I could be happy.
The thought unnerved me and made me shake even more. I’d been happy staying with Meri, even with the threat of my father looming over us. I couldn’t begin to imagine what that happiness would feel like when there was nothing hanging over our heads other than our own future. My knees shook so hard that I could hardly lift my foot to shift. I turned into the drive, tires crunching softly, the bike purring quietly beneath me.
Meri’s truck was still in the same place I’d seen it last. The door was still open. Sergeant was pacing the fence, tossing his head and whinnying loudly. I drove off the gravel and around the truck. Meri lay curled in the middle of the drive, her hair spilling over the rocks, her skirt bunched around her thighs.
“Oh god,” I whispered and jumped off the bike letting it fall. I ran up the drive and knelt beside her. She was shivering violently, her breath coming in gasps and sobs, hands balled into fists pressed tight against her eyes. Her knees were scraped and bloody.
“Meri?” I touched her cheek and smoothed the hair away from her face.
“Go away,” she said, her voice high and tight.
“Are you hurt?” I asked. “Did you fall?”
“You didn’t even . . .” She lifted her head. “You just . . .” Her mouth opened and closed around the words she couldn’t form. “You left,” she said, her voice cracking.
“Yes, but I came back.”
“Why?” It was more than one question. It was a thousand questions, and each one had a thousand answers.
I brushed my hand through her hair, letting the soft glow of it slip between my fingers. I imagined it streaked with gray, her face lined, her hands knobby and frail, and it pleased me. I liked the thought of us growing old together. I liked the thought of belonging somewhere, to someone, especially if that someone was Meri.
“Why did you come back?” she asked again.
“I live here.”
“You live here,” she repeated, “with me?”
I looked up at the house with its red tinned gables, the gray barn and white board fences, the misty blue mountains peaking above the treetops dressed in a thousand shades of green. I looked down at her again. “This is my home. We’re a family, you and me.”
She reached for me, grabbed the collar of my jacket, and pulled me down to her. She cradled my head against her chest, burying her fingers deep in my hair, stroking and kneading. I lay with her on the gravel, my ear to her breast, and listened to the wild beating of her heart.
“What about your father?” she asked, her hands dropping suddenly.
I raised my head and grinned. “Taylor has a plan.”
She lifted her hands and cradled my face in her palms, thumbs rubbing hard across my cheekbones. “I’ll bet it’s insane.”
“Oh, it is. You’re going to hate it.” I leaned down and kissed her. She returned my kiss, open mouthed, pressing hard, her palms squeezing my face. Our lips came away warmed and wet.
“Upstairs?” she asked in a whisper.
I kissed the tip of her nose. “Anywhere you want.” I licked my thumb and rubbed it over the worst of her mascara smudges. “Even right here, right now.”
She laughed and hugged me to her. Sergeant gave a loud wet snort from his side of the pasture fence. We both looked up to see him cantering away, his tail held high and his neck strongly arched.
“I don’t think he approves,” Meri said. “He’s worse than Aunt Beatrice.” Her face fell. “I think I’m going to miss her.”
“Don’t start missing her just yet. We’re supposed to have dinner with her next Tuesday.”
Meri’s eyes went wide. “We, as in both you and me? Together?”
“Well, to be honest, she just wanted me, but she doesn’t mind if you tag along.”
“Taylor?” she asked.
I smiled. “He can come too if you want.” She scowled at me and I sighed softly. “He fixed things for you as best he could, Meri.”
“I don’t think I like that idea.”
“You’ve still got some time to get used to it.” I sat up and pulled her with me. She winced a little for her knees. The blood on them had dried, but the scrapes still looked raw. “You think we need to go get your knees stitched?”
“Nah,” she said with sparkle in her eye, “a couple of Band-Aids, they’ll be just fine.”
