A Kiss in Winter

by Susan Crandall

  “Now what am I doing?”

  “Changing the subject away from your feelings.”

  Shooting her sister a grin, Caroline said, “That’s because I’m old and don’t have feelings anymore. Just ask Sam.”

  Macie rolled her eyes and made a sound of exasperation.

  Looking for a safer subject, Caroline asked, “Is your schedule okay?”

  Macie looked at the paper as if she’d forgotten she had it. “Yeah. I have government first semester, so Laurel and I will be in the same class.”

  “That’s good.” Laurel and Macie had been inseparable since they were toddlers. Laurel’s family owned a farm down the road from the Rogers farm.

  “Will you drop me off at Laurel’s?” Macie asked. “I told her I’d come over and keep her company while she babysits her little brother.”

  Another delay in getting the contract, but Macie’s summer days were numbered. Besides, Macie was ultra-perceptive when it came to Caroline’s emotions; she might see Caroline’s longing to escape as she looked at the contract for the first time. So she traded expediency for solitude. “Sure.”

  As they drove past their old farm on the way to Laurel’s, Caroline slowed and looked at the house. It had become such an ingrained habit that she hardly registered she was doing it.

  But today she slammed on the brakes and stopped in the middle of the country road. A tractor-trailer moving van was parked in the lane.

  “She’s moving?” Macie asked with surprise.

  “It looks that way. Mrs. McGuire was supposed to notify me if it came on the market.”

  “Why?” Macie looked at her with drawn brows.

  “Why what?” Caroline strained to see if furniture was moving out or in. In would mean she could relax. Out, well that just left too much up in the air.

  “Why did you want Mrs. McGuire to let you know it was for sale?”

  Caroline had never told Sam or Macie about the pressure that she’d received when she sold the homestead after their parents’ deaths. Or her gut fear that once the property was in someone else’s hands, the fate she’d worked so hard to avoid might still come to pass. She shrugged and tried to sound indifferent. “I just wanted to know.”

  She dropped Macie off and instead of heading to the post office, she drove straight to McGuire and McKinsey Real Estate.

  Mick Larsen watched the movers carry the antique wardrobe up the narrow staircase. He waited at the top of the curving steps, his body rigid with tension, his hands fisted.

  The wardrobe tilted slightly. Mick lunged forward and reached, as if he had a prayer of stopping the heavy piece from flipping over the banister from where he stood. His insides jerked into a knot as he waited for the sound of splintering wood. The wardrobe would be hard to replace, the banister impossible.

  Somehow the two musclemen managed to shift the weight and keep it upright. As they stepped into the upstairs hall, Butch, the bigger of the two men, called out, “Relax, Dr. Larsen. I told you we’d take care of your stuff.”

  Mick cringed at the “Doctor”; it was a title he no longer deserved. He’d told the men early on to call him Mick.

  He nodded and managed a falsely confident smile as the men huffed on. Then he held his breath until he heard the wardrobe’s feet settle gently on the floor in the master bedroom.

  With a sigh of relief, he ran a hand along the thick handrail of the staircase in his new old home. He’d grown up in a house like this, a house with a long history. He’d lived his childhood surrounded by plank floors with secret squeaks, irreplaceable carved woodwork, and a dusty attic filled with spiders and uncountable treasures tucked in dry, crumbling boxes.

  He’d taken such things for granted; he still loved this small town filled with old houses and history. But while attending medical school in Chicago—and living in a two-room apartment in a hundred-year-old house—he’d met Kimberly, a brilliant and strong-willed neurology student, who loved abstract art, hard shiny surfaces, and lots of clean white space.

  She had come into his life at his moment of greatest doubt. He had been on the verge of leaving medical school. It hadn’t been his grades or the money—the two biggest catalysts for med school dropout. It had been his own lack of enthusiasm. After growing up in a family of doctors, after never once considering another life-path, Mick had suddenly feared his heart just wasn’t in it.

  He should have quit then; if he had, lives now destroyed might still be whole.

