While they stood there, waiting for her phone to be ready, he shared about his life in Strasburg, and she discovered that he was as determined as even her now-deceased Dawdi John had been. Hardworking, too, although Glen had quit working in the hayfield or raising crops and running the small turkey operation on his own several years ago when Luke and his family moved in. “I don’t admit to being retired yet,” he joked. The way he talked about working alongside Luke so glowingly, it seemed to Anna that work was something he relished. It might be his antidote for aging, she thought, remembering how Dawdi John had returned to working in the barn now and then when Mammi Eliza had first become so confused. It was only later that they’d received the shocking diagnosis.

“What about you?” Glen asked. “You come from hardworkin’ folk.”

“That was one of the most important things Dat and Mamm taught us early on,” Anna said. “Next to the importance of following God’s ways and respecting our elders, the rewards of hard work were drilled into us.”

This seemed to go over well with Glen, who nodded his head approvingly.

After a time, Anna glanced at her wristwatch and went to retrieve her phone, ready for their walk to the tree house.

What if I don’t get the job? she thought but quickly dismissed it. There was no sense in borrowing trouble.

Anna followed Glen, and within a minute they were out of the hot sun and heading deep into the woodland, a black crow cawing at them as they went. Despite the heavy shade from the many trees, at first the scent of the nearby farmland hung in the air. Soon, though, they walked past underbrush and thick ferns, and the dank, earthy smells of the woods blocked out everything else. She wondered if sunlight ever touched the low-growing underbrush. If not, how could it grow so profusely?

“It’s so beautiful here,” she said as birds flitted from branch to branch, their songs part of the inviting sounds of the forest.

“Wait’ll ya see the tree house,” Glen said, motioning ahead.

An excitement stirred in her as they traversed several obstacles, including a large downed maple tree, its trunk and wide branches sprawled across the path. A little ways ahead, there was another challenge—a heap of rocks, which Glen and his sons had apparently deposited there years ago after removing them from the fields. The path even skirted a murky pond with noisy frogs making their presence known, and Anna had to take care not to slip in the soft mud near its edge.

When they finally came upon it, the tree house loomed high over them, and Anna marveled at the beauty of the natural wood and the spiral staircase that wrapped around the massive trunk, leading to two levels and then to an even higher lookout far above.