“I can use the kids in the garden. Do we have to use them out in the corn fields?”

  “Even in the garden we will want guards. You were there yesterday. You know it wasn’t that far from Don and Jean’s house that the man was found. From now on, no adult leaves the bunkhouse without a gun and no child leaves the bunkhouse without an adult.”

  Sissy Grant snorted. “Does that mean I have to get an adult to go with me when I pee?”

  “Yes.” Will leveled a gaze at her.

  She rolled her eyes. “Oh, Lord! I hate it here.”

  “Sissy Grant! You keep that attitude to yourself or we’ll find an attitude adjuster,” her mother warned.

  Sissy frowned and slid down in her seat.

  Will looked back at Allison. “It’s your call. If you don’t want the kids that far from the house, we won’t use them to harvest.”

  “I think I’d feel better keeping them close to the bunkhouse,” she said.

  “Yay!” Missy Grant muttered. “I hated walking through that corn. Monster spiders everywhere. At least the garden is almost done. Not much left there.”

  Will smiled. “I’m glad we were able to make your day.”

  He looked at Allison. “That’s all I have. I think we have a group going out hunting this morning. We will make sure to look for signs of coyotes. We might have to consider that they have become more aggressive. If so, we will need to do some dedicated coyote hunting to thin them out.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Colder days limited the time Jaden was able to spend in the arena. She wanted to spend more time practicing her archery skills, but her fingers became numb after only a few minutes.

  A greenhouse had been set up in one corner and, while they still had potatoes and onions growing in it, a small woodburning stove kept the greenhouse above freezing.

  Several times a week, Paul joined Jaden in the arena to throw knives. They often took breaks inside the greenhouse, warming their fingers near the wood stove.

  “I don’t even practice archery any more because it’s too cold,” Jaden rubbed her hands to help warm them up.

  “You could come in here and warm up,” Paul reminded her.

  “I know. Its just not the same. I feel a little weird coming in here all by myself.”

  Paul snorted. “Weird spooky or weird oddball?”

  “Maybe both. Except for the crackle of burning wood, there is absolutely not sound in here. Like out in the arena you can still hear noises from outside or from the stable, but in here it’s like you are in a vacuum. It’s just weird.”

  “Yeah, I know what you mean. It’s almost spooky weird. I don’t think I’d like to come in here alone to warm up.”

  He clapped his hands together. “Ready to throw again? Loser has to clean the knives?”

  They were just latching the door closed when the arena door to the stable slid open. Missy, Sissy and Erin all stepped in.

  “What are you guys doing?” Missy asked.

  “Throwing knives,” Paul replied.

  “In the greenhouse?”

  “No, we were warming up. Our fingers were frozen. What are you guys doing?”

  Missy glared at Jaden. “Just checking to see where you two keep running off to.”

  Paul’s eyes darted to Jaden before dropping to the ground.

  Jaden’s mouth dropped. “Are you kidding me?”

  Missy’s eyes teared up. “You think you’re so special, Jaden. You’re just a jerk!”

  Jaden looked at Paul who still stared at the ground, his face red.

  Erin put her hand on Missy’s shoulder. “They are just throwing knives, Missy.”

  Missy shrugged herself away. “But they were in the greenhouse hiding.”

  “They weren’t hiding, they were getting warmed up.” Erin looked up at Jaden. There was a quietness in her eyes that Jaden had never seen Erin display before.

  Jaden stepped toward Missy. “I’m sorry you thought we were hiding from you. I like Paul, but not as a boyfriend. I like Paul because he likes to do the same things as me. I’m not trying to steal him from you.”

  Paul dropped his knives on the bale of hay and moved to the stable door. He avoided meeting eyes with any of the girls.

  “Now look what you’ve done,” Sissy snapped at her sister. “You embarrassed him. He’ll never like you if you keep doing that.”

  A tear rolled down Missy’s face. She looked up at Erin. “But you said…”

  “I know what I said,” Erin cut her off. “I was wrong. I never believed it, I just wanted to make Jaden suffer. I had a bone to pick with her and I used you to do it.” Tears sprung to her eyes. “You can hate me now. I deserve it.”

  She turned to follow Paul.

  “Wait!” Jaden called.

  Erin stopped, but did not turn around.

  “It’s freezing out here, let’s go in the greenhouse where it’s warmer. We can talk in there.”

  Sissy took her sister’s hand. “Come on, stupid.”

  Missy allowed herself to be led to the greenhouse. When she passed Jaden, she glared.

  “Erin?” Jaden called.

  Erin turned and moved toward the greenhouse. She stopped when she got to Jaden. Her eyes were filled with tears.

  “I’m really sorry,” she said.

  Jaden only nodded and followed her into the greenhouse.

  Missy and Sissy sat on a hay bale. They looked up when Erin and Jaden entered. Missy’s eyebrows furrowed as if seeing Jaden and Erin together confused her.

  Erin walked to a nearby haybale and faced Missy. She looked up at Jaden and patted the empty spot beside her. Jaden sat.

