For Every Season (35 page)

She stood and folded her arms, facing away from him, and a cold chill ran down his spine. “How long have you felt this way?”

“It started out as a few scattered seeds I barely realized were there.”

“When, Jacob?” She didn’t even glance at him, and her voice was void of surprise.

“Maybe from the time I first talked to a lawyer and he believed I could get immunity in exchange for my testimony.”

She turned, eyes wide. “That was months ago, and you haven’t mentioned a word until now.”

“It’s just an idea.”

“A pretty well-thought-out one.” She stretched out her arms toward the orchard. “I love it here.” Rows and rows of trees spread out before them. Everywhere they looked, they saw healthy green foliage and smelled the sweet scent of apple blossoms.

He stood and plucked a blossom from a tree. “It’s all pretty amazing, but that’s because of the amount of work everyone’s put into it. All you and I have
had are a few hours of courtship here and there and a single trip to the beach. Don’t you want more? If we were able to employ the right people, you and I could move back to Pennsylvania, which could give both of us what we want—me working as a carpenter and you cultivating a fruit garden again.”

She stared at him, clearly bewildered and apparently speechless.

“Rhodes, say something.”

“You … you want to move
back
? I cared about that orchard, but it belongs to your family. The land and trees seem branded like cattle. At best, I was a guest there, but in the eyes of your Daed, I was an intruder. Here, this orchard has as much of me as it does any member of the King family.”

“It has you and Samuel in it.”

All traces of confusion melted from her face. “Is
that
what this is about?”

He was knee-deep now, and he couldn’t change the subject. He pointed up at a tree. “Soon we’ll see clusters of fruitlets on the trees. It’s like you and Samuel are apples on a tree, sharing the same cluster, but I fell to the ground months ago. I’m rotting while you and he grow stronger each day.”

There, he’d said the truth. He wanted to return to carpentry full-time, and he felt it was important for them that she not have so many work responsibilities on her shoulders. But his real issue with this farm was Samuel.

She looked out over the valley of the orchard. The sun had risen, and the light glimmered on the dew. She finally nodded.

That was it? Nothing more than a nod of her head? His heart pounded with anger. With hurt. With emotions he didn’t understand.

On the other hand, she wasn’t upset or walking away. She was listening and considering his viewpoint.

He dusted his palms together. It was rather depressing to discuss marriage in such businesslike terms.

He shielded his eyes from the sun, wishing he’d worn his hat. “I’ll make a good living doing what I love. We can raise a family and be happy.”

Her eyes reflected a disappointment he wasn’t prepared for. She sat and looked up at him. “You’ll go off to work before dawn each day and return after dark, six days a week in good weather. Farmers are at home, where their children are.”

He sat next to her. “But it’s a regular paycheck. No ruined crops after months of hard labor. And I’ll have extra days off here and there in the winter to make up for it.”

She picked up a blossom from the grass. “Is moving away from here the only way you can feel secure concerning Samuel and me?”

He shifted, putting his hand on the blanket behind her. “Listen.” He didn’t like what he was about to propose, but he couldn’t tolerate being the bad guy. She had to know in her heart that leaving here was the right thing to do. “I’ll continue going through instruction, and you think about what I’ve said. If you decide we should make our home and raise our children here in Orchard Bend, then that’s what we’ll do.”

“And carpentry?”

“I can probably find construction work here as well as anywhere.” He couldn’t imagine going off to work each day, leaving her around Samuel. Surely, after she’d thought about all he’d said, she’d see what they’d need to do to protect their relationship.

“You mean that, Jacob?”

“I trust your judgment.”

She leaned against his shoulder. “Denki.”

Jacob kissed her head. Had he just turned their future over to someone who cared for his brother more than she knew?

THIRTY-TWO

Samuel rocked back in a kitchen chair, staring at Landon’s laptop.

Iva and Phoebe were stirring around, starting dinner. Samuel and Landon couldn’t go to the barn office because Jacob was there with Steven, the door closed as Jacob continued going through instruction. Leah was upstairs reading to the little ones, and Samuel imagined Rhoda was in the orchard, tending her beloved trees.

