The bike wobbled and Willow’s feet hit the ground.  Again.  She was drenched in sweat, exhausted, and still hadn’t stayed upright for longer than five feet- half of that being on the way down.  She had two scraped knees, one scraped elbow, and the remnants of a bloody nose where she’d collided with the handlebars.
A torn skirt lay abandoned on her bed with black streaks of grease accentuating each side of the mangled hemline.  Her shorts were in no danger of tearing but her legs hadn’t fared as well.  She’d worked on it all week and was ready to toss the bike in the barn loft and forget about it.
A car turned into her driveway.  Great.  Now Chad was coming.  Willow wiped a dirty arm across her brow leaving streaks of dirt mingled with perspiration clinging to her skin.
“Hey, what’re you doing?”
Her glare seemed to say, “Well, genius, I’m knitting socks for the orphans in Beverly Hills,” but she tried to reply civilly.  “Trying to conquer this beast.”
As he neared, Chad saw the scrapes, scratches, dirt, and blood.  “Oh Willow-”
“Just help me figure out how to stay up on this thing.”
Feeling a lot like his father, he grabbed a spring from her seat and held on tight. “Ok, I’ve got you.  Just pedal.  I won’t let go until you tell me.”
She bounced along the road, her feet slipping off the petals occasionally but slowly growing confident in their placement.  “Ok, let go but stay close.”
Chad jogged alongside her as she wobbled down the road.  “You’ve got it.”
Too confident in her abilities, Chad stopped, hands on hips, and cheered as she rolled down the drive.  Before he could react, however, she hit a rock, and flew over the handlebars.  He rushed to help her up but she pushed his hands away.
“Leave me alone.  This is the best I’ve felt in hours.”
“Did you hit your head?” Chad demanded concerned.
“I did not.  I’m fine.  I’m just tired of falls and scrapes and ruined clothes.  I’m glad I’ve been sewing or my skirt would be a really sore spot with me right now.”
“Come on.  Pretend it’s a horse.  Get back up there.”
Willow rolled onto her side and glared at him once more.  “I think not.”
“Are you hurt?  I mean do you have any new injuries?”
Unconsciously, Willow tugged at her shirt to hide a scrape across her stomach.  “I’m fine.  I’m just not getting up for a long time.”
“Would please work?”
Her laughter, though strained, erupted weakly.  “I’m not ungrateful, really.  I just want to rest.  I’m tired and sticky and I have cuts and bruises enough to last forever.”
Chad’s hand reached for hers.  “Come on.  One more time.  I promise I won’t bug you about it again.  Today anyway.”
***
As he drove away, Chad glanced in the rearview mirror.  He wanted to stuff her in his cruiser and drive her to his mother or his Aunt Libby.  She looked so young, so battered.  Her nose, the knot she tried to hide on the side of her head- the memory sickened him.  He was used to the dirt, the sweat, the fatigue.  That was part of who Willow was.  The injury- that he couldn’t handle.
It had never occurred to him that learning to ride might be difficult.  Willow could do anything she set her mind to.  It was the mark of the Finley women.  How could he possibly have known she’d struggle so much?  Riding a bike was like, well, riding a bike.  Wasn’t it?
***
“So how many berries do you think there are here?”
Willow handed him her mother’s gloves and a wire cane hook.  “A hundred quarts or so.”
“Do you eat all that?”  Chuck stared at the hook curiously, until he saw her pull the blackberries closer and pick them carefully.
“We usually don’t eat them all.  We dry them for the birds in winter but this year I am going to sell some of the extra too.”
Chuck glanced down at the bucket and realized she’d already half-filled it.  “Wow.  You’re fast.”
“I’d be faster if you started picking.”
“How come your mom’s gloves fit me?  My hands aren’t that small.”
Eyes rolling, Willow continued systematically to strip the berries off the canes.  “She wore ones like this for berries.  She wore those for dealing with animals in winter.  She wore them over her regular gloves.”
An hour passed, two.  Buckets slowly but steadily filled with blackberries.  After a while, Willow sent Chuck to wheel back buckets as she filled them.  By lunchtime, they were done with the blackberries.  Chuck tried to convince her to move to blueberries but she refused.
“If I fill up the baskets Jill gave me, she’ll come get them. I’ll call.”
In awe, Chuck watched Willow as she sorted, filled, and then transferred dozens upon dozens of tiny baskets of fruit into Jill’s truck.  Once Jill left, she boiled water, washed berries and filled jars with a mixture of sugar, lemon juice, and, of course, the berries.  He tried to help but was more in the way than any help.
Bath after bath of berries and jam bubbled in the canner and then sealed on towels on the counter.  “How do you know what to do?  You don’t have recipes or anything!”
“I’ve done it every summer of my life.  Even as a baby mom fed me berries while she washed and froze them.  It’s what we do.”