  But at that point he’d already let his father down by going into psychiatry, a specialty that barely qualified as real medicine in the Larsen family. The youngest and only male of the Larsen children, Mick had been slated from birth to join his father in family practice here in Redbud Mill, just as his father had joined Mick’s grandfather in that same practice.

  His sisters had gone above and beyond in upholding the family tradition, even though girl Larsen children were held to a different standard. Without so much as a prod from their father, the girls had all not only chosen medicine, but excelled in respectable specialties: Elise, a cardiologist; Johanna, a pediatrician; even the black sheep, Kerstin, was an oncologist.

  Mick’s fear of disappointing his father further had been the only thing that had kept him in school. At the point when Kimberly entered his life, that fear had been in danger of being overrun by self-doubt.

  Kimberly had stepped in, bolstered his confidence, quelled his questioning mind, and nudged him toward his degree and his license. By the time they’d finished their residencies, they were a couple. He still wasn’t sure how, exactly, it had happened. They arrived at that point in sort of an unconscious drift; neither of them had a lot of time to focus on a relationship.

  So he’d stayed in Chicago for Kimberly, who came from old Chicago money—and maybe, if he were honest with himself, to avoid facing his father’s disappointment head-on day after day.

  Shortly after Mick and Kimberly had moved into the ultramodern high-rise, Mick had begun collecting antiques. Living in that alien environment, the accumulation of items with a long and mysterious history made him feel less out of place.

  At first Kimberly had made him keep his “old junk” in the spare bedroom. That soon filled up and rich wood antiques began to spill first into their sterile-looking, minimalist bedroom, and then into the leather-and-glass living room. She hadn’t liked it. But, as it turned out, that was the tip of the iceberg when it came to things she disliked about Mick, his friends, and his love for things old.

  “That’s the last piece, Dr. Larsen,” Denny, the less-robust mover, said as he came back out of the master bedroom.

  Mick ground his teeth at the “Doctor” as he shook Denny’s hand. When Butch followed into the hall, Mick handed each man a fifty-dollar tip. “I appreciate all of the special care.”

  Both men would probably grumble over beers later; but they’d kept their good humor while Mick hovered like a worried mother as they’d wrapped and carried his treasures.

  Once the movers had gone, he stood at the base of the stairs and looked around. He heard the drone of summer insects through the open doors and windows. Other than that, it was silent. After living in the city for years, he’d forgotten what silence was like. He hadn’t anticipated the lonely feel of big, high-ceilinged rooms and acres upon acres of empty fields and pastures.

  He wiped the sweat from his brow and heard a single bee buzzing against the screen.

  Too damn quiet.

  He feared silence was going to have an unforeseen and unfortunate by-product. As he stood there, adrift in boxes and bare windows, the voice came again—the desperate voice of a miserably lost soul giving Mick one last chance to avoid disaster.

  Mick had failed.

  Disaster had arrived, delivered by a sixteen-year-old boy whose last angry cry had gone unheeded.

  Chapter 2

  What do you mean it’s a ‘done deal’?” Caroline leaned forward. She sat on the visitor’s side of an uncluttered desk in the McGuire and McKinsey
Real Estate office.

  “I mean they’ve already closed. The new owner took possession today.” Mrs. McGuire folded her hands on the desk and offered an insipid smile that fired Caroline’s anger.

  “You were to keep me informed.” Caroline mentally subtracted the days since she’d driven past the farm. Two weeks. No, ten days. It had been ten days ago when she’d last dropped Macie at Laurel’s. And Macie had driven herself out there at least three times since then. There hadn’t been a FOR SALE sign on the property. How could it have closed already?

  Mrs. McGuire stiffened at Caroline’s aggressive tone. “You really weren’t serious, were you? I don’t see how you could manage that farm by yourself.”

  Caroline owed it to her adoptive father to ensure that the family farm, passed down from one Rogers to another for over a hundred years, continued to be a family farm.

