Heartland Stars

After working beside her sisters for years on their Iowa farm, Meg McCartney finds herself alone, trying to do the work of three people.

She’s never been one to mope around, but she’s lonely and tired and at the end of her rope – desperate enough to give serious thought to an offer that has come in for the farm…and for her.

Farris Warner has spent the last ten years fighting. Fighting the cancer that took his wife’s life, leaving him a widower with four small children. Fighting the government as it took the farm that had been in his family for eight generations through eminent domain for a new airport. Fighting to keep his sanity as he tried to work his farm, raise his kids and keep up with lawyers and doctors and teachers and schools.

He’s desperate.

Desperate enough that when an old buddy makes an outrageous suggestion…he’s ready to take him up on it.

Can two down-on-their-luck strangers take the pieces of their lives and make something beautiful out of them?

Chapter 1

Meg carried the three leftover hot dogs into the house.

Rose’s one-year birthday party had been a huge success. But
most of the guests had left, and it was just her sisters and a few close
friends cleaning up.

“Look at this!” Candace said, holding up a bag of rolls. “Three
rolls left too. How often does that happen?”

Meg smiled. Never. “That’s definitely a first.”

“That’ll be supper for you for the next three days,” Candace
said with a happy smile. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you letting us
have Rose’s birthday here, rather than trying to have it in our new place when
we’re doing all of those renovations and getting everything settled. Thank
you.”

“My pleasure. You know you’re always welcome here. I think
it would be hard to move out of the home you grew up in and not feel at home
when you come back. I hope that doesn’t happen.”

“Oh, Meg,” Candace said, her eyes going to the window where
her husband, Jefferson, carried Rose around on his shoulders while he cleaned
the grill and put the yard furniture back in their rightful places. “Things
change.” She sighed. “That’s just one of those things in life that we have to
get used to.”

Meg nodded, but Candace’s words made the unsettled feeling
that had been in her chest all day even worse.

“You girls talking about changes?” Aunt Bev said as she
walked into the kitchen. She had gone in earlier to take a little nap on the
couch, saying all of the excitement had worn her out.

“Yeah. Good changes. But even good changes make you sad,”
Candace said, her smile not quite as bright, as she wrapped the bag around the rolls
and put them in the cupboard.

“That’s the truth, girl,” Aunt Bev said. “It’s probably best
if you just accept the fact that your life is going to shift when you least
expect it and understand that most of the time when God changes your life, He
does it for a reason. Sometimes, it takes a little bit until we see it, and we
have a tendency to fight the change, but if we could see our lives from God’s
perspective, we’d know that the changes are necessary.”

Meg put the hot dogs in a baggie and set them in the
refrigerator. They truly would make her supper for the next three nights, along
with some of the other leftovers.

“I know you’re right, Aunt Bev, and I’m not upset or trying
to fight anything, I just… I guess I get overwhelmed by the memories sometimes,
you know? Just last year, my two sisters and I were happy and having fun in
this house, working on the farm together. And now…now Esther is happily
married, with a little one on the way, but living in town, and she hasn’t
approached me about it, but I think that she and Monroe would like to sell
their third of the farm. And Candace just moved last month, and I’m happy for
her and excited because I think they’re going to really enjoy living where they
are, and they’re not that far away, it’s just…just different.”

“You know, when you’re the one left behind, it’s always a
little harder,” Aunt Bev said with a sad smile. She ought to know. She raised
four girls who all moved out of the house. All of a sudden, Meg understood how
that might feel. To have that change.

Aunt Bev went on. “You’re the one that’s still in the same
spot, walking around with all of the memories, while the person who moved on,
or people, or whatever, they’re living a new, exciting life, and they don’t
have as much time, or as much empty brainpower, to think about the past. Plus,
they’re not living with the house and everything right with them.”

“That’s a good explanation. I’m just kind of living with the
memories every day, and it’s hard to shake them.”

“Miss Matilda always said when you take something away, you
need to replace it with something. She was talking about sin. Like when you
stop listening to music you know you shouldn’t be listening to, because it
glorifies immorality, or cheating, or just encourages you to do bad things, she
would say you need to replace it with good music. Because you don’t want to
take it out and just have a hole there. So when you take something bad out of
your life, you make a decision to replace it with something good.”

Candace wrung a rag out at the sink and started wiping the
table. “It’s not that anything bad has left your life, but the people who
leave, like we were talking about, they have already replaced things. They’ve
taken something out and replaced it with something else, but the person who’s
left behind hasn’t. Often doesn’t. They just have that hole, and they don’t
think of replacing it with anything.”

“I had never thought about it that way. But I remember Miss
Matilda saying that, and that’s kind of been a principle that I’ve thought
about. But I didn’t apply it to this.”

Candace stood and walked across the kitchen to Meg where she
leaned against the counter and put her arms around her. “It makes me sad to
think that you’re sad. I’m sorry.”

Meg hugged her back, relishing the contact. She’d been alone
in the house, and she hadn’t realized how much she had missed the contact with
her sisters.

