September 21
This time I'm sending you girls a care package, and I thought I'd better include an explanation before you started to worry I'd made any of this stuff myself!
Now that the harvest has begun, the neighbors have been bringing Hawkeye-sensei all sorts of fruits and vegetables, especially over this past week. Tomatoes, nectarines, plums, corn…one person even brought pears, which are really hard to grow around here. Some of them are meant as payment for past services rendered, but mostly people are just being neighborly. And everyone seems to know exactly what Miss Riza's garden does and doesn't have, because so far no one has shown up with any of the vegetables or herbs that she grows herself. Apparently these little gifts are something they do every autumn, and Miss Riza seems to have a lot of experience with preserving anything that can't be used right away. She's spent the last few days canning vegetables and making jams and jellies: the whole house smells fantastic. She says that once she's finished, there will be preserves enough to last us the whole winter.
Anyway, Miss Riza asked me to send this little package to you girls, with her compliments. The dark purple ones are plum jam, and the bright orange are nectarine and nectarine-peach jam. There are also two jars of pickles, one of spicy tomato and pepper sauce, and one of sweet corn relish. (Which she made me try once she saw the look of disgust on my face…trust me, it tastes much better than you'd think!)
It had been quite a while since the last time Roy had walked into town alone. He found that the trip felt twice as long without Miss Riza to keep him company. But she'd been up to her elbows in simmering nectarine-and-sugar slurry all day, with glass jars in their hot water baths spread out all around her, and baskets of plums, peaches and nectarines on the counter waiting to be pitted and peeled.
Roy had offered to help, initially, but his inexperience with canning had made him more of a hindrance than help to Riza. She'd finally pushed him gently out of her kitchen (nursing three burnt fingers and slightly bruised pride), with an armful of jars from her previous day's batch and instructions to tell his aunt hello for her.
After pouting for a few minutes, Roy had slowly trudged upstairs to collect his usual bundle of letters for his aunt and 'sisters.' He'd also taken the time to write another brief note to explain the origin of the preserves, and searched out a small box he could use to send them. Feeling oddly bereft as he plodded down the front steps with his package, Roy failed to observe the dark, ominous clouds looming on the horizon.
Once he'd reached the post office, Roy flirted innocently with the amiable postmistress as he paid for postage. As usual, she teased him back good-naturedly and asked after his family back home. She even wrapped up his little care package in plain brown paper for him, free of charge. Mission completed, Roy wandered leisurely through the general store for a while before stopping at the café to grab a bite to eat with the last of his monthly allowance. Toying with his coffee (which the waitress kept refilling for him, blushing and smiling each time) he noted idly that there seemed to be fewer people out and about today than usual.
But it wasn't until he left the café and turned his steps towards the Hawkeye estate that the sky darkened above him. And Roy, looking up, finally realized that there was a storm approaching. A nasty one, if the clouds were anything to judge by. He grumbled and buried his hands in his coat pockets, noticing the tell-tale chill in the air for the first time.
"Typical," he muttered, walking faster.
He was only halfway home when the rain started. With a soft curse, Roy upgraded his pace from brisk walk to brisk trot. It was awkward to hold his coat over his head at such a speed, and as the rain grew steadily heavier with each step, it was soon pointless to even try. With a deep sigh, he thrust his arms back into the sleeves and impatiently pushed his wet hair out of his eyes.
His feet slipped and slid in the rapidly growing puddles stretching across the muddy road, and he was just beginning to feel sorry for himself when he spotted the large oak tree that he knew to be roughly a mile from his teacher's home. Hoping for at least some shelter, he darted towards it, noticing as he did so that another, familiar figure already stood beneath it.
"Riza?" he asked, surprised. And so it was. She turned to face him, expression doleful.
"Hi. You got caught in this too, huh?" she sighed in reply.
"Yep. I didn't even see the clouds when I left, so I wasn't exactly rushing to get back home. And storms move a lot quicker up here than they do in central," he said sheepishly.
"At least it's a change from all the dry heat from last month," she offered with a wan smile.
"Yeah, there's that," he admitted. "But what are you doing out here, anyway? I thought you were making jam all day again."
"I was. I finished up a little bit after you left, and I took a few jars over to Mrs. Turner as a thank you for the nectarines. But she got to talking, and I stayed longer than I intended to," she said, wrapping her arms more securely around her slender frame. The tree wasn't offering nearly enough protection from the elements, and her thin dress was already wet through. "She wanted me to stay and wait out the rain, but ...well. I thought I could make it home before it started," she admitted.
"Didn't want to be trapped there?" he said with a knowing grin. She grimaced.