  What the reclusive Ms. Stockton had done to it was bad enough. In the six years that she had lived on the property, the woman had let the fields turn fallow and the cattle pastures overgrow. It broke Caroline’s heart to see her father’s bountiful land slide into ruin.

  There were many days when the guilt over selling at all was almost too much to drag around. What if Sam settled down and wanted to be the fifth generation to till that land? But in the wake of the loss of her parents, she’d been scared to death. Her life plan had evaporated in an instant. Suddenly she’d been thrust into the role of single guardian of two adolescents. The very thought of taking on the farm in addition to her new parental responsibilities had been too much.

  “I would have at least liked to have had the opportunity to evaluate the possibility.” Not exactly a lie. What she’d wanted was an opportunity to head disaster off at the pass.

  Mrs. McGuire said, “I’m sorry. I know how much that farm meant to your father. But it’s in worse shape now than when you sold it. It’s just that without help…”

  Nothing made Caroline’s blood boil like being told she wasn’t capable of something—even if it was something she didn’t particularly want to do. She had toyed with a plan to recover the property at some point in the future—for Sam or Macie. Return the homestead to a Rogers.

  But if her worst fears were coming to pass, there would be no homestead to return.

  That selfish little voice she’d been suppressing for so long piped up: Lucky you didn’t know. Then you would have had to choose… again. Stay and fight for the land, or fulfill the dream you put on hold six years ago?

  With guilt nibbling at her conscience—and in honor of all of the Rogerses whose blood and sweat had built that homestead—she worked up a little unjustified indignation and said, “When did it go on the market?”

  “It didn’t.” Mrs. McGuire stood. “It was a private deal. It was never listed on the open market.”

  “Who bought it?” They lived in a small community, of which over half the population farmed and raised livestock; any sale of farming property was always a hot topic. This was the worst possible news.

  “I’m sorry, I can’t disclose the purchaser. Privacy issues.” Then she rose and stepped from behind the desk. She put a motherly hand on Caroline’s shoulder. “I’m sure it’s for the best. You deserve some time to do the things all young women want to do these days. If you want to settle on a farm later, we’ll find you another fine piece of land.” She squeezed Caroline’s shoulder slightly. “Your parents would be proud of the way you’ve handled things. You’ve done a good job with what was thrust upon you. Now, take some time for yourself.”

  She wanted to tell the woman that Sam and Macie hadn’t been “thrust upon” her. But Mrs. McGuire’s words were well intended, so instead Caroline said, “I’m sorry if I was—”

  Mrs. McGuire waved her apology away. “No, now. Homesteads are always an emotional issue. I just had no idea, since you’re not actually a Rogers by blood—” The woman bit off her last words. “I didn’t mean…”

  “I understand.” She wasn’t a Rogers by blood, but Sam and Macie were. And Caroline, a Rogers by adoption, had made the decision to sell their heritage.

  Once in her car again, Caroline’s curiosity pulled her back out to the farm. On the way, her mind played her worst fears over and over again. They were emptying the house for demolition. The buildings would be razed, the land gobbled up in a conglomerate… or worse yet, sold off in residential lots.

  Caroline knew the historical preservationists would have gone to war over the house’s destruction. But that kind of action needed time. Now there was no time. What better reason to keep the sale quiet?

  Ballister Farms had been buying up land all around the Rogers farm. Charles Ballister, in his efforts to create a corporate farm, had tried to buy her father out several times. Caroline remembered how angry Mr. Ballister had been when she’d sold to Ms. Stockton. He wasn’t above working a deal in secret; he’d done it before.

  With a sour stomach, Caroline rolled to a stop at the end of the lane that led to the brick house. She gripped the steering wheel and peered closely. The moving van was gone. It looked as if the place was deserted.

  If a family had moved in, the kids would be outside, exploring the barn, looking into the old well, climbing up to the tree house that Caroline’s father had built.

