A Family for the Farmer

by Laurel Blount

  At the end of that day, Sadie Elliott had a neatly stacked woodpile that would last her for a month of cold weather, and young Abel had gone home with a new shirt on his back, a basket stuffed with eggs and vegetables from her garden and a job on Goosefeather Farm for as long as he wanted it. Abel had been family to Sadie ever since that day, and Emily knew it.

  She got very busy peeling the paper off a muffin before she spoke. “You don’t have to apologize for meaning a lot to my grandmother, Abel. And I don’t blame you for the way she left her will. You and I both know nobody could talk Grandma into doing anything she didn’t want to do.”

  Abel heaved a deep sigh, and she looked up from her muffin to find him smiling that lopsided smile of his. He looked relieved. “That’s good to hear.” He stripped the paper off one of his own muffins and broke off a generous chunk.

  “That doesn’t mean I’m happy about being put through this trial by farm, or whatever you want to call it,” Emily cautioned. “It’s the craziest thing I ever heard of. I don’t know what Grandma was thinking.”

  “The letter didn’t tell you?”

  Emily shrugged. “Grandma never thought I appreciated Goosefeather Farm the way she wanted me to. It looks like she just wanted one last opportunity to change my mind. She was always convinced I belonged here.”

  “Maybe you do,” Abel said simply, breaking off another chunk of muffin.

  “Believe me, I don’t.” He looked as unconvinced as her grandmother had every time they’d had this particular conversation. Time to change the subject. “How are those muffins? I baked them yesterday morning.” She was tinkering with her apple spice muffin recipe, and she thought adding the extra ground cloves had been a good idea.

  “Really good. But then you always were a good cook, even when you were a little slip of a thing. Better than Miss Sadie, rest her soul. Her muffins were like hockey pucks.”

  Emily smiled, remembering. “She mixed them too much. You’ve got to be careful with muffin batter. I always told her so, but you know Grandma. Whatever she did, she did with a vengeance.”

  Abel chuckled. “You’re right about that. Miss Sadie never did do things by halves. I recall when she finally got fed up with my excuses about not going to church with her. She went out in the middle of a Saturday night and flattened her own truck tires, all four of them, so I’d have to come over and drive her into town. Then she made a big show of stumbling on the curb in front of the church so I’d be sure to walk her in. She had me sitting in that pew before I knew what had happened, and she was right beside me, grinning like a mule eating briars.” He sighed. “I’m sure going to miss her.”

  Emily nodded and took a deliberate sip of her scalding coffee to dissolve the lump in her throat. “I know. Me, too.”

  She’d been right to give him two muffins. He polished them both off in short order. She watched as he carefully wiped up the few crumbs he’d dropped on the table and deposited them on the plate next to his neatly folded muffin papers. Then he drained his coffee mug, set it on the plate and rose to carry his dirty dishes to the sink.

  Abel had always done that, she remembered. He’d cleaned up after himself, been careful to remove his muddy boots at the back door and never left one crumb or drop behind. It had seemed so strange for such a big, outdoorsy boy to be so meticulous about things like that that Emily had found it amusing. She’d joked about it one time to her grandmother, and Sadie Elliott’s sharp reply had caught her off guard. “Them that’s had their share of trouble know better than to make trouble for other folks, missy! Mark that, and remember it.”

  “Emily?”

  She glanced up, startled to find Abel standing at the sink looking uneasy.

  “Yes?” She tilted her head to look up at him, thinking that inside the house he seemed bigger somehow. He’d always been tall, but she never remembered him taking up so much space before.

  “I reckon we’ve circled around all this long enough. I don’t want to upset you, but I’m going to speak plain. You’re going to lose this farm if you don’t have good help. There’s just no two ways about it, and I’d sure hate to see that happen.”

  He’d filled out, Emily realized suddenly. Abel couldn’t be called lanky anymore. He was still lean, but his shoulders had broadened, and there was a muscular set to them now. When she’d left Goosefeather Farm six years ago, Abel Whitlock was only a few years out of his teens. Now he was a man. That was the difference she was picking up on.

