The Path to Piney Meadows Read online

  Instead of making him feel rejected, it made him admire her. It didn’t mean he was conceited or full of his own ego to know that, in general, ladies liked him. He’d never had difficulty attracting a lady’s attention, once he set his mind to it. Even Brittany, despite the bad turns in their relationship, had been attracted to him when he turned on the charm.

  But Anna wasn’t falling for it. Quite the opposite: whenever he turned it on, she turned and ran. Just like today.

  He sighed and put the lid on the teapot.

  He’d never felt this way about a woman before. Not even Brittany. He’d thought he’d been in love with her, but the more he got to know her, the more everything fell apart. It wasn’t a relationship to last until a fiftieth wedding anniversary. He wanted a good, happy marriage like his parents had.

  Come to think of it, they hadn’t approved of him moving in with Brittany, although they hadn’t said anything specific, because in today’s society, living together before marriage was pretty ordinary. But then, so many of the couples he knew who lived together never got married, even though they stayed together.

  It made him think. They loved each other enough to live together but not enough to actually get married.

  If he hadn’t moved in with Brittany, it was very likely he wouldn’t be where he was right now.

  But he couldn’t complain. For the first time in years, he felt content, when he could push aside the pending issues.

  He truly could live like this.

  Chad closed his eyes to try to see into the future. Of course, he couldn’t, but he could see what he wanted, and that was to have Anna, here, with him, living together in the order in which God wanted it. It meant a courtship, not too long, of course, and then marriage, followed by children and the classic storybook happily ever after.

  He opened his eyes and walked to the kitchen window, where he could see Anna’s parents’ house next door. He hadn’t known her long in terms of months, but he spent more time with Anna in a week than he had with Brittany in a month, or more. He knew her both at work and at play. Attending Bible study meetings with her, he knew her values. Talking with her every day on the way to and from work, where they were in the middle of both worlds, he knew her heart. He didn’t believe in love at first sight, but his first sight had been at Christmas—she’d been the voice and face of an angel then, and she certainly was that now. If he could believe in signs, this one flashed in bright neon.

  He hadn’t paid attention then, but he was paying attention now. And the sign was telling him Anna was the woman he’d prayed for, whom God had put in his path. Even though he hadn’t prayed for years and he’d only started praying again recently, God had been listening after all. A recent Bible study meeting had talked about God’s timing and how God’s timing was seldom the same as a person’s, and when the timing was right, God would make it clear.

  If this was what God was telling him now, Chad was convinced.

  Now if only he could figure out how to convince Anna.

  17

  Anna stood at the entrance to Chad’s office. Normally she would just walk in, but today it felt wrong to do so.

  Saying nothing, she stood, watching him work. His desk was a total mess, piled with so many papers in random piles. A plate containing a half-eaten sandwich balanced precariously atop a stack of papers, and naturally, his coffee mug sat too close to his keyboard.

  She could tell the second he noticed her standing there. He raised his mug, took a sip of his coffee, then set the mug where it should have been in the first place.

  “Yes? Did you need something?”

  “Ja. I need to talk to you.”

  Chad’s brows knotted. “This feels serious. What’s wrong?”

  Anna clasped her hands together but couldn’t help moving her fingers out of nervousness. “There is talk about you not being pleased with the work everyone is doing. There is so much work to be done, yet you have told people to go home.”

  “That’s because it’s the end of the first shift. Everyone was still working, so I told everyone who’s been here eight hours to pack up and go.”

  She’d seen him go into the factory at the end of the first shift to send everyone home. Lately, he had sent her home at the end of her shift as well, while he said he had stayed to catch up on a few projects. Whenever he said this, she knew that he wouldn’t just stay for a few minutes—it would be hours. She’d seen him arrive home with barely enough time to eat something and accompany her to whatever activity they had planned for the evening. She knew the extra hours he was working. Yet, he didn’t allow anyone else to work extra time to complete their work. “Why do you send them home? They are not finished. They have too much to do with the rush order for our new customer.”

  “There isn’t too much to do that it can’t be done in their regular shifts. I’ve caught them before, staying past the end of their shift to continue working. It’s a rush order, but if everyone works hard, which I know they will, it’ll be done on time. I don’t want anyone working overtime. I want them going home to their families.”

  Anna had told everyone that Chad would not understand, and she was right. Chad was the only one who worked overtime. Even though he never submitted a payroll form to be paid for it, it didn’t negate the fact that he was working long past his agreed time. No one understood why he often worked late yet did not allow the same from anyone else. “They fear you are displeased and have asked me to talk to you.”

  Chad’s head tilted. “Why would I be displeased? Have they done something wrong? What don’t I know about?”

  “There is nothing you do not know. But they do not wish to go home. They wish to stay until they are done with what they are doing.”

  “No. No overtime.”

  Anna’s stomach clenched. “But they do not wish to be paid overtime with their paychecks. They only wish to get everything completed ahead of the deadline.”