"She's very kind. But two and a half hour's 'chat' about the health and welfare of her sheep, and the goings on of her nephew the big-city detective, and the state of her basil and her tomatoes this season was…it was…"she paused, searching for a more gracious phrase than 'it was enough to drive me insane.'
"Sufficient?" Roy supplied, grinning still. She smiled back.
"I didn't want to overstay my welcome," she said charitably.
They stood together in silence for a moment, hoping for a lull in the heavy rain. It was peaceful, in a way, but it was too cold to fully appreciate the beauty of the scene while they were stuck shivering out in it.
"Guess we'd better run for it, huh?" Roy asked, turning his collar up.
"I'm still trying to get up the courage," she sighed in reply.
"It's only another mile or so. That's not so far," he said encouragingly, and offered her his hand. As her fingers closed tentatively around his, the wind roared around them. A terrific flash of lightening was followed up a second later by a deafening peal of thunder, and the teens clung together in startled fright before looking at each other and beginning to laugh.
"Guess that's our cue!" Roy said, and they set out running, hands still clasped tight.
The heavy rain became a violent downpour as they ran. It may as well have been a flood, as far as Roy was concerned. It was almost as though they were swimming rather than splashing their way along. Good thing he'd showed Riza how to swim, after all, he thought suddenly. He began to laugh, though he was barely able to hear his own voice over the noise of the water falling all around them.
"This is insane!" he yelled. He had stopped trying to push his wet hair out of his eyes long ago, and he could hardly see a thing through the sheets of water, but he knew that Riza was smiling back at him.
"Come on!" she cried, and squeezed his hand gently. They ran together through the sodden fields, slipping and stumbling and clinging to each other like life-rafts. Roy saved Riza from a particularly nasty fall when she lost a shoe in the sucking mud, though he nearly fell down himself when hauling her upright again.
At last, freezing, muddy, drenched to the skin, and breathless with laughter at the sheer absurdity of it all, the two teens stood dripping on the porch, fruitlessly trying to wring water from their clothes.
Feeling relatively secure under the covered porch, they stood and watched the storm rage around them for several more minutes. Instinctively, the shivering Riza edged closer to Roy, who slipped an arm around her waist and pulled her closer against his side.
"Geez, it's freezing out here. Front door or back?" he asked, considering.
"I can't decide which would be better," she managed to say through chattering teeth.
"I'll help you clean up the mess we make either way," he said cheerfully.
"It's not that," she said. "I was just wondering which way would be less slippery—tile or wood? With my luck today, I'll fall and dislocate my other shoulder."
"The tile is probably slipperier-is that even a word? But it'd be easier to clean...Either way, we'd better choose quickly. I've never been so cold in my life," he said, squeezing her gently as another full body shiver wracked his frame. Though her body heat, tucked into his side was helping a bit. "Are you sure it's only September?"
"Oh? City boy can't handle a little water?" she teased gently, poking his side.
"This—" he gestured at the deluge around them with one hand. "This is not a little water; this is a maelstrom. I can hardly be blamed!" She giggled and then gasped.
"Oh, gosh, what time is it? I haven't even started dinner yet!" Roy shook his head at her.
"Nope, bath first. Then we can worry about food." He turned and led the way to the front door.
"But Papa—" she started to protest, letting Roy usher her into the house.
"Oh, he doesn't eat at regular hours anyway, and you know it. Besides, I'm sure your father would rather have his dinner an hour late than see you catch a horrible cold to make sure it was precisely on time," he replied, giving her a gentle nudge towards the stairs as he closed the door behind them.
"He's right, child." The gravelly voice startled them both, and they whirled around to face Berthold. He stood in the doorway of the living room. If he'd been near the windows there, he'd undoubtedly seen them running across the field and then talking on the porch.
"Papa!" Riza cried out.
"Sensei!" Roy exclaimed at the same moment.
"Go on, both of you, before you catch your deaths in this cold," he said, looking sternly from one to the other.
"Yes, papa," and "Yes, sir," echoed in the small foyer. Roy felt his teacher's eyes on them as he ascended the stairs behind Riza. He didn't seem angry at Roy's irreverent comments...far from it, he seemed faintly amused. So why was he watching him still with such a calculating look?
Much later that night, when Roy was snuggled into his feather bed with an extra blanket and a belly full of hearty beef stew, he realized something. He'd actually had his arm around Miss Riza, pressing her firmly into his side without any regard to her personal space. And neither she nor her father had seemed to mind in the least.
A.N. Holy cow, this story has over 100 reviews now! You guys are amazing!