Chapter 5
The September light, when it chose to be generous, could make Crystal Lake look as though it were a stunning painting someone had started and realized they could not improve upon.
On the afternoon Jodie walked with Lloyd around the property, the sunlight was being very generous indeed.
The sun came in low and golden over the western ridge, catching the tops of the maples along the fence line so they burned a deep amber against the sky.
The hills on both sides of the valley appeared bright green, and somewhere down in the lower meadow a pair of crows were conducting an argument neither seemed to be winning.
They walked slowly along the track that ran from the farmhouse down the eastern side of the property toward the far fence.
Jodie walked slowly because the baby had settled lower in the last few days, and every step required a determined effort.
Lloyd walked slowly because his head still ached in the mornings, and the dizziness, though it was fading, had not entirely left him.
Between the two of them, they covered the ground at roughly the same pace, which suited Jodie fine. She had nowhere else to be.
Lloyd had been on the farm for over a week now.
In that time, Jodie had watched him do something she had not expected.
He had begun, very quietly, to make himself useful around the property.
Not in the way a man did when he wanted to impress, but in the small, careful way of a man who could not sit still when there was work that needed doing and hands that knew how to do it.
He had mended the latch on the chicken coop that David had been meaning to fix for some time.
He had re-hung the barn door that had been tilting to the left for the better part of a year.
He had stacked the remainder of the firewood against the barn wall in a pattern so precise and well-fitted that Eli had stood and looked at it for a full minute with his mouth slightly open before saying, “Well, that is much better than how I do it.”
None of this had been asked of him. He had simply seen what needed to be done and had done it. The quiet competence of it had not escaped Jodie or David, though David had not yet expressed his approval.
Lloyd stopped at the far fence line, where the pasture met the lower field and the lower field ran down to the drainage ditch, with the old oak beyond.
He stood with one boot on the bottom rail of the fence, his burly forearms resting on the top rail, his eyes moving across the field with an expression Jodie was beginning to recognize.
It was the look of a man for whom land was not merely something you stood on but something you read with the view to its usefulness.
“Your vadder’s land is gut,” he said.
“He would be pliesed to hear you say so. He does not hear it often enough and is sometimes concerned that it is not gut enough.”
“Ach, the soil is strong. There is good depth to it, and the slope is right for drainage—or it would be, if the drainage was working properly, that is.” He pointed toward the lower part of the east field, where the grass was thin and yellow in a long, uneven band that followed the natural line of the ground.
“You see that? Where the grass fails along that edge?”
“I have always thought it was because of the shade from the trees.”
“Nee, it is not the shade. It is the water. The field is not draining properly along the entire eastern line. The water sits beneath the surface, drowning the roots before they can take hold, and the roots lack concentrated nutrients.” He traced the line with his finger, following it from the upper corner of the field down to where it disappeared into the scrub near the ditch.
“If you cut a channel along there—not deep, only a foot or so—and run it down to meet the main ditch at an angle, the water will move instead of sitting. You would double your yield in that field within two seasons.”
Jodie stared at him. “You can see all of that just by looking at the grass?”
“The grass tells you everything if you know wat to look for.” He glanced at her sideways, and a small, self-conscious light flickered in his green eyes, as though he had said something more personal than he had meant.
“My bruder taught me that. Aaron. He could read a field as simply as reading a clock—he would walk the edges once and tell you wat it needed.”
It was the first time he had spoken of Aaron while fully awake. Jodie heard the name settle between them, as though a stone had been dropped into still water, and she waited.
“He is gone,” Lloyd said after a moment. He said it simply, the way a man says something he has said before and will have to say many times yet. “He died in July. His heart, it wasn’t strong. He was only thirty-one.”
“Es dutt mer leed, Lloyd.”
“Yah.” He looked out toward the mountains. “So am I.”
They sat together in silence for a while.
The crows in the meadow had resolved their argument, or at least declared a truce.
The sun had dipped lower toward the horizon, and the light had deepened from warm gold to a striking copper that lay across the field.
Somewhere behind them, back at the barn, Eli was singing something tuneless and cheerful to the horses.
It was not, Jodie thought, an uncomfortable silence. It was the silence of two people who had each carried something heavy for a long time, set it down briefly in the same place, and were resting beside it without needing to explain.
“Isaac never bothered with the drainage,” she said before she could think better of it.
Lloyd turned to look at her. He did not ask who Isaac was. He had heard the name around the house—in David’s careful silences, Eli’s occasional unguarded comments, and the ledger that sat on the kitchen table each evening. He waited.
“My late husband.” The phrase still felt strange on her lips, words she did not want to say often.
“He preferred plans to execution. He could describe a thing so beautifully you could almost see it built, and then he would move on to the next beautiful description, leaving the first one in the air, unfinished, waiting.” She paused.
