Apple Orchard Bride

Jenna felt like she was going to throw up.

Why wouldn’t Toby go away? Just. Go. Away.

A charge buzzed over her skin as if she were still touching the electric fence. He was invading her safe place. Her escape. Her mind instantly flew to a darker place. To a date in college with a very different man, who had invaded not only her space but her body, taking her innocence and destroying her faith in other people in one night.

She’d survived the past eight years since then by carefully constructing a life that kept her safe and protected at all times. Only interacting with other people on her terms—like at church or the farmers’ market or at the Bible study she attended—and then spending the rest of her time locked away. Alone. Safe.

The only man she really trusted was her father. He was the only one she was okay with being near. Toby living on her dad’s property messed up her protected space. She couldn’t feel secure here if she had to worry about running into him all the time. Not that Toby would harm her physically—she didn’t believe that of her old friend for one second—but the feeling of invasion made her gasp for air all the same.

A line of sweat slipped down her spine. They were in for another hot day.

Her father didn’t know, would never know, about the assaults that happened to her during college. He wouldn’t be able to comprehend why Jenna was so vehemently opposed to Toby living in the bunkhouse. The only way to get Dad to agree would be to tell him about the horrible things she’d overheard Toby say about his beloved orchard all those years ago and hope it fired Dad up enough to tell Toby to take a hike. Although... Dad could be frustratingly full of grace and forgiveness. It was a trait she had admired and loved about him until this very moment.

When she rounded the edge of the last row of trees, her two-story white farmhouse came into view. Although, instead of the normal, peaceful feelings that the sight of her family home usually brought, she zeroed in on all that was wrong with it. The house hadn’t been painted in years, probably because Dad had been declining for longer than anyone—even he—realized. Huge chunks of white were missing from sections of the lower portion of the house, and both sets of stairs and the front and side overhangs drooped. The gray-green roof had seen better days. The state of the house resembled Toby’s high school statements about the Crests being podunk and backward.

“I want to stay.” Toby’s voice broke through her thoughts. “I want to help here.”

“We don’t need you.” She sped up her stride, making it to the back steps a moment later. She yanked open the screen door, and it shuttered on its ancient frame. “Dad!” she called. “We need to talk.”

A bowl of oatmeal sat untouched and cold at the kitchen table. She glanced at the digital numbers on the oven. Almost nine in the morning. She’d been out longer than she’d planned, but Dad should have finished eating by now.

Worry gnawing at the back of her mind, Jenna left the kitchen and made for the front of the house. Because it was built more than a hundred years ago, there was no such thing as an open floor plan in their farmhouse, just little divided areas.

“Dad!” Her voice grew louder. Why wasn’t he answering?

Jenna all but ran into the front sitting room and screamed when she saw her father lying, facedown, on the floor. Chunks of a broken mug were scattered near where one of his hands rested in a pool of coffee, but more concerning was the small puddle of red near where his forehead rested.

“Dad! No! No! No!” she yelled and fell to her knees beside him. She touched his shoulder. Still warm. Alive. Thank You, God.

“Toby!” she screamed. “Toby, help!” The infuriating man had followed her all over the orchard but hadn’t followed her into the farmhouse. He must have heard her call, though, because his echoing steps pounded into the house.

“Jenna?” His voice lifted in question.

“Front room!” She turned her attention back to her dad. “Daddy.” She tapped his shoulders again. “Please be okay. I need you to be okay.” She smoothed her hand over his back. Should she move him? Flip him over? She probably wasn’t strong enough to do it while still supporting his neck. That’s what a person was supposed to do when someone passed out, right? Turn them on their back and start chest compressions? Or would that harm him? If something was wrong with his neck or back, movement might further injure him. She didn’t want to make the decision on her own. “Toby!” she yelled again. Hurry up!

“Jen—” Toby’s face fell when he entered the room. “What happened?” He dropped down beside her.

“I don’t know. I found him like this.” Her words trembled as tears started to crash down toward her chin. “I can’t lose him, Tobe.” Her childhood name for him slipped out before she could rein it in. She pressed on. “Will you help me roll him over?”

Toby eased closer. “Call 9-1-1. If he needs it, I know CPR.”

“But—” Feeling completely out of control in the situation, she froze. She wanted to curl up in a ball and let Toby take care of everything. But Dad needed her.

