Page 20 of Over the Verdant Hills
Claire wasn’t sure exactly how she felt about that. On the one hand, eggs and home-baked bread might be nice things to sell to the tourists, but she also loved how quaint and quiet and almost unchanged Raspberry Ridge was from when she was younger. Other than the healing garden, which was a definite asset, most of the town had stayed the same. Tourists would change all that.
But tourists would also give people business and keep them from needing to move out of town.
She looked up at the hill—just barely visible in the distance was the old Lakeside Inn. Maybe someone would even reopen it.
She could imagine how derelict it was, since it had looked old andrun-down when she was a kid. Maybe someone would just bulldoze it down, and the idea of reopening it was a pipe dream.
For some reason, she thought about Josiah and her, how they were helping to fix up Grandma’s old farmhouse.
Maybe they could buy the inn and… Wait. Was she trying to think of things for her and Josiah to do together? What was wrong with her?
She pulled her earbuds out of her pocket and stuck them in her ears. Normally she listened to her Bible while she walked, but she’d had so much on her mind, she’d started out without them. She needed to empty her mind of all her worldly thoughts and cares and fill it with God’s word. That had been the best start to her day she could have imagined. Maybe that was the reason everything seemed to be shifting into a more positive mindset.
Chapter Eight
“This smells amazing,” Josiah said as he walked into the kitchen, his nose in the air, smelling fresh, warm, homemade bread. It was not quite noon, and the bread was done. Claire had said they might as well go in and eat.
He was all over that. He had made breakfast for himself this morning—fried eggs with a few vegetables thrown in. He supposed most people would call it an omelet, but he didn’t get fancy with it. His mom hadn’t had anything—she hadn’t been hungry. He’d reminded her that there was yogurt and fruit in the fridge before he left.
His dad was home, and it wasn’t his problem. Not really, although it was his mother, so he would always care, even if he wasn’t necessarily obligated to be the one who took care of her.
“As I recall, I owe you at least two pieces,” Claire said. She’d warmed up to him, and he appreciated the fact that she smiled a friendly smile as she turned around with two thick, crusty pieces of bread with big slabs of butter melting on top of each.
“I don’t think I need anything else for lunch other than this,” he said, grinning at her and then smiling at Miss Mattie.
She looked tired, and he noted several bruises on her arms. It was funny that Claire hadn’t seemed to notice, or maybe she had and MissMattie had brushed them off. Still, Claire did not seem the slightest bit worried.
“Miss Mattie, come sit down. I can do whatever it is you’re doing.”
“You will not. You’re taking care of your mom. When you’re here, we take care of you.”
He did not miss the fact that Claire rolled her eyes behind her grandmother’s back. Then she saw him looking at her, and she looked a little bit embarrassed but did not duck her head.
Instead, she shrugged her shoulders a little bit like “whatever.”
Yeah, she didn’t particularly like “taking care” of him. And he couldn’t say that he blamed her. They were practically strangers. Just because he enjoyed talking to her when they worked outside together didn’t mean anything.
Finally, Miss Mattie sat down in a chair, and she seemed to do it gingerly, like her joints were aching too.
Claire seemed to be chalking everything up to Grandma getting older. She’d mentioned something along those lines a couple of times with him.
“Will you say grace for us?” Miss Mattie asked, looking to Josiah where he sat at the head of the table. That was where she had always put his plate, and it had become “his” seat when he was at Miss Mattie’s house. He sat here now without thinking, but maybe Claire resented him sitting at the head of the table at the house where she lived.
He didn’t really care one way or the other. He wasn’t the kind of guy who needed to be the head of everything. But he also wasn’t going to let a woman rule him. He didn’t see that in the Bible anywhere, other than as a sign of weakness in a man and a sign that there were no brave men to step up, so God had to use a woman.
Women could do it—it just wasn’t God’s plan.
He prayed and then used his knife to spread butter out on the bread.
Still warm and soft, and probably his favorite thing to eat in the world.
He bit into it and immediately knew that it was not Miss Mattie’s bread.
It was coarser in texture, wasn’t nearly as soft and fine, but…the taste was the same, and he closed his eyes as the warm butter oozed over his tongue, mixing with the yeasty bread and creating an experience that was only possible to have in a farmhouse kitchen, sitting around the big table, with someone who had taken the time to make bread from scratch.
He wasn’t oblivious to the fact that not everyone in modern society got to experience this. It made it all the more precious.
“You’re making me feel like maybe my bread isn’t as bad as what I think it is.” Claire’s words broke into his enjoyment.
