Bitter Harvest

by Sheila Connolly

  When Meg grabbed a hay bale, the goats backed away, startled, although they couldn’t go far. “Don’t worry, I’m just doing a little redecorating. I’ll settle down soon, I promise.” The bale came from the stack that backed against the solid bulk of the storage chambers, and Meg heaved it down to the floor, then repeated that with the one next to it. She’d reduced the floor space, but she now had a seat. Progress.

  She sat down. The goats regarded her for a few moments. Then, getting bored, Dorcas turned to help herself to some feed, and Isabel lay down in the opposite corner, keeping an eye on Meg. Meg smiled at them. So far, so good. She was reasonably warm and comfortable. Now all she had to do was wait.

  It was a reasonable assumption that a night in the barn wouldn’t kill her, but it was bound to make her miserable. Meg pulled her jacket more tightly around herself, crossing her arms over her chest. Dorcas, after some hesitation, curled up next to her feet.

  Meg wondered just what was going on. Okay, she’d been living in Granford just shy of a year. It hadn’t been an easy one, but she’d made some friends, or at least she thought she had. Had she made enemies? What could she have done that would anger someone enough to inspire a harassment campaign against her? Who stood to gain by annoying her? What did they want?

  And why now? Well, maybe it took a little time to get to know her—and to hate her. One of her apple pickers? She couldn’t remember any animosity from any of them. Who else was there? She’d been working so hard in recent months that she hadn’t had time to see many other people. And yet, here she was, sitting in a freezing barn talking to goats. If they could see me now, she hummed to herself. The goats’ ears twitched. She smiled at them. If someone was trying to drive her around the bend, apparently they’d made a good start.

  It was a long night. Meg dozed on and off, finding it hard to get comfortable on the prickly hay bales. Her hands were cold, and she tucked them under her armpits; the goats were keeping her feet warm, thank goodness. At one point she got up and helped herself to a snack of apples, washed down with some water. The goats barely stirred as she settled herself again. She listened to the barn creak and groan as the temperature dropped, sounding almost like a living thing. There were no sounds from outside, apart from the light wind. At some point she fell into a deeper sleep, under the watchful eyes of the goats.

  She was awakened by the sound of a car door slamming. Seth? She felt clumsy, her feet and hands numb, as she extricated herself from the hay, and the goats, fully awake, milled around in front of her as she tried to force her way past them to open the stall gate. Finally she managed and ran to the front doors, pounding on them. “Hello? Anybody there?”

  “Meg?” Seth’s voice. “What are you doing in there?”

  “I couldn’t get any of the doors open. Come around to the side and let me out, will you?”

  On numb feet she hobbled to the side door and waited impatiently as Seth fumbled with the door. What was taking him so long? She hopped from foot to foot in impatience.

  Finally Seth hauled the door open. “How’d you get stuck in there?”

  Meg stalked past him, and he followed, after shoving the door shut. She was cold, hungry, and really wanted a bathroom. “I came out to take the goats into the barn. Last night.”

  Seth hurried to catch up. “What? You’ve been out here since last night?”

  “Yes.” She didn’t need her keys, since she’d left the back door unlocked last night, assuming she’d be back in a few minutes. If someone had trapped her in the barn, had they taken the opportunity to go into the house? “I left the house open.”

  “Then I’m going in first.” Seth pushed past her and made a quick circuit of the ground floor. “No one here. Come on in.” Once inside, he grabbed her arm and swung her around to face him. “Are you all right?”

  “I will be, once I pee and get something hot inside me.” The concern in his face melted her anger; the stress of the night bubbled to the top, and she found herself fighting tears, which Seth was quick to notice. His arms came around her, and for a few moments he just held her. Finally he said, “Why didn’t you call me?”

  “No phone,” she said against his chest.

  “You couldn’t get any of the doors open?”

  She reared back then to look at him. “What, you think I didn’t try? There’s snow piled up against the two I don’t use, and it’s frozen solid.”

