It drove her crazy.
Colin seemed preoccupied. Occasionally he would lift his head and smile vaguely at her, and then lapse back into his own thoughts.
She shouldn’t have snapped at him that afternoon. He was only trying to help, but she had reached the end of her patience. And she had to admit that nothing she said was untrue. It might have benefited from some editing of the tone, admittedly, but the facts themselves were indisputable.
He was probably hurt, and that unfocused smile was simply his way of dealing with her dreadful tirade. After dinner she’d try to catch some time with him alone and apologize. That would undoubtedly go a long way to heal his ruffled feathers.
She beamed happily at him, content with her decision, and let the dinner ride on in silence.
After the last noodle had been eaten, she cleared the table and prepared to wash the dishes. Usually Colin helped her, but tonight he wasn’t there, and bless his heart, she thought, who could blame him?
No, definitely an apology was in order. It wouldn’t solve the problem of the farm, but at least her heart would be happier.
She hummed contentedly while she straightened the kitchen. She hung the dish towel so that the smiling teakettle she’d embroidered faced outward. The plates and cups and silverware were washed and dried and put away, and the counters wiped off.
With one last unnecessary pass at the immaculate stovetop, she took off her apron, looped it over the hook on the broom closet door, and retied her hair.
She took a deep breath and entered the living room. “Colin, I’m sor—”
Her toe caught on the edge of the throw rug, and she tripped. Everything slowed down so that she caught the entire fall in amazing detail: stumbling on the rug, splaying across a sleeping Bruno who barked sharply at her for interrupting his dog dreams, sliding across the floor on her knees and chin, and coming to a halt against the edge of the sofa.
“And that’s why they call it a throw rug,” Bud quipped as he sprang to help her up.
“Are you all right?” George said.
“You’re bleeding.” Bud held up his hand and showed her the smears.
“Is anything broken?” George held her elbow, steadying her.
“Just my pride.”
“Oh, that,” Bud said dismissively.
“Where’s Colin?” she asked, as she finally realized that this had all been for naught, since he wasn’t in the room.
“I don’t know.” George looked around, as if realizing for the first time that Colin wasn’t there. “I don’t know that he came in here after supper.”
“He did, but then he went to his room in the old house,” Bud volunteered. Then he leered at his sister. “Maybe he is your mail-order groom after all. Did you want to go for a long walk in the moonlight? A little hand-holding? Kissy-kissy? Smooch-smooch?”
With all the dignity she could muster, she left the room and went into her bedroom. There was no way she was going to get to talk to Colin, not while her brothers were around.
She didn’t miss her notebook as much as she’d thought she would. She had the real thing here in her home.
She sprawled on her bed and let her mind wander to the subject she enjoyed the most—Colin.
If only this stupid depression hadn’t interfered. He could have found work in Valley Junction, or even stayed and helped with the farm, freeing George to marry Ruth if he wished. Bud—well, she’d never figured out a solution for Bud. At some point he’d find a girl in the area and settle down. The problem with him was the settling down part.
She’d never thought she’d find love here and had long ago resigned herself to being a spinster and living out the rest of her days keeping Bud in line.
But now she had Colin. She loved him. She needed him.
What if he chooses to leave? Resolutely she tried to push the idea out of her mind, but it stayed just inside the fringes. There was no reason he should stay, and in fact, every reason for him to go.
He could take her with him.
Her brain began to play with the thought. They could go somewhere else.
Now that the farm was going to be sold, she had no reason to stay in Valley Junction. In fact, she would probably have to move and find a job. Of course her first thought was that she could go to St. Paul or Minneapolis, but why should she limit herself?
The economy was hurting there, too, but at least in a city they’d have a fighting chance at earning a living.
Perhaps this was a blessing in disguise. The cost was hor-rendous, but maybe there was a silver lining in this dark cloud.
She’d asked for this, longed for this, ached for this, and now she had it.
Freedom.
She laced her fingers behind her head and lay back on the pillow and stared at the ceiling. The more she played out the scenario in her mind, the more she liked it. Yes, it was absolutely possible.
She and Colin would move to the city.
George and Ruth could take the profit from the farm—assuming anyone would buy it—and start again, here or somewhere else.
And Bud? He was the wild card in the lot, but she knew even that would resolve itself.
God would help her sort this all out. He didn’t create problems that His people couldn’t solve.
With those plans floating through her mind like butterflies, she fell asleep.
❧
The sun hadn’t come up yet, but he couldn’t wait. Once again he rolled up two blankets with rope and stowed a change of clothes and his Bible in his backpack.
In this hour before sunrise, the farm was silent except for the last sounds of the night birds calling to each other from the cottonwoods. The chickens were tucked in the coop, sleeping soundly in their straw nests.
Bruno sprang to his feet, his nails scrabbling across the kitchen linoleum as Colin tiptoed through the room.
Colin knelt and scratched the dog’s head. “Take care of them for me, will you please? Especially Lolly.”
