A Hopeful Harvest. Ruth Logan Herne

stupid. A four-year college degree that she’d barely used, a horrific mistake in her choice of husbands and letting things go long enough to end up homeless. A smart woman would never put an innocent child in those conditions.

      “There’s my girl!” Joy heightened Gramps’s voice when he saw her come through the door. “Come to visit, have you? I’ll get Mother. We can set a spell. Okay?”

      She couldn’t squash his hope and re-explain their circumstances, how she was living with him and that he had a great-granddaughter he recognized some days and not others. “I’d like that, but first I’m going to take care of these dishes, okay?”

      “She left them to sit there?” He stared into the kitchen, frowning, because Grandma had always taken pride in a clean kitchen and a job well-done. Libby saw the moment realization hit him. His face dimmed. His eyes lost their sparkle. He didn’t say a word. He simply shuffled away to his chair in the front room. He sat and studied the room around him, his eyes darting from this to that.

      He was trying to memorize it, she realized.

      He was studying things to commit them to memory. Within minutes he would forget again, and these brief moments when he tried to regain a hold on reality hurt the most.

      Oblivion came with an air of peace. Realization brought nothing but frustration to a beloved man, but how could she justify hoping for oblivion when he was striving to maintain what little mental capacity remained?

      “Keep things as structured and as much the same as you can,” the doctor had advised, and she’d been trying to do that, but life had been messing that up lately.

      A soft tune came through the open window. Jax whistling “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree” like he’d done the other day.

      Gramps’s song.

      She took a glass of tea in to Gramps. He greeted her as if she was a waitress in a diner, and when he was settled, she decided she didn’t need anyone’s advice about the barn.

      She was savvy enough to know that easing an old man’s last months was worth the cost of a mortgage to pay the balance on the barn. With land prices at record-high levels, she should recoup the investment when she sold the farm eventually. She’d stop by the local bank and get things in motion. They’d want a plan, too, most likely.

      She used the back door to access the small porch facing northwest. Jax looked up immediately. The warmth in his expression made her heart stutter again.

      She reined in her reaction, then indicated the sloping hills and rugged Cascades beyond them. The arid mountains were brown and bare in spots, a stunning difference to the lush valley below. “We don’t do much sitting out here during the cold months.”

      “Or the front porch, either, I expect, if we get a whip wind.”

      “And yet we get enough pleasant weather to make a porch seem like something to come home to, don’t we?” She crossed to the open post, gazed out, then turned her attention back to him. “I know I said I’d wait, but I decided I want to replace the barn. How do we pick plans to present to the board? Do I need to hire an architect?”

      He motioned her closer. “I was just looking at some pole barn packages. You can go old-school with lumber and we can build a wooden barn, but the new pole barns are beautiful and cost-efficient.” He’d pulled up a web page of an appealing barn with overhangs on two sides. “I thought the porch covers would be good for outdoor displays. Protection from sun and rain. This model is lower and tighter with no wasted space and you could have a cooler big enough for the small forklift to bring bins in and out.”

      “It’s beautiful.”

      He nodded. “They’ve come a long way with these. You could go bigger, but I don’t think you need to. Room to store things in the back, room for a produce-type store up front and plenty of refrigerated space.”

      “How do we get plans and how do we present them to the building inspector?”

      “The plans are as easy as pressing a button,” he told her. “Do you have a printer?”

      “In the front room, yes.”

      “Wi-Fi enabled?”

      She rolled her eyes. “It’s supposed to be but isn’t, so I keep a cable attached.”

      He stood, laptop in hand. “Let’s print this up and get the ball rolling.”

      She stepped back.

      He didn’t want her to, because having her look over his shoulder—her long hair brushing his cheek as she leaned closer to check out the barn’s stats—was too good to resist.

      He was drawn to her. No denying that.

      Her pretty hair smelled of apples and spice. Did she do that purposely, because of the season? Or did she just like the shampoo?

      He wanted to know that and so much more, which meant he needed to put the brakes on. Steer clear. Trouble was, he didn’t want to. Just as he was thinking those dangerous thoughts, three cars rolled into the driveway. An unlikely looking crew of people piled out. Gert Johnson spotted them and came forward the way she always moved when she wasn’t driving a bus. Quickly. “We’re here to help, Libby.” She motioned to the six local bus drivers gathering around her. “You point us in the right direction and we’ll get things going because when Gert Johnson says she’ll do somethin’, she does it, and the same goes for this motley crew.”

      “I’ll find the printer,” he told Libby once he greeted the newcomers. “Then I’ll take folks into the orchard and we’ll get going on those Galas. How long have you got?” he asked the group, and Slim Viney spoke up first.

      “We’ve got afternoon bus runs at two forty, so we have to leave here by two fifteen to get back in time. And we’ll be doing this every day until the job’s done. That’s what folks do in Golden Grove.” He aimed a significant look in Libby’s direction. “They shore each other up when the chips are down.”

      “Sure do!” said Dora Donaldson, a stout but lively woman who helped run the church calendar for Golden Grove’s oldest church. Her great-grandfather had been one of the first settlers this side of Quincy, and he’d worked side by side with Jax’s great-grandfather a long time ago. Jax used his middle name as a surname here. If he uttered the name Ingerson, his relationship to CVF would be instantly known. Loved by some, hated by a few, his family had invested time and money to grow their business over four generations. He wasn’t one bit ashamed of that. He simply wanted to fly under the radar for a while.

      His conscience scoffed as he went inside to hook up his laptop.

       Three years and counting. That’s a long penance by anyone’s standards.

      Would it ever be long enough when four of his men drew a death sentence that day? A dull throbbing began to take root at his temples. A throbbing that could explode into a massive headache.

       Sit. Breathe. Do the relaxation techniques you’ve been taught. You can interrupt this cycle.

      But he had no time to sit and do the breathing exercises to relax the muscles that clenched when memories came flooding back. He needed to get the barn plans printed and get into that orchard. He’d offered his help. Painful head or not, he’d made a promise. Now he had to keep it.

      He frowned, crossed to the slim desk in the narrow hallway, hooked the laptop to the printer, printed a double set of plans, then checked on Cleve.

      The old man had dozed off in his chair. His food was untouched. Jax debated leaving it there or taking it back to the kitchen. In the end, he left it. Cleve might eat when he woke up or might forget to eat at all, another disease conundrum. He started to head out, but a group of photos on the nearby wall caught his eye. He moved closer.

      A middle-aged couple snuggled a