  He didn’t let go. “Sorry, of course. Should we worry about frostbite or something?”

  “No. The goats kept me warm.”

  In a perverse way Meg enjoyed the succession of expressions that crossed his face. Surprise, curiosity, and finally, amusement. “You spent the night with the goats?”

  “I did. They’re warm, and they don’t snore. We sort of nested. Listen, can I go freshen up, and then we can discuss this? Because I really want to know how that side door got stuck.”

  Seth finally let go. “Go! I’ll make some coffee.”

  As she hurried upstairs, Meg noted that the inside of the house wasn’t much warmer than the barn. She hoped Seth would have that fixed by the end of the day. She did what she had to do, and picked some straw out of her hair before going downstairs.

  Seth had coffee brewing, and he was making oatmeal on the stove. He looked hard at her when she walked in. “You’re sure you’re all right?”

  “Yes, I am. And I am pissed off at whoever did this.”

  “Did what?” he asked, returning to stirring the pot on the stove.

  “Locked me in.”

  “You weren’t locked in,” Seth said. “The door was shut but not locked—the padlock was hanging loose on the outside. That pitchfork you use for cleaning out the goat pen was kind of wedged against it. I assumed it had fallen over and gotten stuck.”

  Meg shut her eyes, trying to recall what she had seen the night before. It had been dark . . . When had that pitchfork last been used? Bree had used it to clean out the pen, as far as she knew. But Meg couldn’t remember seeing it anywhere outside the door last night. Wouldn’t she have noticed? The handle was light-colored wood, and would have stood out against the weathered barn siding, even in the dim light. “Seth, I don’t think it could have. Bree isn’t sloppy with tools, so she would have left it in the goat shed, or inside the barn, not outside in the snow. Did you see any footprints this morning?”

  “I wasn’t looking, and you and Bree have been back and forth through that door anyway. Meg, what are you saying?” Seth said carefully, dishing up oatmeal and collecting sugar and milk. “Here, eat this while it’s hot.”

  Meg dosed her oatmeal liberally with brown sugar and added milk. “I’m saying that maybe someone knew I was in that barn, and set things up to make it look like a casual accident. Like so many of the things that have been happening lately.”

  “Like what?”

  “Oh, right, you don’t know—I told Bree about them.” Meg quickly ran through the list she had given Bree—to which she could now add the mysterious jamming of the barn door. “Look, a couple of events I could accept as accidents—but there’s been something every day this past week or two. I can’t be that unlucky, can I?”

  “If you think about probabilities, it does seem unlikely. But I can’t see any reason why anyone would want to do this to you.”

  “Forget about probabilities—there’s somebody behind this. But I can’t figure out who either! Look, I had plenty of time to think about this last night, and I came up with zip. I don’t know of anyone I’ve ticked off around here. And I don’t know why an anonymous stranger would be doing this to me, unless it’s some weirdo who gets his kicks by tormenting people he doesn’t even know.”

  “Exactly.” Seth thought for a few moments. “Well, assuming there is a person behind this, and not just bad karma, what do you want to do about it?”

  “I wish I knew. Setting up surveillance cameras seems a bit ridiculous, and besides, some of these things have happened at other places, like the parking lot at the ma
rket. You want to tail me and keep watch? Should I hire a PI? Or a bodyguard? I’ll bet there aren’t a lot of them in Granford.”

  Seth’s mouth twitched with amusement. “No, there aren’t. Look, I’ll stay around as much as you want, or you can come stay at my place.”

  “I refuse to be driven out of my own home. Even if I did stay with you, who’s to say that this person won’t just wait until I come back to start up again? And Bree lives here, too. No, I want to get to the bottom of this, not just hope it all goes away.”

  “You want to go to the police station and talk to Art?”

  “I suppose I should, just so there’s an official record of this. I assume there’s not much he can do, though, since there’s not much to go on.”

  Meg lapsed into silence as she finished the very good oatmeal Seth had made.