“Now, Jenna. Call.” Toby looked back at her father. He gently cupped where the nape of Dad’s neck met his hair and flipped him onto his back. The line of blood on her dad’s temple shifted to run down the side of his face. He looked as if he had on fake paint for a monster costume. On the positive side, if the gash was still bleeding, then he couldn’t have been passed out long.

Toby grabbed her father’s wrist and leaned close to his chest. “He has a pulse and he’s breathing. Call, Jenna. Go call for help.”

Dial 9-1-1. Right. Her cell phone. She felt in her pockets. She hadn’t grabbed it earlier. Jenna started for the kitchen but stopped when she heard a quiet groan.

Toby smiled. “He’s awake.”

Her dad blinked a few times and then tried to sit up, but Toby stayed him with a hand to his shoulder. “Easy, now, Mr. Crest. You fell. We found you passed out. We’re going to call an ambulance for you.”

“No.” Her father pressed his eyes shut and groaned again. “No ambulance. I won’t leave my house that way.”

Toby sent Jenna a look that said “What now?” It was only an uneven lift of his eyebrows, but she knew him well enough to know what all his facial expressions meant.

“Daddy.” She slowly stepped back into the room, as if he might scare if she walked normally. “You’re bleeding. You were unconscious. We need to get you to the hospital.”

“Stop your worrying, the both of you.” Dad started to try to rise to a sitting position again, so Toby braced his back and helped him up. Toby pulled one of the chairs closer so her father could lean against it.

Dad gingerly touched his temple. “It was nothing.”

“Nothing?” Jenna arched her eyebrow. “Like your hands shaking were nothing this morning?”

“I tripped on the carpeting and knocked my head on the arm of that chair on the way down.” He pointed at the curled-over edge of their large rug and the wooden armrest on one of the two antique chairs that flagged the sitting area. “That’s all. It could happen to anyone. Even someone strong and fit like you or Toby.”

“Even still.” Toby exchanged another worried look with Jenna. “We’d like to get you to the hospital.”

Her father set his jaw. “I’m not climbing into an ambulance.”

“They help you into it—” Toby started to say.

Jenna shook her head. “That’s not what he means.” Dad could be more stubborn than dried tar. Which was probably where she got that particular trait from.

Jenna disappeared into the kitchen and grabbed her keys, her cell phone and a clean dish towel from the counter. She marched back into the sitting room and jangled the keys. “I’m driving you there.” She tossed the kitchen towel to Toby. “Press that to his cut.”

Toby did as instructed. And as if reading her mind, when they were ready to leave, Toby wrapped his arm around her father and helped him walk to the car.

“I’ll sit in back.” Dad motioned toward the backseat of her late-model Camry. “I may want to lie down.”

Toby made sure her dad was buckled in. “Try not to fall back to sleep. I’m sure they’ll want to check you for a concussion,” he instructed before claiming the passenger seat.

Jenna started up the car and backed out of their driveway without looking over at Toby. If he hadn’t been there...if she’d been all alone and something happened to her father...something worse...what would she have done? Would she have been able to clear her mind enough to call for help? She wanted the answer to that question to be yes, of course. But whenever panic clawed its way into her chest, it seemed to affect her ability to think, as well. What if something happened to her father and she couldn’t help him because she was in the middle of an anxiety attack?

Toby was right. She needed another person at the orchard. She needed help.

Now to taste humble pie.

“Thank you,” she whispered so only Toby could hear. No need to stress her father out in his condition; he didn’t need to know that she and Toby had been arguing.

“For?” Toby’s eyebrows rose.

“Coming when I called...even after...” She swallowed hard and tried to make her voice even. “After what I said to you.”

“Listen.” He angled his body so he was leaning over the middle control area and lowered his voice. “From what I’ve gathered, there’s some water under the bridge that you and I need to sort through. And we will. But no matter what—and hear me on this, Jenna—no matter what happens between us, I’ll always come if you call for me. Got that? Always.”

She sucked in a shaky breath and nodded. Toby wanted to deal with their issues? Was that even possible? And if they did sort through everything...then what? They weren’t kids running through the apple orchard any longer—they could never go back to those carefree days. After everything that had happened in both of their lives, they could never go back to their old, easy friendship.