Chapter Five: PLANS
The first gusts of autumn blew down from the mountains, the chilly breezes ruffling through fading leaves, wilting the summer greens into dull yellows and reds. My chores became more pleasant now that the hot, sticky part was over and also more onerous because there were a lot more of them. There was always the usual mucking to do, Sergeant being so full of himself, and pastures to mow, hay to bale and bring in. But now there were fields to fertilize, earth to turn and what seemed like a thousand apples trees to pick, each with a million apples to sort and pack according to type. In spite of the early spring frost, or maybe because of it, it had been a good year for apples.
An odd assortment of Meri’s cousins came over to help with the harvest. I got to help this time too, climbing one tree and then moving on to the next, baking apples in one color box, cider apples in another. The eating apples we kept for ourselves and for Sergeant, too. The broken ones we threw into a barrel for Taylor’s promise of apple wine. Meri refused, at first, to have anything to do with Taylor, plan or no plan, but the hint of the rewards proved to be greater than her hate. I knew it would. Meri’s hatred was a reasonable one, and by the end of the summer, it had faded to an intense dislike. So we threw the broken apples into a barrel, laughed and sang, ate and drank, fought and made up. It was the best October I’d ever known and Meri just kept smiling in a bone-tired but satisfied kind of way.
Taylor had been right when he said that running a farm was almost impossible for one person to do alone. It was hard enough for two and some temporary cousin power. I don’t know how Meri did it all and still found the time to run a B&B before I arrived. I thought it was too much, and to my surprise, Meri agreed. She took down the sign, wrapped it carefully in an old blanket and stored it in the tack room in the barn. Even so, it still seemed like there was always something else that needed doing. We were always sweating or stinking or covered in muck. My pale skin acquired a deepening tan and my arms the suggestion of biceps. Calluses blossomed across my palms.
I absolutely loved it.
Today, though, I was still lying in bed, sick to my stomach and excused from chores. I was glad of it too, because the day had dawned wet and cold. Rain pattered against the windowpanes while Meri puttered softly around the room. I huddled under the sheets, trying to get my mind off the queasiness that fluttered in my stomach by reciting multiplication tables in my head. I was working on the elevens when I got bored.
I peeked out from under the sheets. “Are my gills still green?” I asked Meri in a shaky voice.
She stopped in the middle of folding a freshly laundered T-shirt and looked me over with a critical eye. “That’s ‘green around the gills,’ and the answer is yes. I’d say that you were still looking pretty pasty.”
“And outside it’s still raining hard?”
“Like a cow on a flat rock.”
I already knew that it was because I could hear the rain pattering against the window. I just wanted to hear her say the one about the cow and the flat rock. It was a funny picture. “You think Sergeant will be all right?”
She smiled. “He generally has enough sense to come in out of the rain, but I’ll go check on him in a little while.”
She finished folding the T-shirt into a neat, precise square and put a short stack of them into the dresser drawer. I still didn’t know how to do that. I was just at the point where I was beginning to believe her when she said that clothes didn’t just disappear from the hamper, wash themselves and magically reappear in the dresser drawers every Friday afternoon. Meri kept telling me that there was no such a thing as the laundry fairy, but I was strongly resisting the
idea. Still, I tried to help out as much as I knew how. My folded T-shirts always ended up asymmetrical and rhomboid-ish, but Meri was very patient and didn’t seem to mind refolding when she thought I wasn’t looking. She still wouldn’t let me cook very often. That bothered me some, but I was getting used to meat and potatoes, and once in a rare while Meri broke down and bought something for me she considered exotic, like asparagus or an artichoke.
I swallowed hard and pulled the covers higher. This particular morning, even the thought of food made my stomach flip around in an uncomfortable way.
“Would you like some ginger ale?” she asked, pulling a pair of jeans from the hamper.
My stomach rose a little higher into my throat. “God, no.”
She laughed softly and shook the jeans out. Three quick tucks, some magic sleight of hand, and she had another perfect square. “How about if I rub your feet? Do you want me to do that?”
I thought about it for a second. “No, I don’t want you to do that either. It would give me too many conflicting feelings. I’d want to kiss you and throw up at the same time.”
“Ew,” she said with a little shiver. “You could’ve talked all day and not said anything like that.”