  “I’m sorry,” Seth said softly.

  She looked up at him. “For what? This isn’t your fault. And you can’t exactly protect me 24/7.”

  “I’m sorry this is happening to you, for whatever reason. You know I’ll do anything I can. You want me to set up some bear traps?”

  Meg smiled at him. “You have bear traps?”

  “No, but I know where I could get some.”

  “Of course you do. Is there more oatmeal?”

  After a second bowl of oatmeal, Meg felt almost normal. “So, what now?”

  “I install your furnace, for starters.”

  She’d forgotten the reason he was there. “Of course! You need any help?”

  “Uh, I don’t think so. But if you want, you can help me carry it in.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  As Seth had predicted, Meg was surprised by how light and manageable the new furnace was. It was hard to imagine that it would really keep her entire house warm. Once Seth was happily settled in the cellar with his tools, Meg went to let the goats out of the barn again. Before going in, she studied the outside door. No marks of any kind, or at least, none that hadn’t been there for a long time. Seth had tossed the pitchfork to one side, and she could see on the end of it the scars in the wood where it had caught in the metal tracks for the door. It all looked so innocent; it was so easy to believe that it had simply been in the wrong place, and fallen down at just the right angle . . . No. Her gut said that there was more than that going on. She just didn’t know what.

  She took a deep breath and went back into the barn to bring out the goats.

  16

  It was midafternoon before Seth declared the furnace operational. The process had been delayed by the installation of a new thermostat: like everything else in the house, the wiring had been retrofitted, crammed into spaces in a building that had not been planned for such exotic things, and there had been much cursing and muttering as Seth tried to fish wires through serpentine paths in the old walls.

  Meg had kept herself busy during the day, mostly online, looking for information on early American needlework. The more she hunted, the more she was impressed by the piece she had found. It was no simple schoolgirl exercise. Rather, it was an elaborate, carefully planned, and beautifully executed work, and Meg was surprised by the skill it showed. Violet had been twelve when she made it—to Meg it seemed incredible work for one so young, especially since she herself had no skill with a needle and felt lucky if she could sew on a button. She smiled, though, as she wondered what young Violet would have made of a modern computer.

  Meg had done as much cleaning of the sampler as she dared, given its age and fragility, but it was enough to let her read all the details. What facts did she have? Violet Cox had signed the piece, in silk, in 1798 and she had reason to be proud of her work. Since Meg knew how old Violet had been when she made it, that gave Meg a birth year for her: 1786. What wasn’t clear was where she had made it. In Granford? It was tempting to look at the white house in the bottom panel and see Meg’s own place, but all Colonials looked more or less the same. On close examination Meg had decided that the adjoining small trees, enclosed in a fence, did indeed have little dots that might once have been red, so she thought she was justified in calling them apple trees. But of course, she had learned that the majority of early New England houses had at least a few apple trees, and the other, larger trees flanking the house could be anything. Meg wondered if the tree line had been that close to the house once upon a time, or if that was merely a conventional representation.

  Based on the images she had called up online, Meg could say that the mourner was a typical element, but the row of tombstones was more unusual. There was an entire genre of what was known as mourning samplers, including a group of fairly well-known ones made at a school not far from where she sat, in South Hadley, but the images there were larger and most often focused on a group of mourners clustered around a large pedestal topped with an urn, with weeping willows in the background. A sole mourner was less common, and Meg hadn’t found any other images of a row of tombstones.

  The verse she assumed came from the Bible: it read, “All the increase of thy house shall be cut down in the flower of their age.” That was apt, if it referred to all those dead children above it.

  And that was where she ran out of facts. She had plenty of questions, starting with, who was Violet Cox? How was she related to the Lampsons? And what was the sampler doing in her house, which had been built and occupied by Warrens? Meg already knew that she’d be disappointed if it turned out to be nothing more than a coincidence, but she was going to do her best to figure out who Violet was and if she was connected to the Warrens.

