Love in Bloom

“Wonderful.”

He went off to fetch the rest of her purchases, leaving Lily and Isabella to unpack and arrange spools of ribbon according to color and width. When he returned, Lily helped him carry the furniture up to the apartment. She had something to sit on now, as well as a bedside table and a lamp. Later she would paint the rattan the same shade, hopefully, as the cushions and accessorize with a contrasting color, perhaps a rich yellow gold. She couldn’t think of that now, though. Instead she hurried back downstairs with Tate to get to work in the shop. The time flew by; she barely seemed to have time to think, and as the shop took shape, her excitement and her hope grew.

Only as Isabella began to flag, her little tummy rumbling, did Lily stop to take stock. That’s when she realized how much this one man and his sweet little daughter had accomplished for her. How could she not like them, him, just a little then? How could she not count them among her friends? Even if the relationship was predicated on business, they could still be friends, couldn’t they? So long as she didn’t let herself think of him as anything more than that, everything would be fine.

* * *

“I’m hungry.”

Tate tightened the last screw, stepped back and glanced at his wrist. “Is that the time? No wonder you’re hungry, honey. Wow. Where’d the day go?”

“Time flies when you’re having fun,” Lily quipped, getting up off the floor. Tate chuckled. She seemed to spend half her time on the floor—and the other half shoving her glasses back up her nose. He couldn’t help smiling and shaking his head.

“I think we’ve made good progress,” Tate said, putting away the screwdriver.

“We have, indeed,” she agreed. “Thank you both. Very much.”

“You’re welcome. Now we really have to get going.”

“I understand. If I don’t run, I won’t make it to the grocery before it closes.”

He made a face. “The store closed early for the holiday.”

She bowed her head. “I should have thought of that.”

“You can have dinner with us,” Isabella instantly invited. “Right, Dad? We got lots of leftovers from our barbecue at Grandma’s house today.”

Lifting her head, Lily blinked at Tate, and he blinked back. He couldn’t very well leave her without dinner, and he needed to get home sooner rather than later.

“Tell you what, we’ll pick up some burgers at The Everything on the way out to our place. I saw they were open today, and I have to get home to feed the livestock. It’s not far, so I can just drive you back in later after the fireworks.”

Obviously surprised, Lily hesitated. He found himself holding his breath until she smiled and nodded, which made no sense at all, except that Isabella would have been disappointed, of course.

“Okay. Do I have time to run upstairs first?”

“Sure. I can lock up here and get Isabella into the truck.”

“Great.” She handed over the keys and hurried out.

He turned off lights, locked the doors, ignored his daughter’s none-too-subtle babbling about how much she liked Lily and belted the matchmaking little magpie into her booster seat.

“She has pretty hair and eyes and hands,” Isabella said, “and she’s very nice, too.”

“That’s enough now,” he told her firmly. “I don’t want to hear any more about it. Understand?” Isabella nodded, but he’d seen that look in her eye before. “I mean it. I don’t have time for a girlfriend.”

“If you had a wife—”

“I had a wife,” Tate reminded Isabella softly. “I don’t want another.” She quieted finally, and he pulled out his cell phone, saying casually, “I’m going to call ahead and order our burgers now, but this is not a date. It’s just a nice thing to do for someone new in town on a holiday. Got it?”

“Got it.”

He doubted that, but he tapped his daughter on the end of her button nose and closed the truck door.

Lily came skipping down the stairs a couple minutes later in skinny jeans, athletic shoes and a snug red T-shirt.

Tate tried not to gulp, but he had the sudden feeling that he’d just made a very big mistake.

Chapter Four

“I, uh, called ahead for the burgers,” Tate managed, trying not to stare. “Ordered yours with everything but cheese. So, uh, that way you can take anything off the burger that you don’t want.”

Lily smiled that soft smile that did funny things to his insides and said, “That’s fine.”

“I ordered the condiments on the side, too.”

“Okay.”

He wanted to kick himself. Instead he said, “Let’s go then.”

He opened the passenger door for her, then wished he hadn’t because of the way she smiled and the way that smile made him feel. Lily hopped inside the truck, and Tate hurried around to do the same and start up the engine.

The street was deserted, so he hooked a U-turn, came to a stop at the four-way and turned left onto Bronson. Half a block later, he turned left again, bringing the truck to a stop in front of the L-shaped building across from the school.

“Interesting building,” Lily commented.

Tate chuckled. “If by interesting you mean cobbled together from an old house, a shed and a gas station.”

“Why is it called The Everything?”

“Well, it’s part convenience store, part grill and part gas station, which was just about everything we needed around here at the time.”

“What are the picnic tables for?”

