Meg shivered, and not from the cold. Who could be thoughtless enough to shoot a rifle without knowing what lay beyond? Assuming it was a mistake and not something worse. “Is there a lot of hunting around here?” She knew she was just making conversation, because she didn’t want to think about what had just happened.
Seth shrugged. “Some. Maybe a little more this year because people are strapped and they want the meat. You ever eaten venison?”
Apparently Seth was making conversation, too. “Not that I can remember,” she said. She took a breath. “We’ll need to clean up this glass. You said Art’s coming?”
“Yeah, he’ll be here any minute.”
Meg found a dustpan and brush and had begun carefully sweeping up shards of glass from the floor when Art’s cruiser pulled into her driveway. Seth went out to meet him, and together they studied the window. Then Art turned 180 degrees and looked at the distant tree line, as Seth pointed. As Meg watched them, she realized that hunting—and the dangers that hunting represented to her—had never crossed her mind. She had never even held a gun, and the last time she had shot a bow and arrow had been in summer camp a couple of decades earlier. She couldn’t imagine depending on bagging a deer to feed a family, although she had heard that there were areas where deer posed a real threat to crops and needed thinning. Meg had noticed a few deer now and then, but how big could the population be? This part of town was moderately built up, although there were still plenty of open fields and woodlands. How much space did a deer need to hide and to forage? More things she didn’t know.
A few minutes later Seth brought Art into the kitchen, and Meg greeted him. “Hi, Art. You look tired. Can I get you anything?”
“Yeah, thanks, coffee would be great. Sorry this happened. I know most of the guys who hunt around here, and usually they’re careful.”
Meg chose her words carefully. “Do you think this was an accident, Art?”
Art looked at her. “You don’t? You thinking about that other stuff you told me about? Because this is in a different league, if you don’t mind my saying so. Someone could have been hurt.”
“I know. Believe me, I’d rather think it was an accident, even if it’s a stupid one.”
Art looked around the kitchen. “Where were you when it happened?”
“We were standing on either side of the table here.”
“Would you have been visible from outside?”
“You mean, from that distance?” Seth asked. “We weren’t right next to the window. It was light outside. And the land slopes down to the marsh there. So I wouldn’t swear that anyone could see us standing in the kitchen. You agree, Meg?”
“I guess.” She’d never looked at the house from that angle.
“So it could have been a very careless hunter,” Seth went on, “or maybe someone who didn’t plan to hit anyone, just make a mess and scare us. Which he did, damn it.”
Meg looked at Seth, and then at Art. “So it’s part of the same pattern, just more serious? Intimidation?”
“Maybe,” Art said. “Let me take a look at the bullet. You see where it went?”
It took the three of them a couple of minutes to locate the bullet, partially embedded in the plaster wall. Art took a penknife and pried it out. “Twenty-two caliber. Not very big. Could have done some damage to you, but probably not from that distance.” He slipped it in his shirt pocket. “Look, I’ll investigate, check for footprints before I lose the light. Ask around. I’ll let you know if I get any other reports of hunters, legal or otherwise.” He stood up wearily. “I’d better be going. Sorry it had to happen to you, Meg. See me out, Seth?”
“Bye, Art,” Meg said. She watched the men leave the house and stand in the driveway talking. At least Art couldn’t tell her she was imagining things this time—that bullet was very real. She shivered in the air from the broken window.
When Art left, Seth came back and said, “I’d better get something over that window. You sure you got all the glass?”
“I think so.”
He looked at her critically. “Are you okay?”
“I don’t know, honestly. I don’t know what to think—whether this was a stray bullet or somebody is really trying to get to me. You tell me.”
“Meg, I don’t know what to say. I’ve lived just over the hill all my life, and I can’t recall any incident where someone was hurt by a hunter around here. You haven’t heard any other gunshots?”
