Isaac, she wrote absentmindedly next to the drawing.
Startled at what she’d done, Sanna threw the pencil across the room. One day with him, and he’d already wormed his way under her skin. She didn’t want him—or any man—around to complicate her life. All she wanted was to run the orchard and make cider. Her life was uncomplicated, and she preferred it that way: trees, apples, cider. Unfussy. Hardworking. Simple.
“You want to talk about it?” Sanna jumped as her dad’s face appeared in the window as he balanced on a ladder to reach the second-story panes.
“No, Pa. I don’t.”
He studied her through the broken glass, outlined by the sunny morning behind him.
“It’s been too long since you had new people in your life. You closet yourself in this barn too much.”
“I go out with Thad.” She picked at the corner of her journal, folding and unfolding it.
“Don’t make me laugh. I don’t know why you waste your time. He only wants our land and you very well know it. Plus Mrs. Rundstrom is a nightmare.”
Sanna gave a little smile. He wasn’t wrong about Mrs. Rundstrom—that woman once complained to a room full of mourners about the poor caliber of casseroles at a post-funeral luncheon, then filled large plastic containers with them, which she shoved into her purse. Last year, Sheriff Dibble found her loading her truck with wood from trees cut down in the state park even though she knew they sold that wood to campers for firewood. Sanna knew for a fact—from Thad Rundstrom, her son—that all of the perennials in her garden, including a rare pink peony, were dug up from various yards and parks around town in the dead of night.
And she didn’t really know why she wasted time with Thad, either. He’d become a convenient habit. They had dated during college, but had settled into a friendship when they graduated. Early on, he’d tried to rekindle their romance, but she had no interest. They would see movies, grab dinner, and talk orchards every couple of weeks. She’d assumed he’d eventually find someone new and that would be the end of that, but in the meantime, he was decent company. They each knew where they stood with the other. No expectations, just company. It was simple.
“Why don’t you wait for Isaac to help you with that?” she said. “You did hire him to help you around here.” She looked down at the drop, and it was higher than she thought. He scowled at her.
“I’ve been fixing things around here for years without someone watching my back.” He tugged at the windowpane to loosen it, needing to get it out to replace the broken glass.
“You just told me you were getting too old to do everything.” He kept working and ignored her worry. Sanna picked up the Ziploc of melting cider and turned back to her blending, already drifting off toward that rosy pink she was so drawn to today. If she hurried, she could have it blended before Isaac and Bass arrived. “Fine. If you fall, I won’t visit you in the hospital.”
“Ow, dammit.” Her father’s curse broke her concentration, and she was about to scold him for handling broken glass without gloves. At his age, he should know better. But a screech of wood ripped her back to the present. She turned in time to see her dad’s arms flailing backward, the ladder sliding off to the left and falling with a clatter so loud it almost muffled the sound of Einars hitting the ground and another awful noise she didn’t want to dwell on. Her stomach jolted even harder. The silence after the fall pushed her into action, and she dashed out the barn’s side door, down the grassy slope, and around the corner of the building, unable to move fast enough, the air turning to molasses she had to power through. Incapable of looking at her father yet, her eyes moved instead to Isaac tearing out of the trees at a dead sprint straight to where her father lay.
Isaac didn’t even glance at Sanna but knelt beside Einars. She finally looked at her dad. His right side had taken the brunt of the fall. His forehead already bled from where it had smacked the gravelly ground, his wrist flopped at an odd angle, but the worst was his leg. As he had fallen, it had gotten trapped in between ladder rungs. Bile rose up her throat at the sight of blood soaking his jeans, which folded as if they were draped across the end of a bed, perfectly normal except there was a leg still inside. At least he seemed to have passed out from the pain, or was he . . . ?
Sanna finally knelt on the side of her dad opposite Isaac and their eyes met.
“Is he?”
“He’s breathing.” He pointed to the shallow rise and fall of Einars’s chest. “Do you have a phone on you?”
Sanna shook her head no.
“Get mine. Back pocket. Right side.” Sanna stood to move around to Isaac’s rear when Bass appeared, his shorter legs not able to move as fast as his father’s longer ones. It had been moments since her father had tumbled to the ground, but it already stretched into hours of torment. She couldn’t react fast enough. Bass grabbed the phone from his dad’s pocket and did as his father instructed, but Sanna couldn’t make sense of anything. All that registered was her strong, always-there father not moving, barely breathing, broken on the ground.
Bass held the phone up to Isaac, who nodded as he listened to the calm voice on the other end. He stripped off his long-sleeve plaid shirt and tore it in two, using one-half and a thick stick to tie a tourniquet on Einars’s leg in confident, quick motions. Blood already smeared his hands and jeans.
A tiny part of her acknowledged that his steadfastness soothed her, the part that wasn’t shutting down from panic.
She’d never seen her father so pale—his skin had always had a faint pink to it, unable to contain the vitality flowing through his veins. Or so still. A tree always needed trimming, grass mowing, or a windowsill painting. Even at night, he made dinner, dusted knickknacks, straightened pictures. He was a perpetual motion machine when his eyes were open, grace in his long-limbed movements—always strong and capable.
“Sanna, here.” Isaac held a folded square of plaid out to her, interrupting her thoughts. “Press this to the cut on his forehead.” Detached, she watched her hand grab it and her knees bend—then she didn’t know what else to do. Isaac wrapped one of his hands around hers—his long fingers gentle and firm at once while leaving smears of her father’s blood on her own pale skin, guiding her to the spot where it trickled down his temple. “Be firm, with the palm of your hand.”
He opened her palm one finger at a time, then pressed it to the wound—his hand covering hers. He was so confident, surely this would all be okay. She could do this. Focus on the task at hand.
“Keep it there.”