The Harvest of Grace (26 page)

“Morning milking is done, and the barns are cleaned out, so I’m on break for a few hours.” He pulled a treat out of his pocket and fed it to Better Days.

Trevor didn’t seem to mind running back and forth regularly between Hope Crossing and Dry Lake. As dilapidated as his car was, it never gave him a lick of trouble, and he acted as though he enjoyed carting her around. That made it easy for her to go to Sylvia’s to study … and to drop by the cabinetry shop to see Ephraim for a few minutes on the way. Cara liked Sylvia and appreciated the lessons, but her favorite part of going to Dry Lake was seeing her fiancé. Having Trevor around actually made her life easier, but taking his help was almost too effortless, and she chafed over it.

Trevor stopped petting the dog. “I wanted to come by and let you know I’m going away for a few days.”

In spite of how far they’d come, she felt a burst of hope at the idea of his being gone, even briefly. “When?”

“This weekend.”

Cara couldn’t decide if she wanted to know where and why. “Looks like I’m going to be without a free ride this week.” She sounded as if she were just using him, and part of her balked at being so distant toward him while allowing him to be of service to her.

“I’ll probably be back before Tuesday.”

Probably?
She stopped messing with the material in her hand and stared at him, wondering if he might not come back at all. She couldn’t deny that he had begun to matter a little, and that bothered her.

“I brought you something.”

She took the package from his hand and peered inside. A used book.
The Hiding Place
by Corrie ten Boom. It seemed odd that she and Deborah had used the phrase
hiding place
when talking about Cara’s anger with Trevor, and now he’d brought her a book with that title.

She read the back cover. He’d bought her a biography of a Holocaust survivor. She loved reading, but she hadn’t read a biography since dropping out of high school.

“I bought it at a used bookstore a couple of miles from here. I gave your mom a copy for Christmas one year, and it became her favorite book. I’m not sure what happened to her copy.”

“Did she love to read?”

“There isn’t a word to describe how much she enjoyed it.”

She opened the book. “Ephraim, Lori, and I love reading.” Inside the front cover was a handwritten sentence. “Did you write this?”

“No. I didn’t even see it there.”

She ran her fingers over the cursive writing.
Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God
.

Emotions rolled over her. “It’s a saying of some sort.” She passed him the book.

“That’s a quote by Corrie ten Boom.”

Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God
. “I like it.”

“Good.”

She skimmed through the book, catching just enough to know what she’d be doing tonight after everyone else went to bed. “Thank you.”

He didn’t answer, and she glanced up.

“Hello?” Jonathan called as he came in the front door. His almost white-blond hair looked like sunlight beaming under his hat, and his hazel eyes carried a gentle confidence. Deborah could look forever and not find a man better suited to her.

“Hey, Jon.” Cara gestured from one man to the other. “Trevor, you remember Jonathan Stoltzfus. He and Deborah are courting.”

“Yeah, he’s been here several times while I was here,” Trevor said. “Good to see you again.”

Cara knew they’d met, but so many people came in and out of Ada’s House that she didn’t want to assume Trevor had everyone’s names straight yet. “What are you doing here?” she asked Jonathan.

He peered into the other room. “Is it just us?”

“Yeah. Sorry. Deborah’s making deliveries with Ada and Lori.”

“Gut.”

“Good?” She laughed. “That’s a surprising answer. What’s up?”

“I thought I had timed it right to miss her. I want you to come with me so I can show you something. I need your expertise.”

“Mine? I know nothing about everything.”

Jonathan chuckled. “Now that’s just not true. You have great hunches and a good grasp of the big picture. Besides, you have Deborah pegged better than anyone else I know.”

Cara found his opinion of her too lofty, but she lowered the needle into the cloth and released the presser foot. During one of her many sewing lessons, Ada had said that was the position to leave the machine in—the needle in a piece of cloth and the presser foot resting on it. “I’m game.” She glanced at Trevor. “You?”

