Amy’s bottom lip quivered. “But my Pooh bear is in it.”
Beth sighed. “I promise you, honey, I will find a way to get your Pooh bear out of there, just not today, okay? Can you be patient a little while longer?”
Amy toed the ground with her sneaker. “Okay,” she finally said.
“I’ll watch her, Mama,” Matthew assured her.
“All right, but I mean it, now. You must stay completely away from that tree. Do you promise?”
After giving her their solemn promises, they ran off happily. Beth watched them for a moment, then turned back to her task. Oh, God, there was so much to be done! Suddenly she felt overwhelmed, and tears blurred her eyes. Why, on top of everything else, did this storm have to happen? Wasn’t it enough that Eben had left them with nothing—no insurance and no savings—and that grasshoppers had all but wiped out their plants last year?
Now this.
Yesterday’s storm had caused enormous damage to the farm. One of the trees hit by the tornado had fallen on the propagation house—the greenhouse where she nurtured the cuttings taken from leftover stock and grew into viable plants. The misting system had been destroyed, and one of the tanks used to catch rainwater had been torn from the ground and thrown a hundred feet. It had missed hitting anything when it landed, which was about the only good thing Beth could say.
The other six greenhouses, which held the more mature plants—the ones she sold—had all suffered damage. Because the greenhouses weren’t covered until November, the plants were sitting under open roofs. At least half of them had been completely ruined by the wind and hail. The ones remaining looked half-drowned, but Beth was hopeful they’d perk up again. If they didn’t, she wouldn’t have any way to obtain new root stock, because she certainly couldn’t afford to buy it.
Of course, how she would tend the baby plants, even if she was able to salvage enough of the mature plants to take cuttings, she had no idea. It would have been hard enough before this happened, seeing as how she had no money to hire help, but now! A misting system was absolutely necessary, because the baby plants needed water on a regular basis. Her misting system had been automatic, turning on every hour for a few minutes. And to make matters even worse, the water used by the misting system had come from her rainwater tanks, one of which was now gone.
It seemed ludicrous. Why was she trying so desperately to hang on to the farm? Yes, it had belonged to her dear grandmother, and yes, the farm and the old country roses her grandmother had introduced to the area nearly fifty years ago were Beth’s heritage and she loved them, but were they really worth the price she’d had to pay to keep them?
She thought about how she hadn’t had a day off since Eben died a year ago. How she’d had to say no to Matthew when he wanted to play soccer because she knew she wouldn’t be able to get him to and from practices and games. How she hadn’t bought herself a new outfit in three years. How most nights they ate spaghetti or soup or meat loaf—things that didn’t cost a lot of money. How her truck was ten years old and had more than 150,000 miles on it and how she prayed every day that it would last another year.
When Caleb, her cousin who had worked for her since Eben’s death, left at the beginning of the summer, he’d said, “Bethie, if I were you, I’d try to sell this place.”
Beth knew it would be a lot easier for everyone if she sold the farm. With the proceeds, she could buy a small house in town, get a job in Tyler, live a normal life. Yet every time she thought about leaving the roses she loved—Madame Hardy and Bloomfield Courage and Madame Alfred Carrière and Jacques Cartier and hundreds of others—she got such a desolate feeling in her stomach, she knew she would never willingly do it. Her grandmother had loved her roses passionately, and she had passed that passion on to Beth. She would never sell. Not unless she was forced to. Not unless there simply was no other way for her family to survive. And I’m not there yet. I may be close, but there’s still Grandma’s jewelry.
As she had many times since her drunken husband had run his truck into an oncoming eighteen-wheeler, she told herself it didn’t matter that she was virtually penniless. That she had no idea how she would get another crop together for the spring selling period. That she had never before had to do everything herself. She was strong, and she wasn’t afraid of hard work.
I have to keep this place going. This place isn’t just my heritage. It’s my children’s heritage, too.
They were such good kids. They made up for all the bad stuff she’d had to endure during her marriage.
Beth’s grandmother hadn’t wanted Beth to marry Eben. “He’s lazy,” she’d warned. “Always wanting something for nothing.” She hadn’t added, like your good-for-nothing daddy, but Beth had known it was implied. “He’ll give you nothing but grief,” her grandmother had added sadly.
But Beth hadn’t listened. She’d been twenty-two and a hopeless romantic. He’d been twenty-four—handsome and charming. It was a whirlwind courtship; they were married four weeks to the day after she met him at a country-western dance.
Marry in haste, repent at leisure.
Beth grimaced. Truer words were never spoken, cliché or not. Beth and Eben hadn’t been married a month when he started coming home drunk. Later she found out he’d always had a problem with alcohol.
Oh, Granny, I should have listened to you. And yet, if she had, she wouldn’t have Matthew and Amy today.
Beth became pregnant with Matthew almost immediately after marrying Eben. For a while after Eben found out about the coming baby, he’d tried to be a good husband, but the lure of booze was stronger than his good intentions, so when Matthew was a year old, Beth decided to leave Eben. But then her mother got sick. And her grandmother couldn’t do everything—run the farm and take care of Beth’s mother. So Beth abandoned her plan to leave Eben and talked him into moving out to the farm instead. She didn’t have to do much in the way of persuading. Eben liked the idea of being a rose grower. Rose growers were respected and looked up to. That he knew nothing about growing roses didn’t seem to daunt him, and to be fair, he had worked pretty hard that first year. Beth began to hope that he had changed.
Carrie Wilder lasted six months before succumbing to the cancer that plagued her body. A week after her funeral, Beth discovered she was pregnant again. Distraught over the loss of her mother, Beth resolved that unless things got worse, she would try to stick it out with Eben—at least until the kids were in school.
The following year, just fourteen months after her mother’s death, Beth’s grandmother suffered a massive heart attack and died. It was a shock to all who knew her. Lillian Wilder was only sixty-eight years old, and had always seemed indomitable.
Beth was devastated by the loss of the woman she had so admired, but there was no time to mourn. The farm was now hers. By the following week, she had taken over its management.
Eben couldn’t handle it. Once again, he began to drink heavily. Beth knew his ego had suffered a fatal blow, yet how could she have done anything else? He didn’t know enough about the business to run it without her supervision. So his drinking increased, and as he drank more, he worked less. Beth had to hire more help. Instead of one helper, she had to have two men, one to replace Eben, one to assist. She spent as much time as she could overseeing the work, but the children were young and needed her attention, too. She was busy day and night, too busy to worry about Eben’s bruised ego.
Now he was gone and, except for the children,
