Past Forward Volume 1 (39 page)

“I can’t go, Chuck. I’d love to, but I just
can’t. I’m too busy. This fall and winter I’ll have more time for a
movie or something, but right now, I’m fighting to get the work of
two women done alone.”

Willow ignored Chuck’s protests. She was
determined not to lose any momentum on winter preparations, and
that meant no time for movies with Chuck. A thought occurred to her
just as he started a new argument.

“You could always come here and help. I’ve
got enough canning to last forever. Come pick berries with me.”

“I don’t know anything about canning.”

“Who has to know how to pull berries off a
bush? I’m going out tomorrow, come on over and pick instead of
seeing the movie.”

An uncertain tone crept into Chuck’s voice.
“Are you asking me because you feel like you have to, because you
need the help, or because you really do want me to come? You know,
want me to come because I’m
me
.”

Compassion flooded Willow’s heart. She’d
been impatient and she knew it. “I need the help, Chuck. I won’t
pretend I don’t. However, I want your company. Just come and talk
to me if you prefer.”

“I’ll be there Saturday morning.
Thanks.”

Bill hung up the phone. She was coming.
Wednesday. He glanced at his calendar and ticked off the days as
though hoping to shorten the time. Six days.

“If she’d only come tomorrow. Maybe she
could have stayed overnight—”

He shook his head. That wasn’t going to
work. He’d have to remember not to pressure. His eyes strayed to
the calendar again, and he punched the button for Mari’s phone.

“What’s on the calendar for next
Wednesday?”

With a little rearranging, he managed to
clear the afternoon’s appointments. He stared at his ten o’clock.
If he was willing to sacrifice a Saturday and tickets to Rockland
stadium, he could clear the morning as well. With a sigh, Bill
called Mari and told her to invite Mr. Keirburg to the game on
Saturday and buy the tickets if he agreed. Bill hated baseball
stadiums.

A new debate raged within him. Did he
surprise her with his free day or was he presuming once again?
Unsure, he picked up the phone and redialed. Sheep bleated into the
phone as Willow answered.

“Hey, that didn’t sound like the goat!”

“It wasn’t. That’s one of the lambs. I’m not
sure which since neither have names.”

Well, that was news to him. “I didn’t know
you had sheep too.”

“I don’t.” Willow’s voice betrayed her
distraction.

“Well, I just wanted to see what you had
planned for Wednesday. I cleared my schedule in case you had time
to do something.”

Her silence unnerved him. She was irritated.
That probably meant she’d planned to go to the DMV, get her ID, and
get right back on the bus to Fairbury. Just as he opened his mouth
to tell her not to give it another thought, she spoke. “I’d like to
take you to lunch then.”

“Well actually, I was hoping—”

Her tone turned menacing as she threatened,
“If you don’t let me take you to lunch, I’m getting on the first
bus back to Fairbury once we’re done at the ID place.” She
snickered.

“I’ll make reservations for you. Where do
you want to eat?”

“Pick something good and I’ll love it,” she
assured him. “I have no idea what’s available, so it’s silly for me
to choose.”

Bill fingered her thank you note as they
chatted. The opening line
“My Dear Mr. William Franklin,”
had amused him; her genuine appreciation and delight in his gift
had touched him, but the signature tugged at his heart in an
entirely new way. As she described her lambs he reread it once
again,
“Most cordially yours, Willow Anne Finley.”

The bike wobbled and Willow’s feet hit the
ground. Again. She was drenched in sweat, exhausted, and still
hadn’t stayed upright for longer than five feet—half of that being
on the way down. She had two scraped knees, one scraped elbow, and
the remnants of a bloody nose where she’d collided with the
handlebars.

A torn skirt lay abandoned on her bed with
black streaks of grease accentuating each side of the mangled
hemline. Her shorts were in no danger of tearing but her legs
hadn’t fared as well. She’d worked on it all day and was ready to
toss the bike in the barn loft and forget about it.

A car turned into her driveway. Great. Chad
could now watch her fail--again. Willow wiped a dirty arm across
her brow leaving streaks of dirt mingled with the perspiration
clinging to her skin.

As he climbed from the truck, Chad waved,
calling, “Hey, what’re you doing?”

Her glare seemed to say,
“Well, genius,
I’m knitting socks for the freezing orphans in Beverly Hills,”
but her tone remained remarkably civil. “Trying to conquer this
beast.”

He neared and Chad saw the scrapes,
scratches, dirt, and blood. “Oh Willow—”

“Just help me figure out how to stay up on
this thing.”

Now he knew what his father must have felt
like as he grabbed a spring from her seat and held on tight. “Ok,
I’ve got you. Just pedal. I won’t let go until you tell me.”

She bounced along the road, her feet
slipping off the petals occasionally but slowly growing confident
in their placement. “Ok, let go but stay close.”

Chad jogged alongside her as she wobbled
down the road. “You’ve got it.”