That funny saying was a new one to me, and I was still puzzling it out when the phone rang. Meri set the jeans on top of a perfectly square pile of pants and went down to the kitchen to get it. I hadn’t been able to talk her into getting a phone installed upstairs. She didn’t understand why anybody would need more than one, and that one belonged in the kitchen. I couldn’t even talk her into putting one in the barn. She claimed it would make me too lazy and if I had anything I needed to say to her I could just ‘walk my skinny butt back to the house and say it,’ I think is how she put it. My butt wasn’t nearly as skinny as it was when I first arrived, but still, she was probably right. Meri came back upstairs and sat next to me on the side of the bed.
“Aunt Beatrice wants to come over,” she said, leaning over me to tuck the sheet in around my shoulders. “I told her you were sick and not up to receiving visitors. She’s coming anyway.”
I groaned and Meri smiled. There wasn’t much you could do with Aunt Beatrice once she got hold of an idea.
“I’ll move to the parlor.” I struggled to get out from under the sheets while fatigue and nausea conspired to keep me in them.
Meri laid a firm hand on my shoulder and pushed me into the pillow. “I told her you were in bed, so stay in bed.”
“I’m in your bed, Meri. I don’t think she’s ready for that. She still won’t sit with us at the kitchen table.”
Meri grinned evilly. “She’ll just have to get ready. After all those ridiculous dinners we’ve had to attend with her showing you off to the neighbors like a prize-winning rutabaga, she can stand stepping into our world for a little while.”
I gave her a look and she gave me one back. She made a funny face at me and I crossed my eyes and stuck out my tongue.
“Promises, promises,” she said pinching my cheek. “Maybe when you’re feeling a little better.” She bent over to kiss my scars and touch my cheek with hers. “You’re still feeling a little clammy.”
“Not very sexy, is it?”
She tried not to smile. “No, not really.”
That wasn’t the answer I was looking for, and it didn’t do much to bolster my slowly unraveling self-image. I had changed so much since I first crash-landed in Meri’s barn. Physically speaking, I didn’t think it was all for the better. I looked at her. “Am I getting ugly?”
She touched my cheek. “No, Bea, of course you’re not. You’re beautiful even when your gills are green.”
I felt my eyes tear and the room went wavy. “I don’t like the way you say that.”
“Oh, Bea,” she said, laughing at me, her eyes going all sparkly.
“I am getting ugly,” I said pulling the sheet over my head. “You’re just too polite to admit it.”
She kissed me through the sheet. The fabric made her mouth feel all scratchy and stiff. “You’re so cute when you’re emotional,” she said. Her words warmed the cloth near my cheek.
“Well, I’m glad you like it,” I snapped at her.
Her fingers traced the cloth around my chin making small shushing noises as they slid across the fabric. “You want that ginger ale now?” she asked.
I thought about drinking it, and my stomach held steady. “Yes, please.”
With another kiss through the sheet, she got up and I heard her go down the stairs. Even with a steady stomach, I was still feeling really tired, and I hoped that Aunt Beatrice wasn’t going to make me get out of bed. I stared into the sheets. They had little yellow flowers on them and I counted the petals, wondering what kind of flowers they were supposed to be. Probably something with a name that sounded like a disease, like clematis or nasturtium. A gust of wind rattled the rain against the widows, and I thought of all the fading flowers out in the garden. Meri and I had worked hard that summer, cleaning her mother’s old kitchen plot, trimming the bushes, planting new flowers and even some herbs for the sake of tradition. Now the garden was beginning to get that brownish ragged edged look that happened after autumn’s first frost. It had been such a beautiful summer. I was sorry to see it go.
Meri came back up the stairs. She lifted the corner of the sheet and peeked under it at me.
“Ginger ale’s on the nightstand,” she said. “I brought you a few crackers, too.”
“Thank you,” I said looking at her, studying her face. Today, her eyes were a clear pale blue. The pinched lines around them had long since disappeared, and there was a certain set to her mouth that made it look like she was always just on the verge of smiling. My heart swelled. I sniffed and then she did smile, shaking her head. She pulled the sheet down farther and kissed my lips softly. She pressed her cheek against mine.