“Extra seating, and it gives the local teens someplace to hang out even when the grill is closed. Velma Dill, one of the proprietors, sometimes nukes frozen pizzas for them. Her husband, Elwood, is one of the SOS Committee members. You’ll meet them at the reception after the Grand Opening.”

“He’s the one with the beard,” Isabella put in from the backseat.

Tate chuckled. “It’s a joke. The Dills are self-proclaimed hippies, the long-haired sort, in their early 50s, both with visible tattoos, earrings and headscarves. They basically dress and look pretty much alike.”

“But Elwood has a beard, I take it,” Lily surmised.

“A long, scraggly one. He’s actually a pretty good guy. Gives gasoline to folks who can’t pay, and there are a lot of those around since Randall shut down the plant.”

“I read about that,” Lily said.

“The Dills have really stepped up since Randall Manufacturing closed,” Tate told her. “We try to give them as much business as we can. They’re open today so folks who can’t afford to cook out can get burgers at half price.”

Lily nodded. “Good to know. I don’t have a car, but the store is certainly convenient, and a girl’s gotta eat. I’ll be sure to give them my business.”

Smiling, Tate went in and picked up the burgers and fries while Lily and Isabella waited in the truck. As he climbed back in a few minutes later, he heard his daughter saying, “And Dad doesn’t ever do anything fun.”

Imagining what else she’d said, Tate reached into the bag and took out a cardboard cup of fries, passing them back to her, along with a bottle of water. “Here. Eat these.” That ought to keep her little mouth busy.

Instead of heading on down Bronson Avenue and then taking a left on Church Street, Tate chose to head east on School Drive. That way Lily got to see Bronson Park, with its pretty pond, gazebo and playground. They turned back south on Granary Road and passed by the old Bronson Homestead. The house now contained the Public Library. Behind the Homestead, on property donated by the Bronsons, stood Bygones Community Church, which fronted on the aptly named Church Street. They passed a few residential streets and then drove over a cattle guard onto Bronson property.

“So it’s the city limit on one side and your place on the other,” Lily clarified. “You’re practically in town then.”

“Nope. House is still a mile or so away.”

She lifted her eyebrows at that, quipping, “This is quite a yard you’ve got here.”

He chuckled. “You could say that. It’s part of the original holdings. My folks’ house is about a half mile east of mine. We’re country folk. Wouldn’t know how to get along in town.”

“I’m a city girl,” she said. “Bygones doesn’t really feel like town to me.”

“All a matter of perspective, I guess,” he said.

“Yes, it is,” she agreed, looking around her.

He tried to see it as she did, the wide-open spaces, the fields gilded by the rising moon. It looked like peace to him. It looked like the whole world. It looked like home. He hadn’t prayed in a long while, but if he was going to pray, he would ask God to make this crazy scheme to save Bygones work out, for Lily Farnsworth’s sake as much as anyone’s.

* * *

Nothing Lily had seen thus far had prepared her for what she found at the end of the road. She had already discovered that the topography of the plains was deceptive. Though seemingly flat as pancakes, they were, in fact, low undulating hills, wherein lay small hidden valleys, so that what looked like shrubs in the distance gradually became trees tucked into broad, rolling folds. It came as no surprise then that, as they topped a shallow rise, a wide shady hollow spread out before them. No, the surprise was in how Tate had adapted his home to the natural beauty of his glade.

Lily’s gaze fell first on the barn in a field of golden, knee-high grass. Constructed in the shape of a large rectangle, the building’s walls of native stone supported the weight of its steep sheet-metal roof, while the upper diamond-shaped end walls were made of wood painted a deep, rich red. Corrals of stone, wood and metal pipe surrounded the barn, as well as several smaller outbuildings of the same dark red.

The two-story house mirrored the barn in construction, with the lower walls built of native stone and the upper portion of cedar planking stained a deep red. Even the roof was made of shiny corrugated sheet metal and extended to cover a deep porch that surrounded the house on three sides. The builder had somehow managed to tuck the house, which couldn’t have been more than ten years old yet managed to seem ageless, into a grove of mature hickory trees. Stone walkways completed the picture.

The whole place seemed to have emerged naturally from its surroundings, as if everything had grown there organically. God might have designed the land for these buildings. Certainly, whoever had designed the buildings had done so with the land in mind. To Lily’s thinking, the only thing the place lacked was flowers.

She wouldn’t have planted formal gardens. They would have looked out of place and ruined the natural ambience. Instead she would have added a rosebush here or there, and some hanging pots of flowers, a splash of color to draw the eye. She couldn’t think of another thing that she might have added, especially when she saw the rocking chairs and swing on the porch.

“It’s beautiful, Tate,” she whispered reverently, “just beautiful.”