He stood up and surveyed the room where he’d spent so many enjoyable hours with Lolly, falling in love with her as she peeled the carrots that never seemed to grow completely, or as she stood over a basin full of soapy water and dishes, her hair that couldn’t stay in place escaping into those eyes as dark as wet granite.
Every part of his being screamed at him: Stay! His heart spoke the loudest.
But he couldn’t. He needed to leave, to go back to where he’d begun.
He had work to do.
His heart wanted to stay here, tucked in the curve of the Minnesota River, where within a couple of weeks the first gilt of autumn would touch the landscape. He wanted to sit on the pier with Lolly, enjoying October crisp mornings when the sun was as golden as the leaves, against a backdrop of clear blue sky.
And then to watch the first snowflakes fall. . .together. To stand in the warmth of the farmhouse and watch the winter put on an icy mantle, or to walk in the snow, their footsteps marking where they had been, and only their love deciding where they should go.
To await spring with its burst of brilliant new green, the first shoots of life to appear after the winterkill on the land.
He sighed. It was not to be.
He’d come in search of God, in search of meaning, and he had found it. He realized at last that it was very simple.
All he’d had to do was open his heart and let God bloom. God had been there all along. He had just been waiting.
He shifted his backpack onto his shoulders and settled the bedroll.
This was so difficult to do.
And so necessary.
“Good-bye, Lolly,” he said into the dark. “God bless you.”
With that, he turned and left the house, shutting the door very quietly behind him, and walked down the road, headed toward the future.
❧
The chickens squawked and clucked and complained loudly, and Lolly smiled as she tied her apron on. Colin had probably just walked by. The silly birds had decided that whenever he appeared, it was time for him to feed them.
And, soft touch that he was, he almost always did, even if it was only a few kernels as a treat.
She went to the window to call him in for morning coffee. It was weak, to be sure, but it was coffee.
The chickens, though, weren’t being fed. Instead, they were milling around anxiously, pecking at the bare ground as if that would make the food appear.
Where was Colin?
Bud slid into the kitchen with his usual carelessness, and she automatically chided him. “Can’t you just walk into a room? You know, one foot in front of the other like a normal person?”
“Aw, Lolly, you know I don’t do imitations.” He picked up a cup and poured from the coffeepot. “I thought we were having coffee now.”
“We are.”
“So what is this?’
“Coffee.”
“No, I mean really. What is it?”
She sighed. “It’s coffee.”
“Coffee is brown. This isn’t brown. It’s beige.”
“I had to make it a little bit weak.”
George joined them at that moment. “Any coffee left?”
Bud hooted. “Depends on what you call ‘coffee.’ There’s some stuff left that Lolly brewed up, but it’s a stretch to call it coffee.”
George poured himself a cup. “It is kind of, well, trans-parent, Lolly.”
“I’m trying to make it stretch until I can get into town with some more eggs.”
“So what do you suppose is better, brother of mine,” Bud asked as he pulled a chair out from the table and sat backwards on it, “five cups of weak coffee, or two cups of good coffee?”
“I don’t know, Bud.” George dished up scrambled eggs from the skillet and joined him at the table, but with his chair facing forward. “You tell me, as I’m sure you will.”
“Sounds like somebody got up on the wrong side of the bed today.”
Bud was in one of his taunting moods, Lolly realized. That was going to make the day all that much more difficult. When he was like this, especially first thing in the morning, it set the tone for George, who liked to eat his breakfast in grumpy silence.
“Where’s Colin?” George asked, interrupting Bud’s dis-cussion of coffee.
“I don’t know,” Lolly said, frowning at her own cup of coffee. Maybe she had been a bit too light-handed with the ground beans. This looked a lot more like tea. She took an experimental sip. It tasted like hot water with a faint aroma of coffee. “Isn’t he with you?”
“I haven’t seen him,” George said.
“Me, either.”
“Those fool chickens are about to drive me insane, too,” George said, sending a dark look in the general direction of the henhouse. “Colin needs to get up and feed them.”
It wasn’t like Colin to ignore the chickens, Lolly thought. Something was wrong.
“Would one of you do me a favor and check the old house?”
“Why?” Bud asked as he reached over to George’s plate and speared a forkful of eggs.
“Get your own!” George growled.
“It’s easier to just eat off yours,” Bud said.
“Stop!” Lolly came around the corner of the counter. “Just stop it, please! You two don’t need to argue about every little thing that comes your way. I want one of you to go check on Colin and—”
She frowned as an ominous crunch behind her broke into her rant. “Bruno, you didn’t!”
“Oh, he did,” Bud said.
The dog had gotten into the garbage and pulled out the eggshells and was contentedly munching away on them.
“Nasty dog!” She leaned down and forced Bruno’s jaws open and pulled out what she could of the shells. “Now you’ll probably get sick.”
She cleaned up the shells that were spilled on the floor, and when she stood up, George was standing beside her.