Now that there was no one, she wouldn’t say she got lonely
exactly, she just…kind of craved human touch and interaction.

“Please don’t be sad. I…I’m not sure how we got on the
subject, but it definitely wasn’t because I wanted you to feel guilty. I’m glad
we talked about it, because it’s obvious to me that I need to fill the hole, as
Miss Matilda would say, with something, rather than just trying to power
through the sadness.”

“Sometimes we can power through things, but sometimes it’s
okay to try to make that powering through a little easier,” Aunt Bev said.

Meg nodded, feeling hopeful. Which was better than the
slightly depressed feeling she’d been having as everyone packed up and started
leaving. The amount of people who had been here after having no one for days
had been a little overwhelming. But the idea that both of her sisters were
married, and she wasn’t, made her feel even more left behind.

She honestly didn’t begrudge her sisters any happiness, not
at all, but the fact of the matter was she did have a hole in her life, she did
feel left behind, and it was up to her to fix it, not up to anyone else to undo
something they had done, just to try to make her happy.

“I think maybe I’m going to make some changes,” Meg said,
thinking about the message she had gotten earlier this morning.

She had determined to do something about it but then changed
her mind.

Now, it seemed like the Lord might be opening a door, after
closing several others.

“Well, honey, don’t be too rash,” Aunt Bev said, coming over
and patting her arm. “You also don’t want to make snap decisions, just because
you’re trying to grasp at anything to replace the things that you’ve lost.”

“That’s good advice, Aunt Bev,” Candace said, giving her
sister a concerned look.

Meg smiled. “I’m not gonna do anything that I’m not going to
pray about first and feel like God wants me to do.”

“That’s a relief. And that’s much smarter than I was,”
Candace said, kind of sadly, her eyes again going to the window. “But God can
take bad mistakes and turn them for good. Sometimes despite the fact that we
don’t deserve it.”

Meg wanted to argue and tell Candace that she deserved every
good thing, but she understood what Candace was saying. That no one truly
deserved the goodness God gave to them, that each and every thing that came through
His grace was a gift beyond measure and one they needed to be thankful for.
Especially when it came after they had made poor decisions and even sinned.

“Promise me that you’re not going to do anything rash,”
Candace said, studying Meg’s face.

“I promise,” Meg said easily, knowing that she wouldn’t.
Although, if she truly did answer that social media post, some might consider
it rash. But this conversation in the kitchen had been exactly what she needed.

Glancing out the window, she saw Preston, their neighbor,
trying to move the picnic table back by himself while Jefferson carried some
chairs back to the barn.

“I’m gonna run out and give him a hand,” Meg said quickly, hurrying
to the door and stepping out. The picnic table was heavy. Although Preston was
moving it, it would be much easier with two people. She was so grateful that
Preston had stayed to help clean up, and she didn’t want to see him working
extra hard when she could help.

“Hang on a second,” she called as she walked through the
yard. “I’ll give you a hand with that.”

“This thing must be made with bricks. It weighs a ton.”

“It’s pressure-treated lumber, and I ought to know, since I
made it in high school.”

“You made this? You don’t typically see an octagon picnic
table like this.”

“I love it, except you can’t push the seats in and out.
Which I suppose is typical for a picnic table, but it makes it kind of hard to
have a group of people of various ages and sizes sitting together.”

“That’s the story with picnic tables, right?” Preston said
as Meg picked up the other end, and they carried it, somewhat awkwardly, back
over to the oak tree where it typically sat, not far from the rope swing.

They settled it down, and Meg brushed her hands off,
figuring she’d walk back up to the house with Preston and kind of waiting on him.

But he stood there, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Nice
party.”

“You know it’s funny we do so much celebrating with
one-year-olds, because the kids never remember them. It’s mostly for the
adults.”

“And the other kids. Lisa and Oliver seemed to have a great
time.”

He referred to Candace and Jefferson’s other two children, the
ones that they didn’t have custody of but had permission to keep.

“They did. Birthday parties are always fun for kids.
Hopefully anyway.”

“As long as there’s cake, they’re fun for me too.”

Meg laughed. “I guess I could say the same thing, although I
always love to eat off the grill, and we just don’t cook on it unless we have
people over.”

“That’s part of summer as well,” Preston said and leaned his
hip against the picnic table like he was planning on staying for a while and
chatting.

Meg didn’t mind, almost everything had been cleaned up, and
she’d be heading down to the barn to start the work, a little late, but it
would be there when she got there, so she wasn’t in a huge hurry.

“This is going to sound odd,” Preston started, and Meg’s
breath caught in her throat. He almost sounded like he was a little unsure, and
she thought he might be going to propose something to her.

Preston was a great guy, a good friend, and someone she
really liked and admired.

He didn’t date, and everyone pretty much assumed it was
because the girl he’d fallen in love with in high school had married someone
else.

But maybe he was like her, ready to do something desperate
just to move on with his life.