Warm Front

by Patricia McLinn

  But that didn’t matter. None of that mattered. Because he was their boarder. Paying his rent on time was all that mattered to her and so far, so good.

  Just because he’d been prying into her life — past and present — didn’t mean she should do the same. It might even encourage him to do more.

  Far, far better to demonstrate to him how they could coexist in the same house without prying apart each others’ pasts.

  And besides that, it wasn’t any of her business.

  Hooper Farm. That was her business.

  If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. If Chris hadn’t started messing around with—

  But he did. It is broke — and there might not be any fixing that.

  She and Everett had never even come close to saying those things before and there’d been good reason for that.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  When she came out to get in the farm truck Saturday, Quince was hunkered down, taking photos of it from a low angle.

  “Sorry. I need to remove your model.”

  She sounded cheerful. No, amend that. She sounded determined to sound cheerful.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Need to check how the north field is draining.”

  “Can I come?”

  She hesitated. “Suit yourself.”

  Then she watched — clearly impatient — while he brushed off the passenger seat.

  “There’s got to be more dirt in this truck than out in the fields,” he said, wondering about her determination to sound cheerful.

  “Possibly. First rule of farming is dirt’s everywhere, you’re living on a farm, so get used to it. Besides the truck has the advantage of four wheels. You want to ride or you want to stay?”

  “Ride.”

  “Then get in. Have to get there before the light goes.”

  She treated these farm roads like the Autobahn.

  Flat. That’s what everyone said about the Midwestern prairie.

  Pancakes, flounders, tables. Flat, flat, flat.

  That’s what he’d always thought about Illinois.

  Not anymore.

  Not after being driven across it in a pickup without great suspension. Or possibly any suspension.

  He was pitching and rolling like he was on the deck of a boat in a squall.

  Not Anne.

  He wished he could say it was because she was clinging to the steering wheel. But her hands rested comfortably on the clunky thing. She wasn’t using it for balance, just to steer the truck.

  She adjusted to the dips and rolls with no apparent effort. Almost anticipating them, as if she could feel it through the soles of her feet.

  Or through her soul.

  She belonged here. She’d grown roots that were deep and strong.

  No matter where she’d come from originally, she belonged here now.

  “Hello? Are you awake over there?” Anne’s voice jolted him.

  “Yeah, yeah.” They’d stopped. “Is this where we get out?”

  “This is where you get out — temporarily. Second rule of farming — close every gate after yourself.”

  “Ah. The Grandy Rule.”

  “Yes, though Rule 2B should be don’t go in Grandy’s pen. Ever. Anyway, to close this gate, you first have to earn your keep by getting out and opening it.”

  When he got back in after the truck passed through and he closed the gate, he said, “Hey, if you’re giving me farming lessons you must think I have potential as a farmer.”

  She gave him a where-did-that-come-from look.

  “C’mon. You said your family’s in Foreign Service, so you couldn’t have grown up farming. You had to start somewhere, too. Unless you had a spare farm in the family to practice on.”

  She chuckled. Briefly.

  “Not hardly. It’s like Chitmell said about earning a million as a farmer by starting with two million. Anyone who has money in Foreign Service had it before they got in.”

  “And your parents didn’t.”

  “No, they didn’t. I’m not saying they’re poor, but it’s not the extravagant, non-stop party lifestyle people think of. There are a lot of social functions, but they’re more likely to have the regional equivalent of pigs-in-a-blanket than caviar.”

  “What about your siblings? Older? Younger?”

  “Younger sister and brother. You?”

  “Half-brother and two half-sisters. All older. Didn’t know them at all growing up.” She shot him a look, but he was used to skirting this. He gave his usual shrug. “Never crossed paths much. Did your sister and brother go into the family business?”

  “No, though both work overseas. They inherited the family wanderlust. I’m the odd duck who didn’t.”

  “Would have been tough if you had. Wanderlust would be a definite drawback for a farmer or a farmer’s wife. You sure you didn’t suppress it when you fell in love wi—”

  “Absolutely sure.” She looked out the driver’s window as she added, “His being a farmer was one of the initial attractions.”

  “You always wanted to live on a farm?”

  “I always wanted to grow things.”

  He started to ask another question, then spotted her slight smile and shut up, letting the silence give her room.

  “In second grade, when we were stationed stateside, the teacher had us put beans in three Styrofoam cups,” she said, “each with a wet paper towel, and we put one in a window, one in the middle of the room, and one behind a screen. We watered them every day — that was my job — and each week we measured them. I was fascinated. I don’t think I’d ever associated the plants and trees all around us with starting from a seed until then, much less our food. We had green beans that night and I remember taking them apart, finding the seed within the bean.” She grinned briefly. “I was told not to play with my food. When I explained, they said, okay, but I still had to eat the beans.

  “After the first couple weeks, I started more cups at home — a whole forest of them — experimenting with the amount of water and what kind of water. And then using soil. When the weather warmed up, I transplanted them to a little plot behind our townhouse in Maryland, outside of D.C.”

  He had a feeling he knew where this was going.

