” Mom said. “And we take care of any deferred maintenance on the house and barn, and the equipment, naturally.”
“Taxes,” Dad put in.
“Michael organizes all the books for our accountant to go through,” Mom said, nodding. “But mostly it’s a chance to catch our breath before the whole thing starts over.”
“A well-earned breather,” Dad agreed heartily. “And it’s also a chance to make plans for next year, and of course to enjoy the holidays.”
“Sounds nice,” Dalton said, nodding. But Ella noticed the slight furrow in his brow.
“It is nice,” Dove said. “You’ll see. We’ll get a Christmas tree and we’ll bake cookies and everything.”
“First there’s Thanksgiving,” Mom reminded her.
“My school celebration is today,” Dove said, her eyes wide with excitement.
“It sure is,” Ella added with a smile.
“And on actual Thanksgiving, we’re having three pies,” Dove sang out happily. “Three.”
Dalton seemed distracted during the rest of breakfast. And when they got out to the barn, he grabbed a push broom and swept the already-clean floors while he waited for an assignment.
By afternoon, when the box delivery came, Ella was certain that something was wrong.
“What do I do with these?” he asked as they surveyed the flats of boxes her mom had just signed for.
“Well, we have to put them together before we can pack up the sweet potatoes,” she told him. “But Mom and I are going to the Thanksgiving celebration at Dove’s school now. You should take the afternoon off too, and we’ll start work on it together later.”
Dalton frowned.
“You could come to the school with us, if you want,” she heard herself offer. “It’s a fun event.”
“No time like the present,” Dalton said, heading over to the boxes.
The man is all work and no play, she thought to herself as she watched him pull out a pocketknife to cut the ties on the first flat.
The celebration at the school was as joyful as Ella remembered from her own days as a student.
The children sang “’Tis a Gift to be Simple” and there was the expected tableau of Native Americans and Pilgrims. Principal Tucker thanked the teachers one by one with art and poems created by the kids, some of which were so funny that the teachers had tears in their eyes from trying not to chuckle as they stood on the stage to be honored.
Afterward, Ella got looped into a conversation with some other parents, and when Dove wanted to get hot cocoa and pumpkin soup in town at Jolly Beans with two of her friends and their families, Ella and her mom hadn’t wanted to say no.
By the time they finally got back to the farm, it was past their usual dinnertime, but there was a light on in the barn. When they got into the house, Dad said Dalton hadn’t come back up since lunch.
“That boy,” Mom said, shaking her head and moving toward the door like she was going to march down to the barn and drag him back to the house by the ear.
“I’ll get him,” Ella heard herself volunteer.
Mom’s eyebrows lifted, but she nodded and followed Dove into the kitchen to put a copy of the poem she had written for her teacher on the fridge.
Ella pulled her boots back on and headed out without a coat. She had a warm sweater on over her skirt and blouse, and it would only take a minute to call Dalton back in.
As she opened the front door, she was hit by a draft of late fall wind that lifted her hair and sent a shiver down her spine.
Hurrying down the path to the barn, she thought about how she had always found this time of year spooky when she was a little girl.
Trees that had been flaming with fall colors just a few weeks ago were almost all bare now, their branches reaching for the black sky like bony fingers, where a silvery crescent of the moon peeked out from behind a thin veil of clouds.
I’m not scared anymore, she told herself.
But that wasn’t entirely true. Grownup Ella might not be scared of witches and ghosts.
But sometimes she felt like she was afraid of just about everything else.
She worried that growing up without her father was bad for Dove.
She was scared about her parents and their health.
She was afraid for the future of the farm and whether the highway would change the way of life in the little town she loved.
And lately, she was scared of the way she felt whenever Dalton Tyler’s gaze landed on her.
The door to the barn let out a loud creak as she pushed it open.
“Hey…” she began, but trailed off as she forgot what she had been about to say.
A single bulb hung from the big wooden rafters, casting a pale glow on the wood planks below. A shaft of moonlight coming through the back window was the only other illumination.
In that half-light, she could see what had to be hundreds of boxes in stacks taking up at least a quarter of the barn floor. It was so many boxes—too many for one person to possibly construct in a day.
Just as that thought occurred, she sensed movement and saw Dalton standing in the corner, his pocketknife glinting as he prepared to release the boxes from another flat.
“What are you doing?” she asked softly.
Her voice echoed very slightly in the huge space, and with no noise coming in from outside, the warmth of her tone felt almost intimate.
“Putting together boxes,” Dalton replied without looking up.
“Why are you still here?” she asked him. “Why did you do so many?”
“We need them all, right?” he asked.
“Dalton,” she said, moving closer. “Are you okay?”
His vivid blue gaze locked onto her eyes at last, and even in the dim of the barn she could see that intensity in his expression that made him seem like his carefully guarded emotions were about to boil over.
“Why?” he asked, tilting his head, his tone slightly sharp. “Are you going to make it better?”
But she didn’t take in his words because she had just gotten close enough to see that his hands were wrapped in rags.
“Dalton, what happened?” she asked, reaching out for his wrists. “This is from the boxes, isn’t it?”