Something bounced off her head. She looked at the ground to find it. Probably an acorn. There were plenty of old ones from last fall scattered around. “What I was saying was—”
Thunk! And this one stung. Bella rubbed her head and looked above them. Something moved, and the leaves rustled.
“I’m going home,” Jimmy said. “Tell your pa to save that puppy for me.”
“You can’t go home. Not yet.”
“Happy birthday,” he said, then ducked out from beneath the limbs and disappeared from sight.
Bella’s hands clenched into fists. What was wrong with him? Weren’t men supposed to be grateful for every kiss offered? She hadn’t predicted this outcome.
“You can offer your thanks now.”
Bella jumped. The voice had come from above her. “Who’s that? Come out!”
The leaves rustled. Branches parted, and a face emerged. It was Adam Fisher, a classmate and rapscallion of the first order. And he had the audacity to be grinning at her.
“You should thank me,” he said. “My well-timed missive stopped you from further embarrassing yourself.”
Sweet potatoes, he’d heard the whole thing! “What are you doing up there, besides spying on me?”
“Where else would I go? It’s not like I have a lot of friends.”
Adam and his family had only moved to Oak Springs around Christmas. He was handsome enough, but Bella had already set her sights on Jimmy.
“It’s no wonder,” she yelled. “Who’d want a friend like you? Come down here this instant!”
“While you have a knife? No, thanks.”
He was laughing at her. The most painful episode of her tragic life, and he was laughing at her. She’d make him pay.
“I’m coming up!” What she was going to do when she caught him, Bella had no idea, but anything was better than standing around like a pitiful, scorned reject. She threw a leg over a low-lying branch and pulled herself upright. Straddling it, she could see Adam crouched on a limb closer to the trunk. “You’re going to be sorry.”
“Next time, just ask for an orange,” he said. “That’s a better birthday present than a kiss from Jimmy.”
She got her feet on the limb and reached for another branch to steady herself. “I’m coming for you, Adam Fisher.”
“Or maybe if you had traded him a speckled pup for a kiss, you would’ve had more luck. He sounded right taken with those pups.”
Drat him. He didn’t seem the least concerned that she was hunting him, but he’d learn.
She moved forward but couldn’t reach the next limb up. She rose on her tiptoes. If she could just stretch a little farther . . .
“And just think, your poor initials are going to be all alone on that tree. What a pity,” he crooned.
That was the last straw. She had to stop the horrible words coming out of his mouth. Then she spotted his foot hanging down from the branch above her. She’d show him. She’d drag him out of this tree if it was the last thing she did.
Bella lunged for his foot. The leather scraped against her fingertips, but she got no purchase because, at the last second, he yanked it away. Her weight shifted, and her foot slipped off the branch. The inside of her leg scraped against the limb as she sat down hard, but then she spun upside down, and suddenly she wasn’t being hit by leaves anymore. There was only air.
She only had time to put out a hand to catch herself, but that was a mistake. The pain was immediate, bringing tears to her eyes and blurring the shocked face of the boy who’d mocked her.
two
THREE YEARS LATER
From the seat atop his threshing machine, Adam Fisher stopped his four-horse team and studied the town of Oak Springs before him. He hadn’t been back since he’d graduated from the one-room schoolhouse in the valley below. His parents had lived in the community for less than a year before moving on, but he planned on it being his home for the next few weeks, and maybe even longer.
“This is a likely spot.” Dr. Paulson’s black buggy pulled into the shade thrown by Adam’s massive machine. “See how the land has a natural terrace down toward the creek bed? More than likely the soil has benefited from spring floods and silt deposits. I would expect that this would be a high-yield valley.”
“You would expect correctly,” Adam said, surveying the golden ripples of wheat interrupted by scattered homesteads. The heavy kernels bending toward the ground announced that he’d arrived just in time. “I lived here once. These farmers know what they’re about.”
A few more weeks of the farmers’ toil, and then his thresher could be used to separate the yellow kernels from their stalks and husks. But would they hire him? Another payment was soon due on his equipment, and if he didn’t stay busy, he’d never earn enough to make his payments through the winter.
Newfangled machines were more likely to be ridiculed than appreciated in rural Grimes County, and if a prophet had no honor in his own country, a student like Adam would be laughed out of the region. He rubbed his chin, the stubble barely chafing against his calloused fingers. When he’d left Oak Springs, he’d had no need for a straight razor. Amazing what changes three years wrought.
Dr. Paulson shook his reins, and his sharp carriage horse stepped lively. Adam roused his laden team, and they gamely followed. As the names of the local farmers came to mind, so did memories that he’d forgotten. That farm belonged to Mr. Granger, who’d hired him during harvest. The house by the road was the Bond family’s. Mrs. Bond had quickly befriended his mother when they’d moved to town and always seemed to be in the Fishers’ kitchen when he came home from school. And that farm east of town was Mr. Eden’s.
There was one name he hadn’t forgotten. Bella Eden. He’d always had a hankering for her. Her sweet, heart-shaped face and waves of light
