Chapter 9 Ella
ELLA
Ella stood at the kitchen stove a few days before Thanksgiving, stirring fresh cranberries into a saucepan of sugared water while Christmas music played softly on the radio.
She had already made the dough for pie crusts and tucked it in the freezer. Soon, the cranberry sauce would be done. Her goal was to do enough ahead of time that everyone could enjoy the big day without getting too overwhelmed.
Her mom and Dalton were packing sweet potatoes today, and had encouraged her to wrap up early and do her Thanksgiving prep work so they could all have dinner together when the day was done.
As the cranberries slowly heated, she relaxed and her mind carried her back to the barn with Dalton, like it seemed to do all the time since that night.
Don’t think about it, she told herself.
But it was useless. Every time she let her guard down, she flashed back to the heart-pounding moment when he’d held her close, with that look in his eyes, the air between them crackling with a strange electricity.
While they hadn’t talked about it since, Ella had felt herself softening to Dalton. It wasn’t because she’d wanted him to kiss her—that had been a momentary weakness.
But he had unknowingly revealed something about himself that night. The expression in the fierce soldier’s eyes had been almost like pain, and pain was something Ella knew all about.
She spoke with him in the mornings and between chores now, not about anything important, but enough that she thought they both felt a little less lonely.
He might have given the impression that he lived to work, but no man was an island and all that, and she was determined to be a good friend to him, if nothing else.
He was kind to Andy, she would remind herself each time her pulse raced at the sight of him and she worried about letting Dalton get too close. Andy would want me to be kind to him.
Dalton had been featured in so many of Andy’s letters home. She had read those messages avidly back then, and she still got them out from time to time now, just to feel close with her brother.
The cranberries were still heating when the back door opened and there was a familiar clomp of boots in the mudroom.
“Dalton,” she said softly, hearing the pleasure in her own voice and feeling a little ashamed about it.
“Hey,” he said, moving to stand close enough to see what she was doing. “Are those cranberries?”
“Yes,” she told them. “And I’ll add Dad’s homemade vanilla once it gets going.”
“I thought you had to buy that stuff in cans,” Dalton said dubiously.
“What do you think they do to it before they put it in the cans?” she asked him, smiling. “Besides, it’s nicer when you cook fresh berries and season them just the way you want them.”
“I learn something every day around here,” Dalton said, shaking his head with a wry smile.
“It’s just cranberry sauce,” she said, feeling silly for making a thing out of it. “But it’s Mom’s favorite. You can decide for yourself on Thursday if you think it’s better than the canned stuff.”
“Oh,” he said, drawing back a little. “I won’t be here.”
“Why not?” she asked, surprised at how disappointed she felt.
“I’ve got plans,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck.
“Are you going to see your family?” she asked.
She had wondered how he could bear to come straight to them after his service without seeing his own parents. She knew that she should be happy for him that he would get to have the holiday at home, but it still stung a little for some reason.
It was funny that she’d been working with him all this time and she still didn’t know a thing about this man’s family. Andy had never mentioned it in his letters, and Dalton himself seemed to be a vault when it came to talking about any aspect of his life before the military.
“Nah,” he said.
She blinked in surprise.
“A girlfriend?” she ventured, feeling her cheeks heat as soon as the words were out.
“Definitely not,” he told her.
The wave of relief that washed over her was not a good sign. She should be focused on her own family.
But that made her worry again about his.
“Dalton, is your family really okay with you not coming home for the holidays?” she heard herself ask him. “They haven’t seen you in a long time.”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said, his voice uncharacteristically cold as he turned away from her.
“Well, what are your plans?” she asked, brightly, trying to change the subject.
“I’m just going to go to the diner,” he said, his eyes still on the fields outside the window. “I saw that they were open, so I figured I’d just head to town for the day and have dinner there.”
“What?” she burst out without meaning to.
“I don’t want to intrude on your family’s holiday tradition,” he said calmly.
The stairs creaked and Ella’s dad came to the landing while she was still standing there, gobsmacked.
“Dad, did you hear this?” she asked, shaking her head.
“Hear what, sweetheart?” he asked.
“Dalton just said he’s going to the diner on Thanksgiving because he doesn’t want to intrude on our family tradition,” she said, as shocked at the words as she’d been when she heard them the first time.
“What?” her father asked.
“I like the diner,” Dalton began as the back door banged and her mother stepped in. “It’s not—”
“Mary, did you hear this?” Dad demanded.
“Goodness, what is it?” Mom asked as she pulled her boots off.
“This young man says he doesn’t want to interfere with our Thanksgiving tradition, so he’s spending Thursday at the diner,” Dad repeated indignantly. “What do you think of that?”
“I think it’s horse hockey,” Mom said firmly, turning to Dalton. “Pardon my French, but that’s exactly what it is.”