  He ran his fingers through his hair, which she noticed was starting to look a bit shaggy. “Since I’ve been here, we haven’t missed a single deadline. And from what I’ve seen, in all the files I’ve checked—and I’ve checked a lot—we’ve never missed a deadline. Ever. There’s no need to work crazy hours. I set the completion date with reasonable production timelines. So did Ted, and so did Bart.” He paused, then leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. “My old boss would work everyone into an early grave to meet unreasonable deadlines. I won’t do that to these people. Sales aren’t hurting by setting reasonable runs, and if they were, I’d have to think twice if that’s the kind of customers we want. They pay for quality, and they’re not going to get it if everyone is overworked or overstressed.”

  “But you do not understand. Everyone knows this is an important order, so they want to work hard to have it completed ahead of schedule. Then if something goes wrong, they will still be on time with it.” She cleared her throat and looked directly into his eyes as she spoke. “This is the way it is done. They want to work hard, but you are not allowing it.”

  “Of course, I’m allowing it. I expect it. But when everyone’s eight hours are up, I expect them to go home.”

  She wrung her hands again. “But that is not our way. We will work hard until the job is done, and we will be happy because we have done it well.” Anna watched all the emotions play in his face as he considered her words. One thought at a time, she could see him lose his rigor, until he slumped, plunked his elbows on his desk, and buried his face in his hands.

  He shook his head as he spoke, without dropping his hands. “Every time you say ‘that is not our way’ I know I’ve done something else wrong. All I want to do is be fair and show everyone how much I appreciate them.” He dropped his hands and looked at her, his eyes like those of a beaten puppy. “I know so many people who are so overworked. The overtime pay doesn’t make them happy. Instead, with more money from more overtime, all that happens is that they only want more stuff. It just becomes a vicious cycle. I know a
lot of people say they love their jobs, but when a person’s life is nearly over and they’re thinking about what they’ve done over the years, no one ever says they wish they’d spent more time at work. More people say they sacrificed too much time for their job and didn’t spend enough time with their families.” He waved one hand in the air, toward the window. “That’s what I want to do here. Give these people a balance between work and spending all the time they can with the people who love them.”

  The pain in his eyes told her that the opposite had happened to him. “I know you said your old boss was not good and made everyone work too hard and did not pay them rightly for it. We all know you are not like that. You are a good man; you want what is best for everyone.”

  At her words, his eyes widened and he sagged even more. “Yeah. I want what’s best both for the business and for everyone who works hard to make it successful. Sometimes the balance between the two is hard to find.”

  Anna nodded. “It is not hard here. Everyone wants to do a good job. Because when one person succeeds, we all succeed.”

  Chad sighed. “Okay. Tell everyone on both shifts that I’m calling a meeting in ten minutes. I’ll offer everyone a trade. It would be nice to get this order shipped ahead of schedule. Reputation means everything in most businesses. I’ll okay everyone to work up to two hours of overtime a day, and in exchange, I want them to agree to take equal time off when we’re between jobs. That’s called banked time off. Do you think they would agree to that?”

  She couldn’t help smiling. “I think that would be a wonderful idea. I will tell them to prepare for a meeting in ten minutes.”

  Before he could say more, she turned and nearly ran to where everyone from the first shift was waiting for her. Immediately she found Harold, the supervisor. “I talked to him, as you wanted, and he is coming. I think he is going to have some very good news for all of us.” She wouldn’t say more in her excitement and ran to tell the second shift the same thing.

  In exactly eight minutes, the staff assembled in the lunchroom, ready when Chad walked in.

  She noticed he’d combed his hair.

  He outlined the same plan he’d told her, except in more detail. He then asked for a show of hands for all who agreed, and of course, everyone did. She knew everyone wanted to work hard and do their best, and it would be exciting to be rewarded with equal time off with full pay.

  As the room quieted, Chad turned his head and looked toward her, causing all to do the same thing.

  Anna felt her cheeks burn to have every person there watching her at once.

  As Chad spoke, everyone continued to watch her. “In order to be fair, everyone needs to keep track of their extra time, and every day, before you leave, please write your name and the time you left on a piece of paper and put it in an envelope I’m going to tape near the door. If you leave on time, I still need you to leave a note. In . . . uh . . . the cities . . . we’d be doing this with a punch clock, which is a machine that stamps the time on a card you insert into a slot. Everyone would put their card into it when they arrived and then again when they left, and this is how most employers keep track of a person’s time in a factory like this. They do that every day, for as long as they work at that job.”

  He stopped to let all of them imagine the process. All Anna could think about was how needing to do such a thing displayed a complete lack of trust between people and the company they worked for. But if this was the way it was done in the cities, then she would accept it, and now that she knew, she would not be surprised when asked to do so. When she finished her work for the day, she would stay a few extra minutes and check the Internet for more information.

