LITMIR.BIZ

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closing her laptop.

      “She’s a rare one, exotic in her own way,” Josh said. “Good with animals and good with people. Most girls—young women—who weren’t being told about their real parents by their adoptive ones wouldn’t be so careful not to hurt them, at least I think so.” He leaned forward in his chair. “But did something happen in your past that kept you from liking animals, at least some animals?”

      Sandra jumped up from the table and started to pace, dining room to living room and back with jerky steps. “I wish I had a cigarette or a drink,” she muttered, wrapping her arms around herself as if she were cold.

      “I’m proud of you that you gave up smoking, and cider’s the strongest thing I have in the house.”

      “I wasn’t being serious! But—but yes, I once closed a closet door on my brother’s puppy when I was about six. I—I smashed his head, and he yelped and cried and I felt horrible when he died. I ran and hid in the basement, but had to face up to what I’d done. I swear, my brother hated me for months after that—years—and nothing my parents said about it being an accident made things better for me.”

      She sniffed hard and strode away again. “The thing is,” she said, her voice shaky and almost choked, “I think I meant to do it— I mean, looking back at it now, analyzing, playing my own shrink. Grandpa had given that dog to him, not me, and everyone was fussing over it. I was the first born, used to be the family princess, and then here came my brother and everyone doted on him...

      “Oh, damn—sorry,” she blurted out, but he wasn’t sure if the ‘sorry’ was for swearing or for telling him her painful story. “You just heard true confessions about what an idiot I was—still am.”

      He stood and snagged her arm when she passed again, hugged her awkwardly with one arm around her shoulders. “We all have things in our past that haunt us. Look at Lydia, even me.”

      “You? Such as what?”

      “I agonized over jumping the fence, you know, leaving home to pursue my dream of working at a zoo for several years. I hurt my mother. I’m regretful to this day that her grieving, even though I hadn’t yet joined the church and so wasn’t shunned, probably made her cancer worse and hastened her death. And that I was too late getting a ride back here and didn’t get to say a final goodbye. But you’re not going to hurt animals ever again, or be hurt by them, and my mother needed to accept my dreams, even if they weren’t to work the fields and milk cows with Daad and my brothers.”

      She pulled away and blew her nose. “That— You helped me. Lydia did, too, like you say, cutting to the heart of things. You know what? I have a bumper sticker I should put on the back of the car that says, I Brake for Squirrels. I do, really. Now, camels and donkeys, I don’t know, but maybe later, sometime while I’m here, I’ll go out to the barn with you or Lydia. Now, what in the world is keeping her?”

      * * *

      “You been up to the house?” Connor called to Lydia as she approached him down a row of white pines that were not quite as tall as he was. Next year’s trees, she guessed. “My mother’s in town with my wife.”

      “I heard. I was just helping some of our women deliver food for the funeral and thought I’d walk home. This is like a well-ordered forest,” she said, with a sweep of her gloved hand at the acres of trees. She noticed he had hastily put aside what looked like a spray paint gun. Ya, she could see he’d been spraying some of these trees with a green paint that smelled. On closer look, some did seem a bit brown on the tips—wilted.

      “Not that well-ordered. It’s a struggle. I was just touching up some of these with insecticide where a beetle’s been at them. See. They have a few dead needles, but I just knock those off.”

      Though she was no expert, Lydia knew this wasn’t the time of year to be spraying for insects. And that was paint for sure, so was he doing something wrong by covering up the wilted branches? She decided she’d better not ask or let on she suspected him of lying and maybe more. For a moment, she just watched him handle two pitchforks, one in each hand as he quickly knocked dead needles off the tree. But it seemed to her the needles falling to the snow were more than a few.

      “Besides,” he said, “the darn deer have been nipping the tops off seedlings on the other side of the hill, and here I am worrying about pests I can’t even see. But,” he said, stepping closer, “I’ll find a way to get rid of them.”

      “Hopefully, these trees will be all right by next year.”

      “They’re for this year—apartment size.”

      When he frowned at her, she said in a rush, “I wanted to tell you I’m sorry about your aunt—that she died that way. I know you’ll be too busy at the funeral and meal to tell you then, but please accept our sympathy, from both Josh and me.”

      Her voice broke. She shouldn’t have spoken for Josh. It almost sounded as if they were a couple. As usual, she felt awkward around Connor Stark, especially since he had a pitchfork in each hand. But he stabbed them through the snow and into the ground where they shuddered a moment, then stilled. Although Connor had been around as long as she remembered, she hadn’t been alone with him for years.

      “You heard the coroner’s ruling?” he asked, examining another tree limb that looked diseased, even to her untrained eye.

      “Ya. Ray-Lynn Freeman told me.”

      “Whatever you hear about Victoria Keller, Lydia, we tried our best with her, but she was, to put it nicely, beyond help.”

      He moved around her to examine a tree slightly up the hill as if he didn’t want her to be looking down on him. When there was no snow on the ground, he often rode a golf cart around, but he’d obviously walked here today, carrying that equipment. And if his work was all on the up-and-up, why didn’t he send one of his seasonal workers to take care of it?

      “So,” he said, shaking snow from a tree bough and staring at it, “would you like a job working at the tree barn for the next couple of weeks? I know you work for your father, but Gid Reich mentioned how good you are with customers there. It would be only for a couple of hours an evening, if you want. You wouldn’t have to run the cash register. Just oversee doughnuts and cocoa, chat people up.”

      “Gid suggested it? That figures. He doesn’t like me working with the Yoder animals.”

      “He’s pretty sweet on you, I’d say, and probably doesn’t want you to get hurt—by the animals or the situation.”

      Lydia was going to ask him what situation he was referring to, as if she didn’t know, but Connor went on, “Gid’s one of my new investors in the tree farm. I’ve taken several locals on and plan to buy more land to the north, hire on some extra help since I’m now also ‘Mr. Mayor’ and my mother’s gone a lot.”

      “I thank you for the job offer, and your family has always been kind to me, but—”

      “My mother, especially. Some like to help stray animals, but she is always into causes for people—in her capacity as state senator, I mean. So, you’d better be heading home.”

      Connor’s words reminded Lydia about the time he’d ordered her off their property years ago. Of course, it must have been hard on him to lose a father he’d adored to an illness with the big name of multiple myeloma. He was being kind now, at least, wasn’t he? Yet she sensed an edge to him. Others had mentioned it, too—their smiling new mayor with the invisible chip on his shoulder when he seemed to have so much going for him.

      “See you tomorrow, Connor. I appreciate the job offer, but no thanks.”

      “Yeah, sure. I’ll see you.”

      Lydia did not look back as she hurried down the hill, taking small strides so she wouldn’t slip. She’d pop in to tell her mother she was heading straight for Josh’s and she was late.

      Still, it was the strangest thing. Maybe it was because she thought she’d caught Connor doing

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