His eyes widened. “You’re asking me to go too?”

She stood. “I am.”

Trevor turned to Jonathan, wordlessly asking for his response.

“Ya, sure. I bet you know a thing or two about older homes.”

Trevor pulled out his keys and dangled them. “Need a ride?”

Jonathan shook his head. “It’s a stone’s throw from here.”

It surprised Cara how excited she was for Deborah. She hadn’t realized it until now, but in some ways Deborah resided in her heart much as she imagined a sister would. “A house?”

He nodded. “I’m only checking into it right now. And I’d like to keep it a secret until I’m sure that it’s the right house and that I qualify to buy it.”

“Oh, Deborah’s going to like the sound of that.”

“Not a word, Cara. I know how you two stay up and talk half the night sometimes.”

Cara made a zipping motion across her lips. A dreamlike feeling surrounded her. Before she landed in Dry Lake, she’d had only shards and fragments of relationships. But today with her
dad
beside her and her future brother-in-law inviting her to share in his excitement, she sensed a wholeness she’d never known before.

Aaron carried a fifty-pound bag of milk replacer into the calf barn and plunked it onto the ground. Trevor had already begun to muck out the stalls. Whatever the man was like at one time, he was now a hard worker. Aaron pulled at the nylon thread to break the bag’s seal, but the cord broke instead.

“Here.” Trevor hurried to him, reaching into his pocket. He pulled out a knife, whipped the blade open, and slit the bag.

“I need to get one of those.”

Trevor smiled. “My beat-up old car and this knife are the only things I own that are of any use. It’s a folding Buck with a lockback design.” Trevor closed it with one move of his thumb. “Take a look.”

Aaron held it. “It’s got a nice weight to it.”

“A man of means like you wouldn’t have any trouble buying one of these.”

Aaron passed it back. “I’ll think about it.”

It’d be rude to say he had less cash than Trevor. The man owned almost nothing, and the Blanks owned hundreds of acres, but they were up to their eyeballs in debt. However, people who lacked didn’t want to be told how tight money was for a landowner with cattle, horses, crops, several carriages, and two houses.

“I could use a ride to Owl’s Perch this weekend,” Aaron said. “If I paid you, could you take me?”

“Actually, I was gonna ask for this weekend off.”

“Oh, okay. I can get a ride elsewhere.” Aaron had no idea if that was true, but it was the polite thing to say.

“Where’s Owl’s Perch?”

“Perry County, not far from Duncannon.”

“I’m heading to New York on Saturday. I’d have to pass close to Owl’s Perch. What time do you need to be there?”

“About two.”

“Your dad and Sylvia doing the milking by themselves?”

“Ya. It was just the two of them for several months. They’ll be okay.”

“I can drop you off. But you’ll have to figure out another way home.” Trevor slid his knife into his pocket.

“So what’s going on in New York?”

“Were you here when Cara arrived in Dry Lake?”

Aaron hated being reminded of all he didn’t remember. “Technically, I’m sure I was.”

Trevor filled the ten-ounce measuring cup with powdered milk and dumped it into a sterilized calving bottle. “Technically?”

Aaron turned on the warm water at the mud sink. “When you came here to ask for work, you said you’re a recovered alcoholic.”

“Yeah. Been sober nearly twelve years.” He pointed at the bottle in Aaron’s hand. “Uh, I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

“I’m just preparing the bottles for the calves.”

“Sylvia will want to feed them herself. I just get the bottles ready with powder and set them on the shelf.” Trevor fixed a second bottle and put it on a shelf near the sink.

“Not today she won’t. Mamm roped her into helping can corn and green beans.” Aaron added two quarts of water to each bottle before turning off the water.

Trevor had been down the same rough road as Aaron and had been sober much longer. Aaron wanted any words of wisdom the man might have.

“I’ve been sober about six months.”

Trevor moved to a fresh bale of hay and forked a hunk of it. “So you were here when Cara arrived more than a year ago … and yet you weren’t.”