  She felt a sudden prickle of nerves. Maybe this deal with Abel wasn’t such a good idea after all. Then again, she knew he made a good point. If she didn’t have help, she’d never be able to keep this place afloat.

  It looked like she was trapped between this rock of a man and a very hard place.

  “Listen to me, Emily. I know you’re not easy in your mind about any of this. You don’t like leaning on somebody else, and I can’t say as I blame you. I’d likely feel the same if I were in your shoes. But I’m no stranger to you. You’ve known me nearly half your life, and you surely know me well enough by now to know that I mean what I say. If you let me help you, I’ll make sure you end up with this farm at the end of the summer. You have my word on it.”

  For a second, all Emily could do was blink at this man standing in her grandmother’s kitchen in faded jeans and a threadbare shirt. Apparently he was so determined to forfeit a tidy little inheritance that he was promising his help to the very person who was going to do her best to make sure he didn’t get it. Was it even possible that such a person still existed in this dog-eat-dog world?

  “Come on, Emily,” he coaxed, one side of his mouth quirking up. “You must have one last Goosefeather Farm summer left in you.” Suddenly there was something irresistible about that crooked smile. She found herself smiling right back at him, and that was when it happened.

  Emily felt a quick, flooding warmth around her heart, and her stomach dropped abruptly out from under her as if she’d just unexpectedly barreled down the slope of a roller coaster. She froze while Abel calmly turned his attention to rinsing out his coffee cup at the sink.

  What had just happened?

  Her mind stuttered with the shock of it. Had she just had some kind of weak-kneed, girlie moment? Over Abel Whitlock?

  Surely not.

  She’d thought she was dealing really well with Grandma’s death, all things considered, but she was obviously more overwrought than she’d realized. Because Emily Elliott didn’t have weak-kneed, girlie moments over men anymore. She’d learned her lesson in that department a long time ago, and she had no plans to go down that particular road again any time soon—if ever.

  And if and when she did, it certainly wouldn’t be with another man from Pine Valley, Georgia.

  * * *

  Abel turned back from the sink to find Emily studying him with a wary expression on her face. As he watched, her cheeks flushed pink, and her gaze darted back into her coffee cup.

  She was still acting skittish, but who could blame her after the day she’d had? Judging from those purple smudges under her eyes, she was tuckered out. He could hear the twins arguing in the living room, something about a cartoon. Emily still had to load them up and make the trip back to Atlanta tonight. Abel felt a flicker of doubt. As much as he wanted to get this all settled, maybe right now wasn’t the best time. He hesitated, shifting his weight from one foot to the other and wishing he knew just what to say to put her mind at ease.

  “Abel.” Something in Emily’s voice jerked his wandering thoughts to attention. Now she was sitting bolt upright in her chair, and she looked as taut as a newly strung fence wire.

  His muscles tensed. Something was wrong. “What is it?”

  She swallowed, and very, very slowly she scooted the old ladder-back chair a few inches backward. “I think...” she whispered. “Okay, I know it sounds a little crazy,
but I think there might be something alive under this table.”

  Abel’s mind flashed to the screened door, to how it had seemed to be open just a crack when he came up the back steps, and he winced. On Goosefeather Farm that could only mean one thing, and he didn’t think Emily was going to like it one little bit.

  Before he could gather his thoughts enough to speak, something gray and long snaked out from under the low-hanging tablecloth and jabbed Emily smartly on the thigh. She yelped, and the mug she’d been holding hit the floor and cracked into pieces, sending the remains of her coffee flooding across the floorboards. Emily tipped her chair over backward, her legs tangling up in its slats as she scrambled away.

  She was halfway into the living room before she stopped to look back. “What is it?” she asked in a trembling voice as the creature sidled slowly out from under the table.

