“There comes the boy, right on time. One of those jugs of apple cider is riding home on my lap.” Holding on to the door, Greer started to jump down from the seat to the gravel parking lot.

“Greer!” Alanna scooted over the seat when she saw he would have fallen if he hadn’t been holding the door.

Silas and Matthew came running up.

“You okay, Greer?”

“Yes. Just came down the wrong way,” he said, limping to the passenger door. “Here, help me up in the seat, Matthew.”

Matthew lifted Greer into the front seat.

“Hand me one of those jugs of cider,” Greer demanded before Matthew could shut the door.

Silas handed him one, giving him a suspicious glance and shutting the door before Greer could ask for anything else.

Alanna leaned forward. “Are you sure you’re okay, Greer?”

“Yep,” he said, taking a drink from the gallon-sized jug.

Looking out the window, she saw Silas and Matthew unloading the two dollies.

“I didn’t know they had bags of flour.”

“Ain’t flour; it’s cornmeal. Those bags weigh a ton to lift.”

Alanna poked her head around to see Greer unconcernedly drinking his cider while watching the other men unload the cornmeal and bushels of apples and potatoes.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he said, seeing she was watching him.

She narrowed her gaze on him accusingly, feeling all the goodwill she had started to feel from bandaging her hand go up in smoke. Greer was deliberately not helping them. “I bet you do.”

He narrowed his back at her. “Then I guess you know what I’m saying back.”

Chapter 21

Chapter Twenty-One

Alanna blinked to clear her blurry gaze. Yawning, she opened the freezer in the storage building to take out a package of frozen sausage before moving to the other freezer to take out pre-made waffles. After making sure she marked the items off the inventory list, she gathered them to leave the storage building.

She turned on her flashlight and started walking toward Silas’ home. The eerie silence in the morning was giving her second thoughts about being out so early. She was dreading walking back through the wooded area of the property she had to cross to reach Silas’ home. On her way to the storage building, she could have sworn she had felt eyes on her the entire way.

Her hand trembled on the flashlight as the eeriness enveloped her again. Then she froze in place when she heard a small sound. Raising the flashlight upward, she narrowed her eyes. Was a rabid squirrel about to attack her?

At a small movement between the branches of a tree, Alanna started screaming, afraid she was about to be pounced on by a fox, a racoon—

“Alanna, stop screaming,” Matthew’s frantic whisper had her pausing mid-scream.

“Matthew?” she angrily yelled, shining the flashlight higher. “What are you—”

“Shh …” he whispered.