“I love you too, Bea.”
She did. No question about it. Sometimes that nearly scared me to death. I reached for her hand. “Do you really think Taylor’s plan will work?”
She sat on the edge of the bed and stroked the back of my hand with her fingertips. “I think it just might.”
“We’re taking such a big chance.”
“I know.” Meri reached over and put a hand on my stomach. “All of us are.”
I put my hands on top of hers. “I wish it was over.”
“Yeah,” she said with a slight sag to her shoulders. “Me too. I don’t know what’s taking so long. I thought for sure that the news of your being here in this little pond would have floated down to the ocean by now.” She tilted her head and looked thoughtful. “We’ll give it another week or two, and then we’ll start jumping around and waving flags to get your father’s attention.”
“Why don’t we just wait?” I asked, pressing her hand against my stomach. “Maybe he’s forgotten all about me. Maybe he won’t ever come.”
Meri looked at our hands. “The whole plan is complicated enough as it is. If we wait much longer, it’ll be too hard on you and too much of a shock for him to be useful.” Meri frowned, her brows creasing with concern.
“Are you having regrets, Meri?”
“No, Bea, no regrets. Just a few little fears, that’s all. I want us to be a family. I just can’t see what shape that family is going to take.”
“Can anybody?”
“I guess not.” Meri drummed her fingers over my bellybutton. “Maybe we should start jumping around waving flags right now.”
“You mean you’ll have Sam put my picture in the paper?”
“Yep,” she said. A mischievous grin twitched at her lips. “I’ve been saving the one I took of you at the Fourth of July picnic.”
“The pie eating one?” I asked. The question ended with a squeak.
“That’s the one.” She nodded happily. “It’s a surefire bet that it’ll attract attention.”
I narrowed my eyes. “You wouldn’t . . .”
“Why not?” She laughed. “It’s such a funny pi
cture. You had a cherry stuck up your nose. Wouldn’t everyone in the whole world just love to see a picture of Collier Torrington with a cherry stuck up her nose? I bet we can get good money for it, too.”
I rolled over with a moan and pulled the covers over my ears.
“God, how embarrassing,” I said. “If you put that picture in the paper, I’ll never get to be president.” I moaned again as dramatically as I could. “There goes my whole career.”
Meri chuckled at that. She knew that even though I was intimately familiar with the political machine, I was just about as ambitious as her prize-winning rutabaga. She leaned over me and rested her chin on my shoulder, her arm slipping around my middle. “We had such a wonderful time at the picnic. Everybody liked you, and no one even looked cross-eyed at us being together.”
I hugged her arm against me. “It was the best picnic I’ve ever been to, but I think people were still too dazed to look cross-eyed. Give it time. Someone will get all worked up about it and then we’ll be banished back to the farm.” I snuggled deeper into her arms. “That’s okay with me though. I like it here.”
The doorbell rang.
“That must be the Auntie,” Meri said sitting up. “I really love that she rings the doorbell now.” She gave my butt a quick rub and went downstairs.
Aunt Beatrice wouldn’t come upstairs.
The ginger ale and crackers settled my stomach a little so I dragged myself out of bed, threw on a robe and went down to the parlor. She was waiting for me, sitting with Meri on the couch and chatting about the apple harvest, falling prices and asking if the cousins had done a good job for her this year. She was in her Sunday clothes, a powder blue jacket and skirt with a small matching hat perched precisely on top of her blue helmet of hair. A small blue handbag sat at her feet.
She sipped daintily at a glass of iced tea, pinky finger raised slightly. I sat myself in the wingback chair and propped my feet on the ottoman. My hair was a mess and the robe was an old one. I was aware that I wasn’t dressed properly for receiving visitors, but still, I didn’t care very much for Auntie’s slim, disapproving frown. I never failed to entertain her guests during one of her dinners, but this was my own home, and I’d be damned if I was going to try to meet expectations on a Saturday when I was tired and sick.
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