  Finally Seth came back up the cellar stairs and sought Meg out. “I can’t exactly hand you a key, but you want to start her up officially?”

  “The furnace is a her?”

  “You can call it ‘her’—or ‘it’ or whatever you want. Let me show you the thermostat.”

  “Seth,” Meg said impatiently, “I’ve seen a thermostat before in my life. Just tell me how to turn it on.”

  “You don’t want complete instructions on how to program it for the next seven days?”

  “No. I want heat—now!”

  “Then push that arrow key. The ‘up’ one.”

  Meg complied. She waited a few moments, then said, “I don’t hear anything.”

  “You’re not supposed to. It’s new, right? That old one of yours sounded like a jet engine taking off. But check the registers.”

  Meg walked over to the nearest floor grate and stuck her hand out. Yes, there was a steady stream of hot air rising. “Hurray! How do we celebrate warm air?”

  “A kiss might be nice. And an offer of dinner. And dessert.”

  “All your wishes shall be granted. I am positively giddy! The house will be warm again!”

  “Give it a few hours and it’ll be fine. Of course, you’ve still got the same leaky windows and no insulation.”

  “Oh, pooh,” Meg said. “Come here.”

  A few minutes later she said, “If you want dinner you’re going to have to let go.”

  Seth backed away reluctantly. Meg opened the door to the kitchen, and Lolly ventured out cautiously, sniffing. She sneaked up on the heating grate, and after deciding it didn’t pose a threat, she settled herself on top of it, the rising air riffling her fur.

  “Smart cat,” Meg said. “Okay, I’m going to go figure out dinner. Oh, and I should call Bree and let her know the heat’s back on.”

  “I’ll go collect my tools and clean up downstairs.” He disappeared down the stairs to the cellar once more. Meg gave her thermostat a final pat and headed for the kitchen. On the way she picked up her phone and called Bree to give her the good news.

  When Seth returned, Meg was happily chopping some late pears for dessert. “Do you want something to drink? I feel like christening the furnace with champagne, except I don’t have any.”

  “I’ll settle for a beer, if you’ve got one.”

  “That I can do.” She found a bottle in the back of the refrigerator and handed it to him, then returned to chopping.
>
  After a few moments, Seth said tentatively, “Meg?”

  “Yes?” she replied without turning.

  “I had time to think about what’s been going on here, while I was working.”

  “Oh?” she said.

  “What happened last night, you in the barn—it could have been serious. I’m starting to think that it was a little too convenient that the pitchfork fell just the right way to jam the door.”

  Exactly what she had thought. “So what do we do about it?” Meg said, turning to face him.

  “I don’t know. Be careful, for one thing.” Before Meg could protest, he held up one hand. “I know, you’re already careful, but maybe you need to look harder at things. Have you noticed anyone following you?”

  Meg stifled a laugh. “Uh, no, but I can’t say I’ve been looking. You think whoever it is, is planning all these little annoyances? Or is he just seizing the opportunities when he sees them?”

  “I can’t say.”

  Meg considered. “I do know that the incidents have been the kinds of things that are calculated to hit a woman’s nerves. You know, those ‘things that go bump in the night’ that we all worry about when we live alone, whether or not we admit it. Nothing violent, nothing really destructive, but disturbing all the same.”

  “Maybe your realtor Frances is trying to force you to sell the house so she can get the commission.”

  “Maybe. The housing market sure has been lousy lately,” Meg said.

  They were interrupted by the sound of a car pulling into the driveway. A door slammed, and Bree waved at Michael as he pulled away. She hurried in, crowing with delight. “Woo-hoo! It must be sixty degrees in here! It’s absolutely tropical!”

  “It’ll get even better. Seth promises. You and Michael have a good time?”

  “Uh, we kept warm. How about you? Oh, is that coffee new or old?”

  “Just made it.” Meg hesitated a moment, then said, “I spent the night in the barn.”