“I’m not sure I’d even recognize them. I’m a city girl, remember? And I lived in a nice neighborhood in Boston where we didn’t hear a lot of gunfire. I’m more likely to assume it’s just a backfire.” Meg sighed. “You want dinner?”
As she started her dinner preparations, Meg realized how much time she spent looking out the window over the sink, now that she couldn’t. Seth came and went, measuring and cutting a sheet of plywood, then screwing it into place, making the kitchen dark. Meg began to feel claustrophobic. At least it hadn’t been one of the antique windows; the sink window was some later generation’s plate glass installation, from some past kitchen remodeling, and she had to admit she preferred it for the light it provided.
When dinner was ready she dished up two bowls and all but slapped them on the table. “There. Food. Let’s eat.”
Silently Seth found forks and napkins, and sat down at the table across from Meg. “Meg, we kind of left that earlier conversation about the orchard unfinished. What is all this about? Are you looking for a reason to bail out on Granford, this house, this whole thing? Am I supposed to tell you that I’m sorry your business is doing well? Is that what you want to hear?”
In spite of herself Meg smiled. “It sounds ridiculous when you put it that way. I’m mad because I didn’t fail? Yeah, that makes sense.” She paused to eat a few forkfuls of her dinner. Seth was still watching her. “What?” she said.
“Are you waiting for me to say something like ‘I’m madly in love with you, and I want you to stay here forever with me, the orchard be damned’?”
Meg looked up from her plate, startled. She’d never even thought about that. “Are you? Madly in love with me? Slightly in love with me? And I’d still need to make a living. I don’t want anyone to pay my way.”
Seth stared at her for several seconds, his expression unreadable, and for a moment Meg wished he would break out of that calm and rational mode—get angry, or at least respond with some emotion. In the end Meg held up a hand. “This is definitely not the time for that conversation. For the record, I am not trying to force some sort of commitment from you. I don’t do that.”
“I know. I’m sorry, Meg. Look, you’ve had a hard year, and I haven’t wanted to push too hard . . .”
She interrupted him. “And I haven’t encouraged you, either. I know myself well enough for that—I knew I couldn’t deal with a new place and a whole new profession and a new relationship all at once. Seth, I don’t know how I would have made it through this past year without you. But a lot of that has been just because you were there. A problem came up, and you would have been there anyway, as plumber or neighbor or selectman, whether or not it was me who was involved. It’s been easy to avoid looking too hard at ‘us,’ whatever that might be. And honestly, I don’t know what I want from you. I don’t know what I want from this place. Damn.” She shut her eyes, mostly to hold back tears. Why did she feel this way? “I should be happy,” she whispered.
“Meg,” Seth said helplessly.
Meg opened her eyes. “If you want another cliché, I’ll give you one: it’s not you, it’s me. You’re one of the greatest guys I’ve ever met.”
“But?” he asked.
“As I keep saying, I don’t know what I want. I expected to be happy if the orchard was in the black, but now I’m just confused. And I’ve got to decide whether I want to keep going with it, or walk away now while I still have other options.”
“And I don’t fit in the equation anywhere?”
Meg realized that she sounded as though sh
e was putting the orchard ahead of him. That seemed awfully cold. Was she trying to push him away? And why? Was she really that afraid of commitment, to a person, a place, a way of life? She meant what she’d said to him, but she’d been skirting around the term “love.” Did she love him?
“That’s not what I’m saying, Seth. I mean, it’s not a package deal, you and the orchard, and it’s not exactly either-or. I can’t see giving up the house and the orchard but being together with you, whatever form that might take. But I can’t see telling you to get lost and then staying on here, with you in my backyard all the time, literally. And I don’t want to do that, either.”
Seth was silent for several seconds, and then he stood up. “I need to go. I think you have to make up your mind what you want, and I don’t want to make that more difficult for you. You know I care about you, and I want to find out where that takes us, but that’s a choice that has little to do with your business decision about the orchard.”
