walk and made the turn into the weed-riddled gravel lane. “Whoa.”
She could just make out the blazing orange canopies of the trees behind the house, and she felt that familiar tug of homecoming, of nostalgia.
“Hop on down now,” she told the girls. “Open that gate. Watch out for that barbed wire, you hear?”
Both children clambered from the buggy. Their skirts swished around their legs as they ran to the rusted steel gate, their hands making short work of the chain.
Mary drove the horse through, then stopped to wait for the girls. “Come on, little ones! Leave the gate open. I hear all those pretty walnuts calling for us!”
Giggling, the girls climbed into the buggy.
“Get your bags ready,” Mary told them as she drove past the house. “I think we’re going to harvest enough this afternoon to fill all those baskets we brought.”
She smiled as the two little ones gathered their bags. Mary had made them from burlap last year for just this occasion. The bags were large, with double handles easily looped over a small shoulder. She’d embroidered green walnut leaves on the front of Elsie’s bag. On Annie’s she’d stitched a brown walnut that had been cracked open, exposing all that deliciousness inside.
Mary drove the buggy around to the back of the house, where the yard had once been. A smile whispered across her mouth when she saw that the old tire swing was still there. She stopped the horse in the shade of a hackberry tree where the grass was tall enough for the mare to nibble, and she drew in the sight, felt that familiar swell in her chest. Picking up their gloves and her own bag, Mary climbed down. For a moment, she stood there and listened to the place. The chirp of a cardinal from the tallest tree. The whisper of wind through the treetops.
“Girls, I think we’ve chosen the perfect day to harvest walnuts,” she said.
Bag draped over her shoulder, Elsie followed suit. Annie was still a little thing, so Mary reached for her and set her on the ground. She handed the two girls their tiny leather gloves.
“I don’t want to see any stained fingers,” she told them.
“You, too, Grossmammi.”
Chuckling, Mary walked with them to the stand of trees, where the sun dappled the ground at her feet.
“Look how big that tree is, Grossmammi!” Annie exclaimed.
“That’s my favorite,” Mary replied.
“Look at all the walnuts!” Elsie said with an exuberance only a seven-year-old could manage.
“God blessed us with a good crop this year,” Mary replied.
“Are we going to make cakes, Grossmammi?”
“Of course we are,” Mary assured her.
“Walnut layer cake!” Annie put in.
“And pumpkin bread!” Elsie added.
“If you girls picked as much as you talked, we’d be done by now.” She tempered the admonition with a smile.
Stepping beneath the canopy of the tree, Mary knelt and scooped up a few walnuts, looking closely at the husks. They were green, mottled with black, but solid and mold free. It was best to gather them by October, but they were already into November. “Firm ones only, girls. They’ve been on the ground awhile. We’re late to harvest this year.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw little Annie squat and drop a walnut into her bag. Ten yards away, Elsie was already at the next tree, leather gloves on her little hands. Such a sweet, obedient child.
She worked in silence for half an hour. The girls chattered. Mary pretended not to notice when they tossed walnuts at each other. Before she knew it, her bag was full. Hefting it onto her shoulder, she walked to the buggy, and dumped her spoils into the bushel basket.
She was on her way to join the girls when something in the house snagged her attention. Movement in the window? She didn’t think so; no one ever came here, after all. Probably just the branches swaying in the breeze and reflecting off the glass. But as Mary started toward the girls, she saw it again. She was sure of it this time. A shadow in the kitchen window.
Making sure the girls were embroiled in their work, she set her bag on the ground. A crow cawed from atop the roof as she made her way to the back of the house and stepped onto the rickety porch. The door stood open a few inches, so she called out. “Hello?”
“Who are you talking to, Grossmammi?”
She glanced over her shoulder to see Annie watching her from her place beneath the tree, hands on