  “She’s an African gray goose.” Abel tried to keep the laugh out of his voice, but he couldn’t entirely manage it. “I gave her to Miss Sadie last spring because I figured any farm called Goosefeather ought to have at least one goose living on it. Your grandma named her Glory. And she’s a born troublemaker.” He addressed his last comment to the goose, who honked briefly at him in reply.

  Emily stayed safely in the living room, her arms wrapped protectively around her twins. They’d left their cartoon to blink owlishly at the unrepentant goose, who was doing her best to thieve the remains of Emily’s muffin off the top of the kitchen table. “Thanks, but you can skip over the introductions. I don’t think I want to be on a first-name basis with that thing. How did it get in here?”

  “You must have left the screen door cracked when you headed out to the barn earlier. She’s smart about opening it if it’s not pulled all the way shut. Your grandma thought it was a cute trick, and that didn’t help.”

  Emily directed a hard stare at the bird. “She bit me.”

  “She does that. Your grandma spoiled her. She wants some of your muffin.”

  As if to prove his point, Glory twisted her long neck and finally managed to reach the rest of the muffin on Emily’s plate. Knocking it to the floor, the goose devoured her spoils greedily. She nibbled at the crumbs, glanced cautiously up at Abel and then turned her sleek head to consider the trio of strangers standing in the living room doorway.

  Whatever Glory saw must not have sat too well with her, because she let out a loud honk and took three waddling steps in their direction, stretching her gray wings out widely. Phoebe’s face crumpled in fright, and she began to cry.

  “Make it go away, Mama! It’s going to bite me!”

  “No, it’s not.” As he watched, Emily got hold of herself, tilted that chin of hers up and let go of her twins. “Don’t be scared. It’s only a goose, sweetie.”

  “But you ran away from it,” Phoebe protested, burying her face in her mother’s shirt. “And it bit you!”

  “Just a little nip. It didn’t even hurt.”

  “But you hollered. Loud.” Phoebe wasn’t buying it.

  “She surprised me, that’s all. I wasn’t expecting her to be under the table. She’s just a spoiled pet and nothing to be afraid of.” Emily took a brave, uncertain step in Glory’s direction. “Shoo!” she said, flapping her hands at the bird. “Scat!”

  Glory refused to scat. Instead she took another step in Emily’s direction, extended her neck to its full length and honked again. Phoebe’s wailing ratcheted up another notch, and even the unflappable Paul looked nervous.

  “Please, Mr. Abel, make it go away!” the boy urged. “It’s scaring Phoebe and Mama. And me, a little.”

  Abel took a quick step forward, but Emily halted him with a gesture and a fierce look. “I can handle this, Abel. If we’re going to live here all summer, we’re all going to have to learn to deal with the animals. You can’t do everything for us. It’s all right, Phoebe. Stop howling.” Emily sounded exasperated.

  “I don’t want to stay here for the whole summer! Bad birds live here! I want to go ho-oome.” Abel might not be any expert on kids, but even he could tell Phoebe had just about reached her limits. Poor little thing—first the rooster and now this.

  “Emily, why don’t you let me—” he started, but Emily interrupted him firmly.

  “No, thanks. I told you. I can handle this.” She took four determined steps back into the kitchen, and she and Glory eyed each other warily.

  Abel’s gut tensed. He didn’t much like the direction this was taking. Scared people scared animals, and scared animals did unpredictable things.

  The goose hissed and scrabbled her webbed feet on the floor as Emily neared her. Abel had been around nervous farm birds often enough to know exactly what was going to happen about two seconds before it did. Glory squatted briefly and produced a very large mess that splatted on the kitchen floor.

  “It pooped!” To Abel’s astonishment, Phoebe’s wails abruptly turned into helpless giggles. “It pooped on the floor, Mama!”

  “That’s disgusting,” Paul said quietly, but Abel saw a little smile sneaking around the corners of the boy’s mouth.

  Abel blinked and readjusted his thinking. All right. Maybe this was good. If the kids found this entertaining, they were going to love living on a farm. Poop, as they called it, was one thing there wasn’t any shortage of.