  “We were transferred that summer. Of course I never saw them fully grown. I tried a few things in pots in the apartment we had next, but there was a drought and a foreigner’s daughter using water for plants was frowned on. When we cycled back to D.C. and our townhouse, I planted the whole plot. Every inch. Not just beans, but tomatoes, carrots, onions, garlic, miniature apple trees, a miniature peach tree. The second year I started pumpkins and…”

  Her enthusiasm fell off the cliff of memory.

  “We were transferred, of course, and the house was rented. When we came back the renters had pulled out everything and paved it over to park another car. I never had the heart to find out if my parents knew or approved it. After that, I didn’t plant anything personally until I came here.”

  “Personally?”

  “I did projects in classes.”

  “Classes?”

  She glanced at him. “I got my degree in agronomy with a minor in agribusiness management from the University of Wisconsin. I was working with a co-op when I met Chris.”

  “And after you married, you started growing things again.”

  “Mmm. Before.”

  She was going to stop. No way. “He drew you in to the farm from the start?”

  “Oh, yes.” She sounded as breathy over it as some women would be over jewels. “Our second date was riding the tractor with him. From the start the farm was part of our relationship. How could it not be? When something on the farm needs attention, it needs it right then. It’s not like you can slide it in a folder and put it in your desk until Monday. It has to be dealt with. Especially at that time, when Hooper Farm still had livestock. So dating worked around that.”

  “A lot of women wouldn’t have like that.”

  She shrugged. “Then
they’re not realistic. There’s a saying that when you marry a farmer, you marry the farm, too.”

  “You liked that, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah, I did. I do.”

  “But now the farm’s in trouble.”

  He knew it was a risk, and when she hesitated, he thought he’d need a way to regain ground.

  But, finally, she said, “It’s not a secret and it’s not the only one in the county. We ran on cash last season, but it’s going to be hard to do that this year as long as Everett remains so stubborn.”

  He frowned. “I thought farms used credit — took out a loan to buy seed and stuff in the spring, then paid it back when the crop came.”

  “That’s how it usually works.”

  “You don’t want to take out a loan?”

  She made a harsh sound she might have intended for a laugh. “I have been all over this county and a half-dozen others looking for financing. We’re caught in a Catch-22. They won’t give Everett a loan, because he’s not doing the farming. They won’t give me a loan because they say I haven’t built up sufficient credit history. Plus, I don’t own the land, so I don’t have collateral.”

  “But you’ve been farming alone more than three years, plus before that—”

  “Chris was the farmer. Anything I did then didn’t count.”

  “How does Chitmell figure in to this?”

  She shot him a surprised look, then tried to make her face blank and her voice flat. “He declined to renew our loan a year ago.”

  She made it sound like a dispassionate business transaction. Having seen Chitmell and how she responded to him, there was more to it.

  “The other banks you’ve been talking to?”

  “Start off polite, but pretty soon it comes around to their wondering why I’d go to anybody other than Chitmell, since Hoopers have done business with First Security Guaranty since the dawn of time. They’re skittish in general, even more skittish about a woman farming alone, and with that…”

  He considered that as they bumped over the entrance to a field.

  “You think Chitmell’s said things to these other bankers?” he said.

  “I don’t have any proof.”

  “I didn’t ask if you have proof. I asked what you think.”

  “Yeah, I do. But maybe I’m making excuses, looking for somebody to blame.”

  He doubted that. He also doubted Chitmell was operating strictly from chauvinism. He’d dealt with his kind before and profit was invariably their prime motivation, with power mixing in.

  Hell, he’d been fathered by a man just like that.

  “Maybe the most frustrating thing is I’ve got money,” Anne said. “Chris’s life insurance. I want to put it into the farm, have from the start, but Everett won’t discuss it. Doesn’t want a woman keeping him — that’s what he says, the stubborn old coot.”

  “Maybe that’s what he says, but I’d guess it’s that he doesn’t want you to be without any options because you’ve sunk every last penny into this farm.”

  “That’s what he’s done.”

  “All the more reason to listen to him when he doesn’t want you to.”

  “I believe in this farm, I believe in me. I can make it work. If he’d only listen.”

  “He’s not going to, though, is he? So what does that leave?”

  He knew she’d shut off the conversation even before she said, “Here we are. It’ll be muddy, so stay in the truck.”

  “I’ll survive a little mud.”

  *

  He did survive, though it wasn’t a little mud. It was a lot of mud in a slippery, slimy tour of a field’s drainage.

  His shoes did not survive.

  His assistant was shipping him another pair.

  In the meantime, he’d just bought stop-gap tennis shoes and was leaving the discount store near the Interstate in the next town over from Drago when he heard his name called.

  Vanessa, Josh, and his kids were entering the store.

  “Oh, good. I want to talk to you, Quince.” Vanessa looked at the kids. “If you shop for the other things first, I’ll be there to help with the supplies for Groundhog Day, if that’s acceptable.”

  “Sure thing, right, kids?” Josh said. “Let’s go get the boring stuff out of the way while Vanessa talks to Quince.”