His face was solemn. “Lolly, Colin’s not in his room.”
“He’s probably out in the back somewhere.” She dropped the shells back into the garbage. “Bad dog!” she said, shaking her finger at Bruno. “No more garbage!”
“Lolly, I think he’s gone.”
“Gone?”
She froze, her finger still pointed at the dog.
“Gone. His bed is made, and his pack and bedroll are gone.”
How could he be gone? How could he? She braced herself against the counter with both hands. “He’s gone?”
George nodded. “I’m sorry. Sis, I’m really sorry.”
“He’s just outside somewhere. He can’t have left.”
“Lolly, he’s gone.”
“Then there’s a note. Let’s look for a note.”
“No note. I already checked.”
“Why would he leave? Why wouldn’t he stay? He’ll be back. He will. You just wait and see.”
He didn’t say anything. But she saw the answer in his eyes.
Whatever was left of her world shattered. She turned around and slammed her fist into the countertop. “This is not fair! Not fair!”
“Lolly. . .” George tried to put his arm around her, but she shook it off.
“First God takes both Mom and Dad and leaves us here on the farm. Then He brings a drought to the land, and if that’s not enough, a depression, too. My name gets smeared all across Valley Junction—”
“Actually,” Bud interjected, “that was my fault. Not God’s.”
“Whatever. He could have stopped you. He could have tripped you when you were reaching for that blanket for the governor rooster. He could have had George run over a nail and get a flat tire. He could have made you decide that for once you’d keep your mouth shut.”
“Eleanor Ann Prescott!” George barked. “No more!”
“And He could have let Colin stay here.”
The rage in Lolly dissipated, and she slid down to the floor. “I’m out of fight. I can’t go on anymore. We don’t have enough money for even a halfway decent cup of coffee today. What are we going to do for dinner tomorrow?”
“We have the chickens,” Bud said.
“We can’t eat eggs forever,” she pointed out.
“Not just the eggs,” George said.
“Oh, this is exactly what I mean! If we eat the chickens, there won’t be any more eggs. Do you see? I’m sorry I yelled at God. I am. But I just don’t know what to do.”
“We aren’t totally out of options,” George said. “In Mankato—”
“I want to be here. I want to be here with Colin.”
“Well,” Bud said, “I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to find Colin and make him answer to me, that’s what I’m going to do.”
“You’re right, you know that, little brother? We saved that fellow’s life! We did!” George pushed back his plate angrily. “We saved his life, and we took him into our home, and we fed him, and gave him clothes, and let our sister fall in love, and—”
What were they saying?
Lolly raised her head. “Wait just a second. You let me fall in love? Are you both insane? I think I can fall in love on my own, thank you very much.”
“But he told us that he told you that he loved you,” Bud said.
“He told you that, did he?” Cold fury was beginning to displace hurt. “What else did he tell you about us?”
Bud screwed his face into a thoughtful frown. “Well, George asked him if he’d kissed you, and—”
“You did not!” She nearly flew to her feet. “Tell me you didn’t do that.”
“Well, I might have.” George at least had the good grace to look uncomfortable.
“And what did he say?”
&nb
sp; “He didn’t really say anything. He didn’t seem to be a kiss-and-tell kind of guy.”
Lolly snorted. “More like a kiss-and-leave kind of guy.”
George pushed his chair back with force. “So he did. He did kiss you.”
She put her hands over her forehead. What on earth had she done to deserve this from her brothers? Wasn’t anything going to go her way?
“I am going to find a place no one will bother me for a while,” she said, with as much dignity as she could muster. “I need to be alone for a while. But first I am going to feed the chickens.”
She straightened her apron, tucked her hair back into the bun, and left the room. Her brothers’ words carried through the open doorway.
“Which way do you suppose he went?”
“If we take the back road, we can probably catch him before he gets to Mankato.”
“Unless he’s going west. But why would he go west?”
“He’s from New York. He’s wending his sorry way back there.”
“But he was going west when we found him.”
“Well, it’s heading into winter. He’ll probably want to go home.”
“Let’s do the back road.”
“We’ll find him and bring him back here and make him marry Lolly.”
That was entirely too much.
She spun on her heel and turned back into the kitchen. “Don’t do me any favors. I don’t want him.”
Bud narrowed his eyes. “But we do, Lolly. Boy, do we ever!”
❧
Colin saw the truck as it came down the road, and he ducked into the underbrush, rolling down a slight embankment as he lost his balance with the pack and bedroll strapped to his back. He could easily see Lolly’s brothers in the front of the truck. From the way Bud was leaning out the window, scanning the sides of the road, and the forward thrust of George’s chin as he hunkered over the steering wheel, it was clear they knew he was gone—and they were furious.
He couldn’t blame them. But this was a way for them to weather the situation, and as difficult as it was, he had to leave. They had given him his life back. He owed them this much.
The last missing bits of his life had all come together, and with them, the answer.
It would work. It had to.
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