“Why do it though?  Why not just buy berries?  You spend all this time in the heat and you work so hard- Why?”
“It’s how we eat.” She said simply.
“Why not buy it though?  You can afford food surely!  Think of the time and work you’d save.”
Chuck screwed up his face in confusion as she answered, “And what would I do with all of the canning time I saved?”

***
“This is our library.  Almost everything I ever learned came from one of these books or from my Mother.”
Chuck picked at a book about the Amish and rolled his eyes.  A copy of Gray’s anatomy lay open to the brain on top of one shelf.  Will and Ariel Durant’s History of the World stood proudly on another shelf.
“You have a lot of books.  Have you read them all?”
“Several times.  Oh, look at mother’s carving.  She did quills and parchment scrolls for this room.”  The love in Willow’s voice pierced even Chuck’s superficial senses.
“She carved that woodwork?”
“Yep.  Come see the doll house she built me for Christmas when I was six.  I think it was a kit but she must have spent every night after I went to sleep for a year to get it so perfect.”
Willow led him upstairs, past the bedrooms and to a small door at the end of the hall.  Chuck wondered how she could stand the heat.  Air conditioning was an essential of life in his book.  “It’s up here,” her voice broke through his thoughts.
In the attic, at one end under a window, a shelf held several toys, more books, and in the corner stood the dollhouse.  Willow’s face lit up.  “Isn’t it adorable?”
A tenderness, like nothing he’d ever felt before, stole over him.  Even someone as dense as Chuck could see the pain Willow felt as she ran her fingers over the roof and wiped dust from the floors.  He wanted, more than anything he’d ever wanted, to give her another afternoon with her mother.
“I should cover this with plastic.  The dust can’t be good for it.  I’ll come up next rain and clean it and cover it.”
“Willow-”
Her voice broke as she continued.  “I didn’t take care of it like I should have.  Some of the furniture got ruined when I left it outside and we had a thunderstorm.  Mother took it away from me.  I gave the mom a haircut- look at her.”
Tears flowed but she brushed them away quickly.  “I’m sorry.”
“Come on Willow, let’s go downstairs.  I want to see what else you made.”
Willow stood as though to follow but pointed out a wooden rocking horse.  “She made that too.  From a kit.  She said the pieces came all cut and ready to sand, stain, and assemble.  I loved that horse.”
Chuck pulled her hand tugging her back down the stairs.  “What about your room?  Has it always looked the same or did you change it?”
Willow followed him into her mother’s room.  “I remember the year mother painted the wallpaper on that wall.  It was an experiment.  She liked it so much we did my room the next year.”
“You painted this?”
Willow showed him the lines and explained how they’d measured carefully, drawn lines, and used masking tape to ensure a perfectly straight row.  “Mother wanted roses but I chose violets.”
“This is your mother’s room then.”  Chuck’s voice was flat.  He’d botched it again.
“Yes.  Mine is over here.”
Willow took him room by room and described their life in detail much as she had with Chad just two months earlier.  The cellar amazed Chuck the most.  “I thought people only used these for old junk and tornados!”
After the tour, Chuck suggested a movie.  “It’s too early to go home.”
“I don’t feel like dressing for town.”  Actually, she felt like kicking him out.  It was time for him to leave but his laughter stopped her.
“Not the movies, just a DVD.  What do you have?”
Willow stared at him blankly.  The terminology was vaguely familiar.  Maybe Chad had mentioned it, or Bill.  Perhaps she’d read it somewhere.  Her mind struggled to recall hat it meant but she failed.
“I don’t have anything like that.  If I wasn’t so tired and sore, I’d suggest a game of Frisbee or even offer to read aloud but really Chuck, I’ve worked hard today, I stink, I want a shower, and I want to go to bed.  You need to go home.”
His shocked face crumbled.  “What?”
Immediately, Willow realized her mistake.  Chuck was over-sensitive.  She tried again.  “I really am glad for all your help today.  I’m sorry I don’t have any more zip but I’m about to fall asleep on you and I might have to rethink my position on hauntings if I did that.  Mother would never approve.”
“You’re not mad at me?”
Willow smiled and shook her head.  “Not at all.  I’m sorry we can’t play a game or something though.  I’ve had fun.”
“Want to do something tomorrow?”
“Maybe next weekend.  I’m busy tomorrow, but thanks.”
At the door, Chuck turned to Willow, an obvious expression on his face but she stopped him.  “Very flattering Chuck, but go home.”  Her smile softened the rejection of her words as she closed the door in his face.
As his little sports car revved and spun around in the yard, Willow slowly climbed the stairs.  “Lord, was that my fault for being too friendly like Chad said or is it just Chuck being Chuck?  I think that little bit of information would be helpful.”