  Quince bought her a small coffee at the snack area and they took facing seats at a plastic table.

  “Groundhog Day supplies?”

  “For a project on the seasons. I want to talk to you.”

  “You said that. We talk every day.”

  “About Zeke-Tech. Not about other things. I said I wasn’t going to be a respite for you.”

  “Vanessa—”

  “We had a very nice afternoon at Hooper Farm the other day.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  She looked at him directly.

  He sat still under her regard, not letting her see that he’d braced for questions.

  She didn’t ask any.

  “When I first came here—” She broke off and considered a moment, then started again. “When Zeke first made me come here, I thought of it as only space. In Drago and all around Drago.”

  “That’s what appealed to me about a farm. Having elbow room.”

  She shook her head. “But it’s not elbow room, because it not just space. It’s … I don’t know how to say it. It’s people and their homes and their work and their lives and their dreams. It’s all there, just like anywhere else. Except maybe it’s even more here because people don’t have up as many walls, as many dividers between them and everyone else. Because they need each other and help each other.

  “Josh fought me on putting the computers in the lab into cubicles, because he knew people here didn’t want dividers. They didn’t want to be that separate.”

  “Then he doesn’t know Anne Hooper. And Everett Hooper,” he added, fast enough that it shouldn’t have been recognizable as an afterthought.

  “Zeke knew Everett Hooper from when he was a boy.”

  “Yeah, he did. And Everett isn’t a total loner, but—”

  “Anne does not appear to be, either. She is friends with Jennifer.”

  “She works for her.”

  Vanessa turned up the power on her disconcerting directness. “You work for Zeke, technically. You’re friends.”

  He grinned. “Okay, okay. You win.”

  She acknowledged his acquiescence with a nod. “We’re becoming friends, too, I think.”

  “I’m sure Jennifer—”

  “Not Jennifer. Anne. She and I are becoming friends.”

  That caught him. Not quite a surprise. Certainly not an unpleasant one. Yet, still out of left field.

  “Good,” he said, because she was still looking at him. “That’s good. For both of you.”

  She declined her head then raised it in a measured, single nod. “I didn’t finish telling you about when I first came to Drago.”

  Vanessa was becoming downright chatty. He might have preferred a topic that didn’t pin him to the wall with those intelligent eyes, but he could only be happy for her.

  “Tell away,” he invited.

  “It felt like something was closing in on me.”

  He felt his forehead crease as his brows rose. “What?”

  “I didn’t know. Not when I thought there was just space here. After a while, after Josh and the kids, and Mrs. R … that’s when I realized how wrong I was about just space and what I felt closing in around me. It was people. I was afraid of it. But I learned to like it. People needing me. People helping me. People wanting to be my friend. People—”

  She looked at him so directly, so openly.

  He felt a ka-chunk in his chest. A hard, rapid beat he usually only got when the craziest of the crazies in Beltway traffic tried their best to turn him into road kill.

  But there wasn’t anything Vanessa could say to him that should set off an alarm in his system the way traffic crazies could. They’d known each othe
r so long and she’d never pried or prodded or—

  “—not letting me hide out any more. Like you’ve been doing for a long, long time.”

  *

  Somehow it had become routine for Quince to spend most of his time at Hooper Farm in the kitchen.

  Mornings, when he didn’t have calls to make or appointments to get to, he helped clear up after breakfast, then read or worked on his laptop.

  Anne couldn’t complain about it. He didn’t talk or otherwise intrude. Except by being there.

  Evenings when he stayed home — here, when he stayed here — he would work on his laptop at the kitchen table while she worked at the computer desk.

  Though he wouldn’t be in the kitchen working tomorrow night or the night after.

  He’d told her that a few days ago. He’d be away two nights because of a big Zeke-Tech event. He, Zeke, and Vanessa were leaving early in the morning for Virginia. The event was the next day and they’d return the day after that.

  So she’d have the kitchen to herself then. But not now.

  “Isn’t your room comfortable?” she burst out.

  He looked up, a questioning lift of his eyebrows. “It’s very comfortable.”

  “Then why do you spend so much time here?”

  She shouldn’t have asked that. Shouldn’t have given him the opening. Or maybe it wasn’t an opening. Maybe it was a needy way of trying to get him to say something—

  “The novelty.”

  “Novelty?”

  “I haven’t spent much time in kitchens.”

  A jet-setting mother who left him with his big-hitter father. Not a childhood filled with baking brownies with Mom in the kitchen.

  She was not going to ask him about that. None of her business.

  “Even when you and Zeke and Vanessa were starting out? The legend says you lived on noodles.”

  “We did. Microwavable noodles. Everything was microwavable, except the coffee. We set the microwave and coffeemaker up on boxes in one corner. That was as close as we got to a kitchen.”

  “But your house in Virginia…?”

  “Gourmet kitchen. At least that’s what the real estate agent said. It does have a good microwave. And one hell of a coffeemaker. I like this kitchen better.”

  She looked around at the worn surfaces and outdated appliances. “Why?”