“He left debts, large debts. We are working through them. Slowly.”
“That is a hard thing.”
“It is a hard thing.” She looked at him directly.
“We could use hilf. Around the farm, I mean. If you were willing. Daed will not ask—he would chew through his own boot leather before he asked for hilf—but the work is more than he and Eli can manage, and the boppli will be here before too long, and after that I will not be much use for a while.”
She had not planned to say it. The words had simply arrived, as the right words sometimes did when she stopped trying to manage them. She felt exposed by them, as though she had opened a door she could not now close. She stood very still and waited to see what he would do with the opening.
Lloyd looked at her for a long moment. The late light was in his eyes, and the green of them had grown warmer, the golden flecks appearing brighter. She found herself looking at her boots.
“Until after the boppli,” he said. “And then we will review the situation.”
“That is fair.”
“I should speak with your father about it.”
“Yah. You should. But I am telling you now that he will say yah because he has watched you mend his chicken coop, re-hang his barn door, and stack his firewood, and he has not once told you to stop, which is the David Graber equivalent of him admiring your warrick.”
The corner of Lloyd’s mouth moved. It was not quite a smile—it was something before a smile, and it changed his whole face.
The late evening sun touched his hair, making it appear as if it were a golden halo.
His eyes were bright and alert. Jodie swallowed imperceptibly, realizing that with Lloyd’s improving health, he was becoming more handsome by the day.
Jodie looked away. She looked at the field, the hills, and the amber light reflecting off the fence posts, because looking at his face just then felt as if she were standing too close to a fire she was not sure she was allowed to warm herself at.
They turned back toward the farmhouse. The track was narrow enough that they walked close together, his shoulder a hand’s width from hers, and she was aware of his warmth beside her in the cooling air.
She had not been aware of another person’s physical presence in this way for a very long time.
Not with Isaac, if she was honest. Isaac had been a voice and a set of plans with a broad, easy smile, but he had never been a warmth beside her that she wanted to lean into.
She did not lean today either. She walked, keeping her hands folded over the curve of her belly.
She told herself this was simply the gratitude of a woman who had been managing alone for too long and who had unexpectedly found someone capable and willing to help.
That was all it was. That was all it could reasonably be, given that there was apparently a woman in Pennsylvania who had not yet finished with this man.
Plus, Jodie herself was expecting a baby by her deceased husband.
She knew the community would likely have opinions about Lloyd staying at the property, let alone the fact that Jodie found Lloyd an extremely attractive man.
She told herself all of this clearly and sensibly, and she believed roughly half of it.
They were halfway up the track when the baby, who had been quiet for most of the walk, delivered a kick of such unexpected force that Jodie gasped and stopped, pressing both hands to the underside of her ribs.
The baby followed this with a second kick, and then a slow, determined roll, as though they were rearranging themselves for greater comfort.
Lloyd stopped beside her. The alarm on his face was immediate and total. “Are you—is it—should I fetch?—”
Jodie laughed. It slipped out before she could stop it—a real laugh, sudden, full, and warm, the first she had felt in her chest in months. “Nee. Nee, she is only kicking. She does this every so often. She has opinions about being carried uphill, I think, and she likes to make them known.”
Lloyd stared at her belly with an expression of cautious fascination. “She?” he said.
“Yah, she.” Jodie smiled. “I do not have proof, of course, only a very strong feeling. But I have been right about most things so far, and I see no reason to doubt myself on this one.”
The baby kicked again, hard enough to make Jodie wince and then laugh in the same breath.
Lloyd’s alarm had slowly and carefully transformed into something that looked like delight.
He was watching her face, not her belly, and the enchantment in his expression was not exactly about the baby, or only about the baby.
It was the delight of a man watching someone he cared about laugh, a pleasing sound that brought him happiness.
“She is strong,” he said.
“Ach, she is her mudder’s dochder,” Jodie said, then blushed, something she had not done in longer than she cared to remember. She turned and walked the rest of the way to the farmhouse at a pace that did not invite further conversation.
Lloyd followed at his own careful pace. He did not say another word.
But when Jodie reached the kitchen door and turned back to hold it open for him, she saw that the almost-smile had arrived, fully this time, and it was the kind of smile that a woman could, if she were not extremely careful, begin to have feelings for.
She went inside, placing the kettle on the stove.
She stood with both hands flat on the edge of the kitchen table.
She told herself, firmly, that she was not going to be foolish about this.
That she was going to be sensible. That there were debts to be paid and a baby to prepare for.
She did not have the room or the right to feel what she was beginning, against every ounce of her better judgment, to feel.
Gott, she said silently, looking up at the ceiling. I asked You for a sign, not another complication.
The kettle whistled loudly, breaking her reverie. No answer came. Jodie sighed, made two cups of coffee instead of one, and carried both to the front room.