He tossed her a smile as he guided the truck around a curve in the pebbled drive and toward the back of the house. “Thanks. It’s been a work in progress.” He glanced into the rearview mirror, addressing his daughter. “Pumpkin, will you take Lily and the food into the house? I need to get to the barn.”

“Sure, Daddy.”

“Can I help?” Lily asked.

He brought the truck to a halt in front of the open garage. “Ever feed livestock?”

“No, but I’m willing to learn.”

He turned to look at Isabella in the backseat. “What about you, Buttercup?”

“I’ll show Lily what to do.”

“Okay, then.”

He backed the truck out and headed for the barn. Two minutes later they were walking along a graveled path. Tate closed a gate at the back of the barn then went into a small room just inside the building.

“Open the stall doors. We have an automatic feed and water system for the horses that I can activate in here. We’ll have to feed the cattle up front by hand after I drive in the horses.”

Isabella showed Lily how to slide the gates open. They would have to quickly roll them closed again after the horses were inside. Once the automatic feed system started dumping grain into the bins, Tate grabbed a rope and walked out to one of the corrals. Soon hooves thundered through the barn. Isabella hopped up on a post and advised Lily to climb up behind her. Perhaps a dozen different horses swung into six stalls and dropped their noses into feed bins. Isabella plopped down to the straw strewn floor and started whisking the gates closed. Lily followed suit. Tate jogged up, coiling his rope, and helped finish the job.

He slung the rope over one shoulder and returned to the small room at the back of the building, reappearing a few moments later with a laden wheelbarrow. The girls followed him to a pen at the front of the barn. While Isabella and, belatedly, Lily, dumped feed into a bucket, Tate crawled over a fence and dropped a loop over the head of a good-size calf, which he then snugged to a post.

“Sugar, bring me the kit,” he said, running a hand down the calf’s flank to its belly. Isabella picked up a black zippered bag and handed it to Lily, who then carried it over to Tate. “Grab his tail,” he instructed, “but watch those back legs and don’t get yourself kicked.”

“Uh. Okay.”

He glanced up in surprise at Lily then shot his daughter a speaking glance before turning his attention back to the calf. “Pull on his tail. Just stay well back while I doctor him.”

Lily looked at Isabella, who nodded encouragingly, and grabbed hold of the swishing tail, stepping back and leaning away from the animal. It jerked and bawled, but Lily held on, reasoning that if Isabella could manage such a feat then she surely could. Crouching down next to the animal, Tate crooned a steady stream of encouraging words as he unzipped the kit, prepared a syringe and then irrigated a wound on the calf’s underside, explaining his actions as he went along. The animal didn’t really put up much of a fight. Apparently it had been through this process several times already. Tate ended by giving the ungrateful beast an injection, then he waved Lily away, released the calf’s head and chuckled as it trotted to the bucket to feed.

He and Lily walked to the fence. After helping her climb over, he passed the medical kit to Isabella and easily vaulted the fence himself. Lily and Isabella sat in the truck while Tate tossed bales of hay into the back before driving around to the corral in front. He cut the wire on the bales, and the three of them tossed the hay into the corral to feed the few head of cattle penned there for one reason or another.

They scrubbed their hands at a spigot beside the barn, using a bar of soap inside a net hanging by a chain, and ate their burgers sitting on the tailgate of the truck while the sky darkened and the stars began to pop out.

She said a quick, silent prayer of thanks for the meal, as was her habit, and took a bite. Now this, Lily thought, breathing deeply of the loamy smells of earth and animals and growing things, is more like it. While nothing at all like what she had imagined, this was somehow what she had been seeking when she’d filled out her grant application back in Boston. Strangely she finally felt that she was getting to know Bygones and Kansas. Or maybe it was that she was getting to know Tate and Isabella.

“Grandma and Grandpa will be here with the fireworks soon,” Tate observed, after chugging the last of his water and recapping the bottle.

“Time to strain the berry tea!” Isabella announced excitedly.

They climbed into the truck and drove to the house. This time Tate pulled into the neatly organized garage and everyone got out. Isabella led the way, chattering all the while about the special tea that had been steeping all day.

“It’s a berry special recipe,” she joked. “It come down in the family. We get the berries as soon as they’re dark enough. They grow practically on the ground, so you got to watch where you’re stepping, and when we get enough I boil ’em up with the leaves. Daddy helps me. And we cook the sugar in until you can’t even see it anymore. When it’s not hot, we put it in the fridge, and then after a long time, I pour it through a piece of material. What is it, Daddy?”

“Cheesecloth.”

“Oh, yeah. I don’t know why it’s called that, ’cause we don’t make cheese. We’re making tea, blue tea for Red, White and Blue Day! It’s tadition.”

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