“She’s right,” Dad cackled. “She’s absolutely right.”
“Now you won’t set one foot in that diner, Dalton Tyler,” Mom told Dalton, who looked a bit like a deer in the headlights. “I forbid it. You’re staying right here for Thanksgiving, where you belong.”
“If you’re sure it won’t be an imposition,” he mumbled, dropping his gaze to his feet, but not before Ella saw that aching look in his eyes again.
“How could you be an imposition, son?” Dad asked gently.
“I don’t know what we would have done without you this year,” Mom said, wrapping an arm around his shoulder.
“You’re part of this family now, and family can’t impose.
Now with that in mind, could I get you to help me get down my slow cooker?
It’s up on that top shelf, and I can’t reach it without my step stool. ”
And just like that, Dalton was looking content again as he got right to work fishing the slow cooker out of an upper cabinet for her mother, and the pretty pie pans too.
Later that evening, Ella decided to grab a book from the shelf in the living room.
The harvest had kept her too busy to go to the library, but she had started reading a chapter or two in bed each night to soothe her mind after she moved home, and the habit stuck.
These days, she kept one book on the table in the living room and another by her bed.
Stepping into the lamplit room, she was surprised to find Dalton there. He sat on the floor, cleaning his boots over a section of newspaper.
The earthy scent of the wax reminded her of the afternoons when she and her brother had done the same, under Dad’s watchful eye.
“Sorry,” he said. “Your dad caught me doing this on the porch, and said it was too cold out.”
“It’s fine,” Ella laughed. “Your boots will last forever that way.”
“So they trained us,” he said with a half-smile. “Some habits stick.”
She smiled at the reference to habits, when she had just been thinking the same about her two-book hobby.
“Listen,” she said, lowering herself to the floor opposite him. “I didn’t mean to put you on the spot about the holiday earlier.”
“It’s fine,” he said. “You guys are really nice, being so welcoming to me.”
“But we shouldn’t be keeping you from your family,” Ella said softly. “Not at Thanksgiving, and probably not at all in the first place. You don’t owe Andy, or us, anything.”
“I made a promise—” he began.
“And you of all people know that Andy would never have held you to it,” Ella said. “You helped him so much. And now you’ve helped us too, through a whole harvest. You’ve been amazing. But this is too much, your own family—”
“I don’t have any family,” he said suddenly.
“What are you talking about?” she asked him.
He sighed out a breath, his eyes still on his shoes, then put down the rag he was holding and met her eyes.
“I grew up in the system,” he told her. “And I made some really bad choices.”
“Everybody makes bad choices,” she said automatically as she tried to process this new information. “You were a kid.”
“My bad choices kept the people who wanted to help me at arm’s length,” he said, shrugging.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said softly, wishing she knew what to say next.
“When I turned eighteen, I got lucky and a buddy got me a gig down at the warehouse,” he went on. “I was there for a while, just grateful for the chance. But I started to realize that it wasn’t going anywhere—it was too small, and there was no way to advance.”
She nodded. Given his work ethic and boundless curiosity, she couldn’t imagine Dalton working forever doing the same basic tasks.
“So, I enlisted,” he told her. “It was a great opportunity for me, and I got some specialized training too.”
“Andy told us all about that,” she said, nodding. Her brother had been so proud of his friend’s accomplishments.
“Well, you know the rest,” Dalton said, shrugging.
She drew in a breath as the whole situation rearranged itself in her mind.
Dalton was essentially alone in the world. If her family hadn’t insisted that he be here, he would have had no place else to go this Thanksgiving.
“Your brother was the only person who ever really made me feel like I belonged,” Dalton went on, his eyes on his boots again.
“I probably would have stayed in the service if he hadn’t passed.
But that promise I made him meant something to me then.
And it means something now, to know I haven’t let him down. ”
She wanted to protest, to tell him that he’d done what he had set out to do, and there was no more obligation.
But she was starting to understand that this promise was more than a self-imposed commitment, it was Dalton’s only link to the man who had made him feel like he was home.
Maybe he doesn’t want to leave.
Maybe he shouldn’t.
“Thank you for telling me,” she said softly.
“You deserve the truth,” he said, shrugging without making eye contact.
She had the sudden urge to tell him everything as well, lay her cards on the table and admit the guilt she felt for the wickedness in her heart those years ago.
But Dalton had enough on his plate. And her guilt was hers to bear. She wouldn’t burden him with it.
“Well, all of this settles it,” she said, lightening her tone to sound as friendly as possible. “You’re definitely staying for Thanksgiving. And I hope you’re planning to be hungry.”
“For sure,” he said, lifting his face at last and capturing her gaze with those brilliant blue eyes. “I heard we’re having three pies.”
She couldn’t help smiling then, and when he gave her one of his rare smiles back, her heart ached and she clasped her hands together to stop herself from grabbing one of his.