  Erin leaned forward and looked into Missy’s eyes.

  “It’s my fault.” Her voice was soft. “You might hate me. Maybe you should hate me. It was never Jaden stealing Benny from you. It was me putting that in your head.”

  “Jaden couldn’t steal Benny because dummy here never had him.” Sissy snorted. She used her elbow to push Missy.

  Missy raised her eyes to stare at Erin. “But you said if Jaden wasn’t stealing Paul, he would like me.”

  Erin sighed. “I know what I said. I was trying to get back at Jaden and wanted you to be mad at her.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I thought Jaden had done something to me. She didn’t. I was wrong. I just needed someone to blame and Jaden was handy.”

  “What did you think she did?”

  Erin looked at the floor. “Nothing,” she whispered.

  Missy looked at Jaden. “What did she think you did?”

  Jaden cleared her throat. “Nothing. It was just nothing. Let’s do something fun.” She stood.

  “What do you want to do?” Sissy asked.

  Jaden shrugged. “Whatever you guys want to do.”

  She turned to the door that led to the arena. “First I have to pick up these knives and clean them before I put them away.”

  She wondered what Paul was doing. He’d looked embarrassed when he’d left. She hoped that it hadn’t ruined their friendship.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Allison found Jaden watering the herbs in the window. “Be careful on that ladder, honey,” she said.

  “I know how to climb a ladder,” Jaden scoffed. “What’s bothering me is this Lavender. I don’t like how it looks.”

  “Can you bring the pot down? Be careful.” Allison raised her hands as if she wanted to help. They hovered a foot away from Jaden.

  “I got it.” Jaden grinned and handed the pot down.

  Allison held the terra cotta planter up and eyed the pretty green spikes of the lavender. “It’s nothing that you are doing wrong, Jaden. Lavender is one herb that I struggle to grow in pots. That’s why you see so many lavender pots on the shelves. They are all in various stages of growth. If I kill one, I still have more growing.”

  She set the planter on the bench. “Do you want a lavender-growing lesson?”

  “Please!” Jaden jumped from the ladder. She hit the floor flat-footed and bent her knees to absorb the impact.

  “Jaden!” Allison didn’t try to keep the sharpness out of her voice. “Don’t jump from a ladder.”

  “Sorry!” Jaden had the grace to look ashamed. Then chuckled. “My dad yells at me for that too.”

  She stepped to the counter where Allison was gently running her fingers over the spikes of the plant. She brought her fingers to her nose and breathed in. Her eyes closed and a smile formed on her lips. “I absolutely love the smell of lavender!”

  “Okay,” she said. “You are turning the pot every day, right?”

  “Right.” Jaden agreed with a sharp nod.

  “We keep turning the pots every day so that we can give each side of the plants as much sun as possible. But even our best efforts don’t give our herbs quite enough sun so they tend to get straggly. There is nothing we can do about that. We are doing the best that we can.”

  Another problem,” she continued. “It’s a bit too warm in here. Lavender does best with a daytime temperature of about 72º or so and around 60º at night. We’ve used the wood stove to heat the whole bunk house all winter and this side of the room stays pretty warm. So, we are stressing our herb by not being able to control our temperatures.”

  “But the things we are doing right are,” Allison held up one finger. “We’ve got the right sized pot and it is a terra-cotta pot. If we use a pot that too big, that extra soil holds moisture and can waterlog our lavender. The terra-cotta is porous and also helps prevent root rot.”

  She held up a second finger. “We rotate the pot daily and water only when the soil feels dry about an inch deep.”

  She held up a third finger. “We know that Lavender is a Mediterranean plant and it loves soil that is a little on the alkaline side so once a month we use our mortar and pestle to grind up egg shells and sprinkle them on top of the soil.”

  She smiled at Jaden. “Can you think of anything else?”

  Jaden frowned. “No. Unless you count pruning as doing something right.”

  “We do count pruning because pruning encourages new growth. And nothing is wasted. Even those days that you prune just a handful of an herb, we dry them and store them until we need them.”

  She pulled a shoe box sized plastic bin from the shelf and rifled through it. She pulled out small scissors. They looked similar to the scissors Jaden’s mother had in her sewing kit.

  “Are those sewing scissors?” Jaden asked.

  “Yes. Somewhere I have a pair of scissors that cost about three times as much. I found them in an herb catalog years ago and thought I had to have them because they were herb scissors. It turns out, they were just high-priced sewing scissors that had a little bit of serration near the tip so that you could easily strip the leaves from the stem. That’s easy enough to do with your hands, so it was a waste of money. These work just as well and are easier to clean.”

  She handed the scissors to Jaden. “Want to prune that? We can set the leaves out to dry. Then if you want, I could use some help mixing some potting soil.”

  “Potting soil?”

  Allison nodded. “We’ve made it through the winter. It won’t be long now until it’ll be time to start getting the garden ready. I’d like to get a jump start on fresh veggies and herbs by starting some of them early so they get a head start and we can replant them outside as soon as it gets warm enough.”

