Lysander hoped what he’d been told in Connecticut was
true. The last farmer he’d gone to was experienced with fruit trees, and his
orchard was legendary. When Lysander had wanted a guarantee, the old
farmer had told him that often what you grew turned out to be what you had
wanted all along. He said that there was a fine line between crimson and
scarlet, and that a person simply had to wait to see what appeared. Ruth
wouldn’t know until the following fall whether or not the pears would be red,
nearly a full year, but she was hopeful that by that time she wouldn’t care.