  When the murmurs stopped, Chad continued. “I’m not going to buy a punch clock, but I’ll buy time cards so no mistakes are made. We’ll only use them when we have a rush order and we might need to work extra time. At the end of the week we’ll give all the cards to Anna, she’ll record everyone’s extra hours, and she’ll be the one to coordinate when everyone wants to take their days off. Remember, we can’t have too many people taking the same day off, or this won’t work. If you agree to this, please raise your hands.”

  Again, all hands raised.

  Chad nodded. “We’ll start this new system tomorrow. If you have any questions or need more information, please ask me.”

  Chad poured himself a cup of coffee and then sat at one of the tables to answer questions and explain his system in more detail. Instead of going back to her desk, Anna sat beside him so she could hear all the details about this wonderful new idea. When everyone was gone, she accompanied him back to the office. He wheeled his chair to her desk, and they sat side by side while he designed a spreadsheet and entered the code for the formulas to add everyone’s times automatically.

  “I’ll order some timecards from the office supply store, but it will be a few days before they get here. Until that happens, we’ll have to make our own. Do you want to go home, or do you want to stay and help me?”

  “I want to stay. Show me what to do.”

  They made a form and printed one for everyone on the sturdiest paper she could find, then left the cards at a table beside the door.

  Chad swiped his hands down the sides of his pants. “I want you to write down the extra time you took today to prepare for this. I don’t want you doing this for free.”

  “But you work many extra hours for free. I hope that you have been keeping track of your own extra time in this same way, so that you can also take time off.”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “Of course not. I’m the boss. Now pack up your stuff and let’s go home.”

  For the first time since he’d met her, Anna chattered. The entire walk home, she talked nonstop about how happy everyone was with his new plan and how innovative it was.

  He couldn’t believe a group of people could be so excited about banked overtime. Personally, Chad had never been excited about it because even though Gary always promised equal time off, whenever anyone asked for the time off, Gary replied that it wasn’t good for the company—or, in other words, him—and the time off was denied. Whenever anyone asked to be paid for it, Gary quickly reminded everyone that the agreement had been for equal time off only, not pay at time-and-a-half.

  When Chad received his last paycheck, Gary hadn’t paid out any of his banked overtime, even on termination of his employment. They had no punch clock at the office. The only record of banked overtime was on paper, on written requests. Chad had kept a file in his desk, but he hadn’t thought to take it with him when he impulsively quit. He had no doubt that Gary had destroyed it when going through his desk. He’d never taken a copy home, and Chad wasn’t going to fight him for it because it was a battle he would never win, even though what Gary had done was against the law.

  Chad would never do such a thing to these good people here. In fact, when they completed this order, Chad planned to ask Bart if he could give everyone a small bonus for their hard work and dedication, and he had no doubt Bart would agree, even though it technically came right out of Bart’s pocket as the only shareholder.

  Anna finally stopped her chatter when they arrived at her door. Instead of giving him a quick nod and disappearing before he could get a word in, she turned to him and smiled.

  The stars in her eyes nearly blinded him.

  Just like in a book, where the hero of the story falls madly in love with the heroine at first sight, his heart pounded and his head swam. In his mind, he pictured her leaning forward, resting her hands on his shoulders, raising herself up on her tiptoes, and kissing him hard and passionately. They would declare their love for each other, all the problems would melt away, the hero would propose, the heroine would swoon and answer affirmatively, and the book would be over, with a happily-ever-after ending.

  But then, reality intruded.

  He’d really been reading too many sappy books lately.

  She smiled and looked down at her clasped hands. “You are such a good man, Chad. We are ve
ry blessed to have you running the factory.”

  A good man.

  His heart sank. He wanted, needed, to be so much more to her. He really felt God had put Anna in his path for a reason, and he wanted the reason to be because one day soon she would marry him.

  But for now, if good was all he was, he would take it. There were so many worse things—at least being “good” had the potential for more.

  He could work at being better.

  However, here, he didn’t know what to do. Back at home, he would buy a woman flowers and small gifts and jewelry and pour on the charm. Here, such behavior seemed inappropriate. The problem was, he didn’t know what was appropriate.

  “Uh . . . well . . . thanks,” he muttered, because he probably should say something, he just didn’t know what.

  However, now that he’d made some friends here, he did have other men available whom he could ask what was appropriate to attract a woman’s attentions.

  He considered his options.

  Of his closest friends, he couldn’t ask David; David was her brother. Back in Minneapolis, Chad had once asked a friend if he would mind if he dated his sister. That day, Chad went home with a black eye. And he didn’t get the girl.

  He couldn’t ask William. Even though word had it that their parents planned to match William and Anna as a couple, he now knew that they were just friends, and friends were all they would ever be. Still, since they were friends, Chad didn’t think William was the appropriate person to ask.

  That left Brian, who, of all the men he’d ever met, was the most clueless about women. Still Brian would know what people did around here, and that was what mattered.

  Whatever Brian said, Chad would make it happen.

  “Goode nacht, Chad. I will see you tomorrow morning.”

  “Yeah. Good night.”

  Just as it did every day, the door closed in his face.