Too confident in her abilities, Chad
stopped, hands on hips, and cheered as she rolled down the drive.
Before he could react, however, she hit a rock, and flew over the
handlebars. He rushed to help her up, but she pushed his hands
away.

“Leave me alone. This is the best I’ve felt
in hours.”

“Did you hit your head?” Chad demanded,
concerned.

“I did not. I’m fine. I’m just tired of
falls and scrapes and ruined clothes. I’m glad I’ve been sewing or
my skirt would be a
really
sore spot with me right now.”

“Come on. Pretend it’s a horse. Get back up
there.”

Willow rolled onto her side and glared up at
him once more. “I think not.”

“Are you hurt? I mean do you have any new
injuries?”

He watched as she tugged at her shirt to
hide a scrape across her stomach. “I’m fine. I’m just not getting
up for a long time.”

“Would please work?”

Her laughter, though strained, coincided
with a shake of her head. “I’m not ungrateful, really. I just want
to rest. I’m tired and sticky, and I have cuts and bruises enough
to last forever.”

Chad’s hand reached for hers. “Come on. One
more time. I promise I won’t bug you about it again. Today
anyway.”

As he drove away, Chad glanced in the
rearview mirror. He wanted to stuff her in his cruiser and drive
her to his mother or his Aunt Libby. She looked so young, so
battered. Her nose, the knot she tried to hide on the side of her
head—the memory sickened him. He was used to the dirt, the sweat,
the fatigue. That was part of who Willow was. The injury—that he
couldn’t handle.

It had never occurred to him that learning
to ride might be difficult. Willow could do anything she set her
mind to do. It was the mark of the Finley women. How could he
possibly have known she’d struggle so much? Riding a bike was like,
well, riding a bike. Wasn’t it?

“So how many berries do you think there are
here?”

Willow handed Chuck her mother’s gloves and
a wire cane hook. “A hundred quarts or so.”

“Do you eat all that?” He stared at the
hook, visibly confused until he saw her pull the blackberries
closer to pick them.

“We usually don’t eat them all. We dry them
for the birds in winter, but this year I am going to sell some of
the extra too.”

Chuck glanced down at the bucket and
realized she’d already half-filled it. “Wow. You’re fast.”

“I’d be faster if you started picking.”

“How come your mom’s gloves fit me? My hands
aren’t that small.”

Eyes rolling, Willow systematically striped
the berries off the canes. “She wore ones like this for berries.”
She wriggled her fingers at him before turning back to her task.
“Mother wore those over her regular gloves for dealing with animals
in winter.”

An hour passed, two. Buckets filled slowly
but steadily with blackberries. After a while, Willow sent Chuck to
wheel buckets to the summer kitchen as she filled them. By
lunchtime, she declared them done. Chuck tried to convince her to
move to blueberries, but she refused.

“If I fill up the baskets Jill gave me,
she’ll come get them. I’ll call.”

For the next hour, Chuck watched Willow as
she sorted, filled, and then transferred dozens upon dozens of tiny
baskets of fruit into Jill’s truck. After Jill left, she boiled
water, washed berries, and filled jars with a mixture of sugar,
lemon juice, and, of course, the berries. He tried to help but was
more in the way than anything.

Bath after bath of berries and jam bubbled
in the canner and then sealed on towels on the counter. “How do you
know what to do? You don’t have recipes or anything!”

“I’ve done it every summer of my life. Even
as a baby, Mother fed me berries while she washed and froze them.
It’s what we do.”

“Why do it though? Why not just buy berries?
You spend all this time in the heat, and you work so hard—why?”

“It’s how we eat,” she answered, knowing
what was sure to follow.

“Why not just buy it. Come on. Tell me you
can afford to buy food! Think of the time and work you’d save.”

Chuck screwed up his face in confusion as
she answered, “And what would I do with all of the canning time I
saved?”

“This is our library. Almost everything I
ever learned came from one of these books or from my mother.”

Chuck picked at a book about the Amish and
rolled his eyes. A copy of
Gray’s Anatomy
lay open to the
brain on top of one shelf. Will and Ariel Durant’s
History of
the World
stood proudly on another.

“You have a lot of books. Have you read them
all?”

“Several times. Oh, look at mother’s
carving. She did quills and parchment scrolls for this room.” The
love in Willow’s voice pierced even Chuck’s superficial senses.

“She carved that woodwork?”

“Yep. Come see the dollhouse she built me
for Christmas when I was six. I think it was a kit, but she must
have spent every night after I went to sleep for a year to get it
so perfect.”

Willow led him upstairs, past the bedrooms
and to a small door at the end of the hall. Chuck wondered how she
could stand the heat. Air conditioning was an essential of life in
his book. “It’s up here,” her voice broke through his thoughts.

In the attic, at one end under a window, a
shelf held several toys, more books, and in the corner stood the
dollhouse. Willow’s face lit up. “Isn’t it adorable?”