Aaron put the nipples and rings on the bottles and shook them. “Pretty much. I don’t remember her coming to the community, but at some point I heard Ephraim had been shunned concerning her.”

“What’d he and Cara do that caused Ephraim to get shunned?”

Aaron moved to the calves’ pens and stuck the first bottle through the gates. A calf latched on hungrily. “I heard she and Lori were living in a barn, social services came for them, and Ephraim stepped in and took them to his home. He was sleeping in his shop, but when the elders confronted him and told him to get her out of his house, he refused.”

Trevor spread hay in the stall while the calves were occupied and out of the way. “I can see why Cara and Lori trust him so much.”

“That’s all I know, just stuff I heard. I have years that are a jumbled, fuzzy mess inside my head.”

“Cara told me that when she moved away from New York, she left everything behind. I’m going to see if the apartment manager or a neighbor might’ve held on to anything of theirs. I’m hoping somebody kept photos and maybe some special knickknacks.”

“Sounds like a nice gesture. Does she know?”

“I want to keep it a surprise. So how are you doing with your sobriety?”

“Still sober. Still tempted not to be.”

“Trust me on this one thing, Aaron. It’s a battle worth fighting every day and every night.”

A calf nudged the bottle, trying to get more milk to flow, and Aaron almost lost his grip on it. “Cara must’ve been, what, sixteen or seventeen by the time you sobered up?”

“I lost contact with her when she was eight, but, yeah, I was sober before her seventeenth birthday.”

“You lose a lot, don’t you? Booze lures … and then destroys.”

Trevor climbed out of the last stall. “It does that. But it ruins far more than just
your
life.”

Aaron’s heart thudded against his chest. He knew the truth of Trevor’s words. “The possibility of taking up the drink again scares me.”

“Good. Fear keeps us from sticking our hands into a fire, walking through briars barefoot, and all sorts of stupid stuff. When being afraid of it goes away, you’ll likely think you can handle a drink or two or a night or two out drinking. Don’t believe it. People like you and me can’t ever afford to believe that.” Trevor put the pitchfork away and began cleaning the mud sink. “Both of my parents drank, and I started young. My mom once said she put a tablespoon of whiskey in my baby bottle every night so I’d sleep. But I thought I’d gotten free of it by the time I turned eighteen. That’s when I met Cara’s mom.”

Trevor’s confession rolled over Aaron like a threshing machine.

The calves had drunk all the milk, and Aaron tossed the bottles into the sink.

Trevor turned on the water and began disassembling the milk jugs. “I drank most of Cara’s childhood away, and she’s got the scars to prove it. If you ever have a child, you’ll know that the word
love
doesn’t begin to cover how you feel about that little being.” Trevor dipped his head. “Not that Cara would ever believe that, and who can blame her? There’s not one shred of evidence that I ever cared. To rebuild a relationship, there’s gotta be something you can point at and say, ‘Remember when I helped you build this or helped you make a good grade on that or taught you to swim?’ Something … anything.”

Aaron’s skin felt clammy. Trevor spoke of honest, giving, caring love—the kind that couldn’t be his if he ever started drinking again.

Trevor turned off the water and set the bottles upside down in a rack to dry. “When Cara came along, her mom and I thought we’d hit the jackpot.” Trevor pursed his lips and released a heavy breath. “Yes, sir, we thought our ship had come in, you know? She was just that precious to us.”

“Can I ask what happened that started you drinking again?”

“We had some issues. Melinda’s heart was still broken over another man when we married, and I wasn’t sure if she loved me or was just a loyal woman. But I kept trying, and so did she. Bills were never ending, and I lost a couple of jobs. Between all those things and how I grew up, I carried the constant feeling of being worthless. But there were some great times in spite of the pressures. I finally got a job that really suited me—as a handyman at an apartment complex. It came with free rent and enough money so Melinda could stay home with Cara.”