Meg stood up as well. “Seth,” she began, hating that she sounded so helpless.
Seth put on his coat and pulled open the back door. “Let me know what you decide.” He disappeared into the night, shutting the door firmly behind him.
Meg remained standing in the middle of the kitchen, her mind in turmoil. In the space of a few hours she had managed to tick off her business manager and her . . . Seth. They were both good people; she did care about them both, and what they thought of her. Worse, she needed them. So what the hell was she doing? And given Seth’s tendency to take care of everyone and everything, the fact that she had managed to drive him away after what had happened this afternoon spoke volumes about how upset he was.
Mindlessly she cleared up the dishes, checked the dead bolt on the back door, turned off lights. She drifted into the dining room, but she had no interest in looking up Internet information about dead people. Although, she had to admit, dead people were a whole lot easier to deal with than living ones. Or maybe she was just lousy at dealing with living ones, period.
In the front parlor, she looked around. Not much had changed since she had moved in nearly a year earlier. She was still living with the same crappy furniture she had inherited, mainly because she hadn’t had either the money or the time to do anything about it. The old wooden windows still rattled and leaked cold air. She hadn’t done anything about them either, for the same reasons. Ever since spring she had been focused on getting in the harvest, challenging herself to see if she could pull off something difficult, with no experience. Well, she had done it. So why wasn’t she happy?
Postpartum depression, Meg? All that anticipation—the end result could hardly help but be an anticlimax. So you managed to do what farmers around here have been doing for as long as this land has been settled: bring in a crop. Big deal. And because she had been so focused on that one goal, she had put off thinking about what she would do after. She had deferred that decision with a lot of “we’ll see’s.” She had once prided herself on her clear thinking and her decisiveness, and yet she’d been waffling about this for almost as long as she had been here.
She sat down in one of the shabby armchairs, and a heatseeking Lolly jumped into her lap and curled up. One more obligation to worry about, Meg thought. Lolly had been abandoned once; could she do it to her again? Was a cat the only thing she would take away from this whole experience?
All right, Meg—think! Fact one: she had proved she could run the orchard, as long as she had help, and make a profit. She could support herself, even though there might be up or down years. Raising any kind of crop was uncertain. It was also hard work. Could she live with those?
If she was going to stick around, there were things that absolutely had to be done. The roof wouldn’t last much longer, and the house sorely needed painting. She had to pay for the new furnace. And, as Bree had pointed out, she wasn’t even pulling a salary for herself, and at some point she was going to have to buy clothes and a new car and maybe even furniture. How far would that slender profit stretch?
And there was Seth. Meg knew she had personal issues with intimate relationships, which was probably why she hadn’t had many. Knowing it and doing something about it were two different things. It would be nice if either she or Seth had been overwhelmed with blind passion and made imperious demands: I love you! I want you! Marry me! Did she want to marry Seth? Did she want to marry anyone?
Or did she want to walk away from him? Go back to Boston, or somewhere else, and start a new life—again? That idea brought a twist to her gut, and Meg almost smiled. Look, an honest emotional reaction, Meg. Did she love him? The answer was a definite “maybe.” Should she tell him? She shied away from that. Not until I’m sure. Which could be about the same time that hell froze over. What are you so afraid of, Meg? Of making a mistake? That’s part of being human. You can’t sit on the fence forever. People won’t wait forever for you to make up your mind. Life moves on.
Meg stroked Lolly, who remained oblivious to her mistress’s inner turmoil. “I guess I should go to bed, eh, cat? Come on.” She picked up Lolly, who protested sleepily, and headed up the stairs, turning off lights as she went.
She awoke sometime in the middle of the night, in the pitch dark. Had she heard something? Animal, human? She lay still, listening. Nothing, or at least nothing identifiably human—just the usual creaks and groans of an old house, ancient trees swaying in the slight wind, a lone car on the distant highway. Lolly slept on. Damn it, these harassment incidents were getting to her—making her see or hear or suspect things that weren’t even there.