It was the first of June, and they still had no canning kitchen or even plans for one.

He tried to concentrate on what was in front of him because Landon needed answers. But so much was going on inside him that he couldn’t focus.

“I’ve given the whole site an update.” With a slide of his finger on a metal pad, Landon moved the electronic arrow around the page, pointing out things. “I changed the location and product line. I’ve upgraded the ordering system and installed a new contact page.”

Samuel was okay with this Internet stuff as long as Landon ran it for them. If they barely looked at it throughout the year, it wouldn’t be considered a problem among most Amish. Advertising had been allowed for decades, but in the past the Amish paid for magazine or newspaper people to list their advertisements. Now ads were done on the Internet. Not a ton of difference in the Amish involvement—they still paid someone to put the information where Englisch people would see it. Some of the more conservative communities shunned this type of marketing, but Steven had a peace about it, so that settled it for Kings’ Orchard Maine.

“Follow the cursor.” Landon made the arrow jiggle. “When I click on this”—he pressed the metal pad—“a form pops up, and this is how people can
place their orders. But if they click on Contact Us, they can e-mail us directly … or rather e-mail me directly. Several people and businesses have asked to be sent regular updates. Do you want to accommodate that?”

“Sounds time consuming.”

“Depends on how often we send out updates. We could do it four times a year, once for every seasonal change. Iva could take photos of the orchard, and we could use a few to show the beauty of the orchard in each season of the year. We could also share a day in the life of an Amish orchardist or tell what you are or will be doing for the orchard during a particular season.”

Samuel pondered the idea. “Sounds fine. Let’s begin with an update for each season. If anyone enjoys doing it, we can send more out each year.”

Life inside this tiny Amish settlement was buzzing—like the multitude of honeybee hives the beekeeper had set up throughout the orchard. But when it came to making a decision about the canning kitchen, Rhoda seemed as dormant as a tree in winter. Even so, Samuel trusted she would either make a decision or step aside and let him do it.

But time was drawing short, and Kings’ Orchard needed answers.

Jacob strode into the kitchen, the way only his younger brother could when he felt right with the world—with confidence and zest.

Steven entered and went straight to his wife, whispering. He then held up a letter. “Another Amish family has contacted us. They’d like to visit and check us out and give us time to get to know them. It’s a man with nine children—ages eleven to twenty-three.” He grinned. “There must be at least one set of twins in that group.”

“The more the merrier.” Samuel chuckled.

Jacob moved to the end of the table near Landon, straddled a chair, and peered at the laptop for a moment before looking up. “What’s for dinner?”

Iva tapped the spatula on the side of a pan. “Amish six layer.”

Steven pulled up a stool at the corner of the table so he could see the screen too.

Jacob rubbed his stomach. “Just six layers? What if I want more?”

“Then I’ll heap two portions onto your plate.”

He frowned. “What if I don’t want twelve?”

Iva stirred the browning hamburger meat. “What if I want to swing this spatula at Samuel’s head?”

The room broke into laughter.

“Me?” Samuel feigned being shocked. “What’d I do?”

Iva shook the spatula at him, grinning, before returning her attention to the iron skillet.

“So what’s up?” Jacob turned the laptop so he could see it better.

Samuel gave Landon time to show Jacob around the site.

“Samuel, I’ve been wanting to show you this part.” Landon clicked on something, and a video began playing. “Iva took the pictures, and I turned them into a short video.”

Soft music played as Landon’s voice explained the history of Kings’ Orchard’s move to Maine and the type of work it took to care for the trees.

“This is really good.” Jacob turned to Iva. “Have you seen it?”

She shook her head, and Phoebe and she moved in closer. Landon restarted the video.

Iva rested her hands on the chair behind Samuel. “It makes working in the grove look much more charming than it actually is.”

Jacob scratched the back of his head. “That wouldn’t take a lot.”

This
was the brother Samuel remembered from their teenage years—a guy who didn’t want to be tied down to an orchard.

When the video finished, Iva returned to the stove and Phoebe to the sink.

