His eyes caught on the glossy oak casket, the dozens of deep red roses arranged on top like a crown. He’d help bear Grams to her final resting place beside Gramps, and as the song finished and the congregation returned to their seats, a slip of joy moved through him.
I will always be with you.
The words slithered through his mind, and he did hear it in Grams’s voice. Tears flooded his eyes as Willa Glover made her way to the mic.
Grams had told him so many times that she’d always be with him. When he went to college. When he’d come home and started his own business. When he’d bought the farm from his grandparents. And just last week, the day before she’d passed.
He pressed his fist to his heart, the way the Glovers always did, hoping to seal Grams in his heart forever. He knew he’d need her to get through the things he still had coming in his life.
“I asked her once,” Willa said in her beautiful, smooth, graceful voice. “What she thought the most important thing in life was. She smiled at me and said, ‘Mercy, Willa. People need mercy more than they know. It’s how God loves us, and it’s how we ought to love each other.’”
Conrad let out a shaky breath, because Grams had been the first and quickest to forgive him. Even with all the things he’d done, she’d been there, standing in the doorway, arms open—just the way he believed Jesus had done for her when she’d finally returned to His rest.
She wouldn’t be just in the other room anymore, and he couldn’t text or call her when something troubled him. But Conrad absolutely believed that Grams was still with him, and would always be with him.
She was gone, yes.
But she’d never, ever be forgotten.
15
Brandon pulled onto the homestead, pure energy crackling through his bloodstream. He wasn’t sure if it was because he was an hour late returning after being gone all day yesterday, or if it was because he was excited to be back, or if the charge in the air meant he really just wanted to see Lenore again.
Or if things simply felt different around the homestead because of their hard work on it these past couple of weeks.
He’d power-washed the barn on Tuesday morning, as the sun lit the day. He’d sealed all the chinks between the logs and fixed any problems with the roof and wood. Lenore had said she needed to go shower and that she would pick up the stain at the hardware store yesterday while Brandon was at the funeral, and once they had the wood re-stained, they’d finally get that project crossed off their list.
The barn indeed had good bones, with a solid cement footing, a large tack room and storage space, and three stalls for animals. The loft would hold enough hay to feed a cow and a horse through the winter, and Brandon lamented the fact that he might never get to see alfalfa stored there.
After all, he wouldn’t be here after February first.
“Yeah, but you’re dating Lenore,” he muttered to himself as her cabin came into view. It looked different now without the greenhouse on the north side. Brandon brought his truck to an easy stop as he gazed at the homestead.
Now, he compared it to what it had been the first time he’d come here—all of the leaning posts and dilapidated fencing had been cleared, the piles of debris moved to behind the barn, so Brandon knew what supplies he had at his disposal.
He’d started the chicken coop and worked on it on Tuesday and Wednesday, after showing Lenore how to plane the logs into flat pieces of lumber. He’d used eight-foot trees of four-inch diameter trunks to lay the footprint for the chicken coop, and he’d stretched industrial animal wire around it, which would keep foxes, coyotes, and hawks away from the birds. He’d started the house on the ground, but he’d put it up on the foundation once he’d finished it, and he’d asked Dawson and Duke to come help him with that installation tomorrow.
That meant he had to get the chicken coop completed today, and when he saw the gleaming pile of cut lumber, he knew that wouldn’t be a problem.
He smiled at Lenore’s house because she’d been here on the homestead by herself yesterday, and she’d clearly been working. He eased his foot off the brake and the truck moved forward again, giving him a better view of the south side gardening area. She’d hauled all of the cinder blocks around the house and brought over the tires using the skid steer, and Brandon grinned at the memory of her behind the controls, mastering machinery she’d never used before.
She’d arranged the tires in a fantastic wind break that went up to the middle of the windows that would seep heat into the greenhouse even at night. Then she’d filled those with dirt too, and she’d put the cinderblock all around the greenhouse and tires and then filled them with dirt too. She’d plant in each ofthose spaces too, and he could practically see the plants spilling out of previously unused tires and cinder blocks in his mind.
She’d selected logs from their pile of felled trees and moved them to the gardening area just before quitting on Wednesday. Brandon could see the things she’d worked on yesterday, as she now had five raised beds in the field, only a few steps from her front porch.
“Way to go, Lenny,” he said, a measure of pride filling him for some unknown reason. He’d sketched this out for her and told her to do five-by-ten-foot beds with walking paths between them, but she was the one who’d done the work. They’d talked through using two logs for the beds, as they didn’t need to be very high, and it looked like she still had one last one to finish down at the end.
He didn’t have any of the plastic sheeting or the wiring to make the covering either, and Brandon had to remind himself that every job got done one step at a time.
He’d texted Lenore several times yesterday and had not gotten a single response. Snakes coiled in his gut as he continued toward his cabin, where he quickly unloaded the groceries Zona had sent home with him, downed an energy drink, and headed back out to the homestead.
He’d no sooner closed his front door before he heard the rumbling engine of the skid steer. He paused on the porch and watched Lenny expertly maneuver it with two more logs balanced on the front shelf. She’d found bungee cords in the debris pile, and she’d used them to keep the logs from rolling off.
She started to buzz by his house, the skid steer coming to an abrupt halt right behind his truck. Then Lenore poked her head around the end of it. “You’re back.”
“Sorry I’m late,” he said. “I got a bunch of stuff from Arizona for you too.” He came down the stairs quickly and approached her. He hadn’t kissed her after their date on Monday night, andhe had no idea what propelled him forward now—probably the raw urge to hold her and tell her how much he had missed this place yesterday.
Oh, yeah, all of the electric energy in the air belonged to the charge between him and Lenore. His own feelings surprised him, but he swept Lenore into his arms, which left her stumbling for balance.