And then Meg got mad—gloriously, indisputably mad. She didn’t need this kind of aggravation, not on top of all the rest of the mess of her life. She couldn’t keep ignoring the events: real things were happening, and someone was making them happen. If somebody around Granford had a problem with her, she wanted to know who, and why. She was not going to let this faceless someone drive her off her land, or deprive her of her satisfaction in what she had accomplished. It was time to go on the attack and figure it out.
Even with that resolution in mind, it took her a while to get back to sleep—but at least now she had a plan.
24
Meg woke late the next morning—if late could be considered any time after the winter sun came up—and the first thing she remembered was her righteous anger from the middle of the night. Did it hold up in the light of day? Damn straight it did! If she could clear up this one part of the mess of her life, it would make it much easier to sort out the rest. And she owed both Bree and Seth an apology. They had done nothing but try to support her, and she was whining and moping. She had no right to inflict her self-centered indecisiveness on other people. Get over yourself, Meg!
She was downstairs fixing breakfast for herself when she saw Bree’s car pull in. Bree stopped short of slamming the car door, but barely. She stormed toward the house and came in the back door, throwing her jacket at the hook on the wall, and saying a curt “Morning” before turning toward the back stairs.
“Bree, wait! Please!” Meg called out.
Bree turned reluctantly to the kitchen and faced Meg, her expression belligerent. “What? I’m not staying around—I just left too fast yesterday to take any clothes along.”
Might as well get right to it. “Bree, I want to apologize for yesterday. You gave me good news and all I could do was complain. It wasn’t fair to you. You did an outstanding job this year, and any success here is largely yours.”
“So, what? You’ll write me a nice letter of recommendation when I go looking for a new job?”
“No, that’s not what I’m saying. Although I will, if that’s what you want. But I don’t want you to go. I don’t want to leave.” There, she’d said it. How did it feel?
It felt good.
Bree still looked wary. “You’re saying you want to keep working the orchard? With me?”
“Yes, that’s what I’m saying. Can we sit down?”
“You got coffee?”
�
�Of course.”
Bree finally noticed the boarded-up window. “What the hell happened here?”
“A stray bullet, yesterday.”
“You’re kidding!” Bree looked hard at Meg. “You’re not kidding. Was it aimed at you?”
Meg shrugged. “No way to know, but probably not. The consensus is that it was a sloppy hunter. Art came by, so he’s got a report.”
“Why are you so calm about this? Somebody shot at you!”
“They missed. And maybe it was accidental. What is it you want me to do? Look, can we talk about the orchard?”
Bree helped herself to coffee and sat at the table, and Meg refilled her mug and joined her.
“I don’t know what I was expecting,” Meg began. “Maybe I thought you’d tell me we’d been a fantastic success and doubled the profits from any previous year.” She ignored Bree’s snort. “Maybe I wanted to prove to those people back in Boston that I could succeed quite well without them. I know I had to prove it to myself.”
“Okay,” Bree said. “And?”
“Well, that was my problem, not yours. If I’d been thinking rationally, I would have realized that a modest success was all I could hope for, given all the strikes against us, like my total lack of experience, and the fact that we had to build the holding chambers for the apples, and buy equipment, and set up new contacts with vendors. Not to mention all the other dramas we had to deal with.”
Bree smiled grudgingly. “Yeah, and I was pretty new at this, too.”
Meg nodded. “You were, but you handled yourself really well. You did all the hiring, and you kept things on track. Tell me, were you dragging your feet on the numbers because you weren’t sure what you would find?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. But I had a lot riding on this, too, you know. It mattered to me as much as to you.”
“I know, and I’m sorry if I didn’t acknowledge that. All I can say is, I was kind of overwhelmed for most of the year, but I want you to know that I’m proud of the results. And of you, and even of myself. So, are we okay?”
Bitter Harvest Page 19