  Caroline’s adoptive mother had always said the farmhouse cried out for children. She used to say that in the childless years before Caroline had come to them, she could actually hear the house sigh with loneliness. Her mother would then hold her close and tell her to listen carefully. They would sit still and silent for several seconds; Caroline could still remember the rhythm of her mother’s breathing. Then her mother would hug her tighter and say, “There, you hear that? The house is humming with happiness.”

  Caroline never heard anything. But her own heart had been humming with happiness; she’d thought maybe that’s what her mother heard.

  Then a miracle happened. Sam was born.

  And before his first birthday, Macie came along.

  Cathy Rogers, who at thirty-eight had given up on having natural children, had always said it was Caroline who brought more children. Nothing had made her prouder than feeling like she’d had a hand in making her new mother so happy.

  For a few minutes longer, Caroline watched the house from the road. No sign of life. By the time she pulled into the farm lane, she’d convinced herself that Ms. Stockton had moved out and left the place empty and that Charles Ballister had a demolition crew scheduled. She calculated what her next step should be to prevent the wrecking ball from crashing through those thick brick walls. Could she get things in motion fast enough?

  She stopped next to the house and shut off the car. She hadn’t been this close to her beloved home in five years.

  All of the windows were open, both upstairs and down.

  Nothing inside left to protect.

  She looked beyond the house, toward the barn. Her sense of impending disaster shot up another degree when she saw the broken windows and BITCH spray-painted in four-foot-tall letters across the barn door. Around the word were other various obscene doodles. The first place her mind jumped was to Sam. But she quickly dismissed it. This was an angry scribble; Sam’s graffiti was much closer to art—and she’d never seen him use such vulgarity with paint.

  If Miranda Stockton hadn’t bothered to replace the windows or paint over the graffiti to sell the place, the farm buildings must be doomed.

  She got quietly out of the car and listened without much hope for sounds coming from inside the house.

  There was an air of abandonment about the place, of desertion. Those open windows, the stillness of the oppressive heat, the absence of life noises from the house and the barn, the hateful graffiti, it all gave Caroline a shiver. It was as if someone had extracted the soul from this place. She felt even more like a trespasser than she had in winter when she and Macie had come in the dead of night to take a picture.

  She inched closer to the house, nearly holding her breath. Tilting her e
ar, she strained to hear movement within.

  “Holy shit!” The man’s shout had Caroline’s feet six inches off the ground and her hands over her heart to keep it from exploding from her chest.

  Something inside the house shattered, followed by the thud of tumbling heavy boxes.

  Rapid footfalls thumped across hardwood.

  Caroline took a step back, fighting the instinct to run to her car.

  “Arrrg! Come back here you little…,” a man yelled.

  Caroline’s gaze cut from window to window, to see if the words were directed at her.

  No angry face peered from inside. But a whirlwind of swearing poured from the dining room.

  Caroline inched closer. “Hello? Do you need help in there?”

  Another cascade of boxes.

  “Hello?” she called louder.

  A primal growling snort answered and she realized who was in there with the man… or rather what was in there with him.

  “Hold on! Don’t try to touch him!” She ran for the front door.

  When she reached the dining room doorway, she saw a rattled giant of a man and an angry raccoon in a standoff. The raccoon was perched on the top of an antique china cabinet. The man approached in a semi-crouched stance, with an empty box and a look of steely determination. “You crap on that cabinet and you’re a coonskin cap,” the man said, inching closer to the animal.

  Caroline grinned and leaned against the doorway. The man was so focused on the raccoon, he didn’t seem to know she was there.

  “Come on now, play nice,” he coaxed, holding the box out.

  The raccoon bared his teeth and gave a hissing growl.

  “Think of this”—he shook the box—“as your taxi to the woods. You can go play with Bambi.”

  Caroline could no longer suppress her chuckle. “Do you really expect him just to jump into the box on his own?”

  The man maintained his hunter-on-safari stance, jerking his gaze from the raccoon only for a millisecond. Her surprising appearance didn’t alter his focus. “I’m trying to get him to jump off there at me; then I’m going to catch him under the box.”