By afternoon, when the box delivery came, Ella was certain that something was wrong.
“What do I do with these?” he asked as they surveyed the flats of boxes her mom had just signed for.
“Well, we have to put them together before we can pack up the sweet potatoes,” she told him. “But Mom and I are going to the Thanksgiving celebration at Dove’s school now. You should take the afternoon off too, and we’ll start work on it together later.”
Dalton frowned.
“You could come to the school with us, if you want,” she heard herself offer. “It’s a fun event.”
“No time like the present,” Dalton said, heading over to the boxes.
The man is all work and no play, she thought to herself as she watched him pull out a pocketknife to cut the ties on the first flat.
The celebrationat the school was as joyful as Ella remembered from her own days as a student. The children sang “’Tis a Gift to be Simple” and there was the expected tableau of Native Americans and Pilgrims. Principal Tucker thanked the teachers one by one with art and poems created by the kids, some of which were so funny that the teachers had tears in their eyes from trying not to chuckle as they stood on the stage to be honored.
Afterward, Ella got looped into a conversation with some other parents, and when Dove wanted to get hot cocoa and pumpkin soup in town at Jolly Beans with two of her friends and their families, Ella and her mom hadn’t wanted to say no.
By the time they finally got back to the farm, it was past their usual dinnertime, but there was a light on in the barn. When they got into the house, Dad said Dalton hadn’t come back up since lunch.
“That boy,” Mom said, shaking her head and moving toward the door like she was going to march down to the barn and drag him back to the house by the ear.
“I’ll get him,” Ella heard herself volunteer.
Mom’s eyebrows lifted, but she nodded and followed Dove into the kitchen to put a copy of the poem she had written for her teacher on the fridge.
Ella pulled her boots back on and headed out without a coat. She had a warm sweater on over her skirt and blouse, and it would only take a minute to call Dalton back in.
As she opened the front door, she was hit by a draft of late fall wind that lifted her hair and sent a shiver down her spine.
Hurrying down the path to the barn, she thought about how she had always found this time of year spooky when she was a little girl. Trees that had been flaming with fall colors just a few weeks ago were almost all bare now, their branches reaching for the black sky like bony fingers, where a silvery crescent of the moon peeked out from behind a thin veil of clouds.
I’m not scared anymore,she told herself.
But that wasn’t entirely true. Grownup Ella might not be scared of witches and ghosts. But sometimes she felt like she was afraid of just about everything else. She worried that growing up without her father was bad for Dove. She was scared about her parents and their health.She was afraid for the future of the farm and whether the highway would change the way of life in the little town she loved.
And lately, she was scared of the way she felt whenever Dalton Tyler’s gaze landed on her.
The door to the barn let out a loud creak as she pushed it open.
“Hey…” she began, but trailed off as she forgot what she had been about to say.
A single bulb hung from the big wooden rafters, casting a pale glow on the wood planks below. A shaft of moonlight coming through the back window was the only other illumination.
In that half-light, she could see what had to be hundreds of boxes in stacks taking up at least a quarter of the barn floor. It was so many boxes—too many for one person to possibly construct in a day.
Just as that thought occurred, she sensed movement and saw Dalton standing in the corner, his pocketknife glinting as he prepared to release the boxes from another flat.
“What are you doing?” she asked softly.
Her voice echoed very slightly in the huge space, and with no noise coming in from outside, the warmth of her tone felt almost intimate.
“Putting together boxes,” Dalton replied without looking up.
“Why are you still here?” she asked him. “Why did you do so many?”
“We need them all, right?” he asked.
“Dalton,” she said, moving closer. “Are you okay?”