  “It’s disgusting all right.” Emily wasn’t smiling, and Abel felt a little sorry for her. She handled those twins of hers like she’d been born a mother, but she clearly didn’t know much about dealing with animals. “That bird’s going outside right now.”

  “Emily,” he tried again.

  Emily was having none of it. “I told you, I’ve got this, Abel. Now, come on, bird. Glory. Whatever your name is. I think you’ve done enough damage for one day.” Edging past the suspicious goose, Emily snagged another muffin out of the bakery box on the counter and positioned herself by the back door. “Let’s get you outside where you belong.” She broke off a piece of muffin and dropped it in a strategic spot halfway between the goose and the door to the back porch.

  Glory angled her head and considered the offering with one beady brown eye before waddling over and gobbling it up. Emily tossed a second chunk of muffin a little closer to the doorway. Glory had caught on, and she immediately ambled over and ate that piece, too.

  Emily turned to smile triumphantly at her children. “See? There’s nothing to get upset about. You just have to stay calm around animals. If you use your brain, you can always figure out a way to outsmart them.”

  Something in Paul’s expression tipped Abel off. He looked back at Emily just a fraction of a second too late to warn her that Glory had gotten impatient waiting for the next installment of muffin and was gearing up to nip Emily again, this time right on the seat of her jeans.

  The chaos that followed left downy feathers floating airily around the kitchen and spilled coffee all over the floor. He was dimly aware of Emily’s protests over the screaming twins, but this had gone far enough. Abel finally cornered the goose by the stove, and soon Glory was honking angrily on the back step.

  Abel banged the screen door fully shut in the goose’s face and went back into the house. Emily was already kneeling on the floor, wiping up the mess with the rags Miss Sadie had kept in a bucket under her sink, two bright red spots burning high on her pale cheekbones.

  She glanced up at Abel angrily. “I really wish you’d have let me deal with that.”

  He blinked. Now she was mad at him for getting the goose out of the kitchen? “Glory can be hard to manage. I was just trying to give you a hand.”

  “Well, next time I’d appreciate it if you’d wait until I ask you to help me.” She splashed a rag into the bucket of soapy water with more force than necessary and scrubbed hard at the floor for a minute before looking back up at him. “I need you to understand something, Abel. I’m used to taking care of
myself and my kids. I’m the one in charge of things, and I like it that way. I appreciate your offer to help me out. I really do, but when I say I want to handle something myself, I mean it.”

  He blew out a slow breath. Okay. This was about more than just the goose. He got that, but Emily wasn’t the only one who was just about fed up. “Maybe you’d better write me up a handbook and let me study some, because apparently you’ve got a whole lot of rules about how you want to be treated that I don’t know about.” And that don’t make a lick of sense. He left that part unsaid, which was good, because from the thunderous look on Emily’s face he’d already said too much.

  “You know, Abel, I don’t think this is going to work out. I appreciate your offer, but I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

  “Aw now, Emily. You’re overreacting. All I did—” he started out patiently, but Emily cut him off.

  “All you did was push yourself in and take charge of a problem that was mine to deal with.” She scrubbed at the floor viciously. “Twice. Once with the milking and the chores outside, and now this. Grandma was old, and she needed you to run things around here for her. I get that, but there’s no need for us to have the same arrangement.”

  “Emily...”

  “I’m done talking about this.” She finished cleaning the floor and chunked the dirty rag into the bucket. “If you still want to be helpful, then take care of the animals tomorrow morning while I get arrangements made in Atlanta and write me up a list of instructions so that I can take over starting tomorrow evening. I’d really appreciate that.”

  “But—” he began patiently.

  “But nothing. That’s the way I want it, and this is my call.” She spoke sharply, then glanced sideways at her staring children and composed herself. “I don’t mean to be rude, Abel, I really don’t. Please don’t take it personally. I’ve just learned that I keep my balance a whole lot better when I stand on my own two feet. You start leaning on other people, and it’s just a matter of time until you fall over.”