  She took the scissors back from Jaden and put them away. Her eyes got a faraway look in them before she closed them.

  She slowly opened them and looked at Jaden.

  “You know,” she said. “I used to hate the word ‘prepper’. I didn’t consider myself one and made fun of people who built a lifestyle around prepping.

  “We get some winter storms here that can keep us snowed in for days. A couple of them were bad enough that it was a week before we could get to town and pick up groceries. We often lost electricity during those storms.

  “I was prepared for them because I made sure we had plenty of wood cut for the fireplace so we could stay warm. A few years ago, we got the Generac for backup electricity. But I didn’t consider myself a prepper.”

  Her hands worried the small dish cloth on the bench.

  “I kept my pantry full of supplies that we would need if we were snowed in for a length of time. Plenty of toilet paper, more than enough sugar and flour, things like powdered milk and instant potatoes. Even packages of instant soup. But I still didn’t consider myself a prepper.”

  She looked down at her hands before looking at Jaden. “I guess, in a way, I was a little bit of a prepper – but not enough of one because there are so many things that I need – that we need – that we just don’t have.

  “Things like flour. We have a little left but not a lot. Jean will teach us how to make out own. But today I need potting soil. Something that I always just jumped in the car and made a quick trip to town to get. I can’t do that anymore.

  “I do have two bags of potting soil left over from last year, but if I use them, I won’t have any bags left next spring. So, I’m going to use one bag this spring and save a bag for next spring. Maybe by next spring things will be back to normal. But what if they’re not?

  “I have no idea how to make my own potting soil and I have no idea how grandma did it a hundred years ago – before you could find it for sale on every street corner.”

  She smiled weakly at Jaden. “So, I have to figure out how to make my own and, if you want to help, I would love to have you help.”

  Jaden sensed the helplessness Allison was feeling. She nodded, then smiled and said, “I’d love to help you. Maybe we can learn together.”

  Allison grinned and held out her hand which Jaden took. “Come on. I’ve got everything in the greenhouse out in the arena.”

  The arena was still chilly but the greenhouse was warmer. Allison checked the thermometer on the wall. “fifty-nine degrees,” she announced. “That’s getting close to what we need to start our plants. I need to see the temperatures stay like this for a week before I feel confident enough to start our seeds.”

  She pointed to a wheelbarrow in the corner. “We’ll need that.”

  “What is in it?” Jaden asked, pushing the wheelbarrow to the bench Allison stood at.

  “This is compost,” Allison said. “Basically, it is a little bit of Showdown’s poop and some leaves I raked up from the yard last fall. There’s a few kitchen scraps in there as well.”

  “It looks just like dirt.” Jaden stared at the contents of the wheelbarrow.

  “It is dirt. Go ahead, stick your hand in there.”

  Jaden drew back. “I’m not sticking my hand in Showdown’s poop.”

  Allison chuckled. “It’s not poop anymore. All winter long, I’ve come out here and used that small rake over there to stir it around and turn it. I’ve kept it moist. It composts little by little until it turns into a rich dirt. It’s the exact same way that we get dirt outside.”

  She stuck her hand into the wheelbarrow and came out with a handful of dirt. She squeezed it and then opened her hand. Fine black dirt sat on her palm. She brought it to her nose before holding her hand out to Jaden. “Smell it.”

  Jaden scrunched her nose, but leaned forward to smell. Her eyes grew wide. “It doesn’t stink!” She took another sniff. “It smells just like dirt in the garden.”

  Allison grinned. “That’s because it is simply garden dirt. The only problem we have is that it is very, very rich. This will be perfect for sprinkling a quarter inch or so on the garden after we get the garden started – but it’s too rich to plant seeds in.” She dropped the handful of compost back into the wheelbarrow and then bent over and pulled a bucket out from under the counter.

  “Now this,” she said, hefting the heavy bucket to the counter, “is plain old garden dirt that I took from the garden after we finished last fall.”

  Jaden looked into the bucket. It was dirt containing clods and loose dirt that looked more like dust. She looked at Allison.

  “I already explained that the compost would be too rich to start seeds in. Let me show you what happens if we try to water this garden dirt.” She sprinkled a little water into the bucket. The water rolled off the clods and pooled on top of the dust. She reached in and took a handful of the dirt. She squeezed it and then opened her hand. A round, hard ball sat in her palm.

  “Do you see how hard this is?”

  “Jaden nodded.

  “We can’t use this to plant seeds. It gets too hard and the little seeds would struggle to grow.”

  She dumped the dirt back into the bucket. “So, what I’d like to try is mixing a little of the compost with some of the dirt. Little by little. We can use small buckets to mix in. In one bucket, we’ll use three-parts dirt and one-part compost. In another bucket, we’ll do half and half. We’ll mark each bucket and come back every day to mix a little more. By the end of the week, we’ll have an idea which bucket will be the best dirt for starting our seeds.”