Landon clicked on another link. “This is where a fair amount of the traffic has been coming from. It’s a series of articles written by Diana Fisher, the blogger Rhoda met at the mulching seminar last October. She writes for two different blogs: Maine Organic Apple Orchards and US Organic Apple Orchards. She linked each article to Rhoda’s website. When Rhoda was in the news, people ran Internet searches on her to see what they could find. What they found were pieces by Diana that led to Rhoda’s site.”

Samuel picked up a pen and pointed at the screen. “So if our business is referred to in the articles by one name—Kings’ Orchard Maine—but the site goes by Rhoda’s former business of Rhode Side Stands, how are people finding Kings’ Orchard?”

“Two ways. There are direct links to Rhoda’s website from Diana’s articles, and I bought other domain names—like Kings’ Orchard Maine, Amish Orchard, and Rhoda Byler—that people might use when searching online. I redirected those sites to this one.”

Jacob clasped Landon’s shoulder. “You’re brilliant.”

“I know, right?” Landon clicked on another tab. “But all this marketing about canned products is only going to do us some good if we actually have the goods to sell.”

Samuel tapped his pen on the notepad. “We’ll have them. I know that for absolute certain. The only thing we don’t know is the when, where, and how of the canning kitchen.”

Jacob folded his arms on the top rung of the ladder-back. “What happens if Rhoda is completely off-base about not accepting the Cranfords’ offer?”

Iva set a tray with four glasses of lemonade on the table. “What offer?”

While Jacob explained it and Rhoda’s reservations, Samuel outlined a to-do list for the month. By the first of July the fruitlets would be visible, and they’d need to spend every waking hour for weeks thinning them. They wouldn’t be able to get any other orchard work done during that time, so these few weeks leading up to that had to be spent wisely.

But in truth this list was like everything else Samuel did—a stab at distracting his heart from any thoughts of Rhoda Byler.

Phoebe passed out napkins with an unpeeled orange in each one.

Iva wiped her hands on her apron. “I don’t get it. So Rhoda shared a hunch with Bob and Camilla. Now she feels obligated to turn down an offer they were going to make before she shared what she knew? Could Rhoda make this any more complicated?”

“Probably.” Steven peeled the rind off an orange slice. “Don’t tempt her. But she comes by her feelings on the matter honestly. If you’d witnessed her gifting and everyone’s reaction to her while she was growing up, you’d understand why she struggles.”

“And,” Phoebe added, “she has a really tender conscience—too tender for anybody’s good. So she’ll stick to what she thinks is right regardless of what it costs her.”

Phoebe’s last sentence struck Samuel hard. Was there any chance that’s what kept Rhoda and him apart—her overzealous sense of loyalty toward Jacob, the business, and the King family? Samuel cared about all those things. Too much so, he imagined. But if Rhoda would go with him, he’d walk away from them, and although he’d be sorry for the pain it would cause everyone, he’d gratefully pay the price to be with her.

Jacob’s eyes moved to Samuel’s and stayed there, and Samuel knew his brother was also bothered by what Phoebe had said.

Steven looked to Iva. “Now?”

Iva’s face reflected stress, but she nodded.

Phoebe put her arm around Iva’s shoulders. “It’ll be okay. You’ll see.”

“What’s going on?” Jacob asked.

Iva reached into the hidden pocket of her apron and pulled out a small stack of letters. “These arrived today. I’m receiving several each week from my community. They want me to come back, because they think that I’m in sin and that I’ve abandoned my parents when they need me most.”

Samuel couldn’t believe this. “But your Mamm sent you.”

Iva nodded. “My Daed hasn’t let me talk to her lately, and I imagine he’s not telling anyone she had a hand in sending me here. I’m certainly not willing to spread that information to anyone writing to me. It could get her into a lot of trouble.”

Steven tapped the table with the tips of his fingers. “I’ve spoken to her Daed several times. He’s got the backing of the church leaders, and the pressure from her district is building day by day. If need be, they’ll pull in other church leaders to stand against me.”

“She’s twenty-one.” Landon closed his laptop. “Doesn’t she get a say?”

“Her age actually works against her right now. Her Daed has voiced concerns that she’s in rebellion because she should have joined the faith by now and hasn’t. He also feels it’s wrong for her to live out from under his authority when she’s not married.”