Frowning, Oliver stacked them back the way they’d been while Mom provided Oliver and Anna with dossiers on her two grandchildren that Oliver and Anna obviously cared nothing about.
The visitors who’d taken Sam’s tour moved toward the farm stand with their apples. Anna snapped to attention when they were just feet away, as if she hadn’t seen them coming, as if they’d materialized out of thin air.
Sam strode toward Genevieve and her parents wearing a white T-shirt, his black baseball cap, and black jeans.
“Everything running smoothly?” he asked her.
“Very smoothly.”
Sam greeted her parents courteously.
In Sam, her mother at last found an audience willing to give her undivided attention while she spoke about her children and grandchildren.
It wooed Genevieve, watching Sam listen so carefully to her mom.
As soon as Oliver finished unfixing every fix Anna had made to the farm stand, Oliver clapped Sam on the shoulder. “Samuel. Never fear, I’ve been guiding your guests through your garden with the utmost respect. One couple so appreciated the recipe for tamales I rattled off and the tidbits I shared regarding sustainable farming practices that they asked to take a photo with me. I consented, of course.”
“Thanks, Oliver.”
“CanIhave a picture with you?” Anna asked Oliver. “You look so cute today—like an ad for fly fishing.”
“I beg your pardon. I’m clearly attired for gardening—”
“Fly fishing is super boring,” Anna said, apparently forgetting her fleeting plan to snap a picture. “Also, the river is really cold. I went with my family once, and we couldn’t figure out why our feet were freezing because our guide was fine. We found out later that our waders were leaking. Our feet were standing in puddles of water! No wonder our toes were freezing. Which reminds me, I need a pedicure.”
Oliver regarded Anna with deep disdain.
“Genevieve has such a wonderful way of communicating her thoughts,” Mom was saying to Sam. “So relatable. That the Lord has called one of our children to serve Him in this way means so much to us. What a rich, rich blessing. He is so good.”
Genevieve intervened before Mom could bathe Sam in the full spectrum of her emotions. “So far, my parents have only seen the farm stand,” she said to him. “I’m about to show them around.”
“If you’d like to see the apple orchard, we can get there quickly on my ATVs,” Sam told her dad.
Instantly, Dad perked up. “I’d like that. How many ATVs do you have?”
“Two. Each one can carry two of us.”
They made their way to the barn. Mom sat behind Dad, which meant Genevieve was paired with Sam. He slung a leg over the four-wheeler first. Oh my. This was going to throw the two of them into very close proximity. She positioned herself as respectfully far behind him on the seat as she could without jeopardizing her life.
“Hang on,” he murmured.
Tentatively, she set her hands on his lean sides. Sensation rolled up her arms, stealing her breath.
They shot through the open mouth of his barn going what felt like sixty miles an hour.
Their vehicles ate up the ground as the earth rose, fell, andturned. Whiffs of Sam’s delicious soap kept snapping back to her on the breeze. Through the fabric of his shirt, the contact of her palms against his ribs radiated heat.
They were going faster than she would’ve chosen to go on her own. The exhilaration of that, plus the air singing against her face and the beautiful landscape, made her feel as though she was one hundred percent alive.
This is what life is, Genevieve.
She needed more living in her life. Now that she was adjusting to the slower and quieter rhythm of the farm, she’d realized that she’d made constant activity into an idol worth pursuing. She’d spent more time crafting social media posts to make it look like she was flourishing than she’d invested inactualflourishing. She’d let her work consume too much... . But then, she’d always found it hard to know where to draw the line. How could anything she did for Jesus be considered too much?
When they reached the orchard, Sam stepped from the ATV, then helped her off, his touch sure.
As their group walked along the rows between the lines of apple trees, he answered her parents’ questions and explained the varieties he grew. The oldest section of the orchard had been planted in the 1800s and contained historic strains like the Yellow Transparent, Red Detroit, Early Rus, and the Esopus Spitzenburg apple. “Which was Thomas Jefferson’s favorite,” Sam said. “He ordered twelve apple trees for Monticello.”
He indicated the far portion of the orchard, populated by smaller trees. “When I moved in, I planted newer varieties. Honeycrisp, Rome Beauty, Red Delicious, and Granny Smith.”
