The Farmer's Wife

by Lori Handeland

  His own theory had been that Brian wanted to stay and Kim just had to go. Brian loved the farm; Kim had always loathed it. And though John had missed her, he had wanted more for Kim, because more was what Kim had wanted for herself. But now he wondered if the more she’d gone searching for had in fact turned out to be less.

  Brian had never been the same. John glanced at the rigid back of his daughter, and he remembered the lesser light of laughter in her eyes. Maybe Kim had never been the same, either.

  “I need a cigarette, he mumbled.

  Kim returned to the chair at his bedside. Her eyes no longer laughed at all, not even a bit, and that made him nervous. “What?”

  “No more cigarettes, Daddy.”

  “Not here, I know.” He waved his hand at the oxygen. “I could blow myself up.”

  “No more cigarettes, period.”

  His head became light and his fingers itchy. John could only stare at her blankly. The words no more cigarettes did not compute.

  “Daddy?” She snapped her fingers in front of his face. He scowled at her. “I’m just going to get this all over with at once, okay?”

  “All what?”

  “No more smoking.” She held up a thumb, then proceeded to tick off horrible news with each successive finger. “Less drinking, less cholesterol, less work.”

  “Why don’t you just say, less life? That’s what you mean.”

  “There’ll be no life if you keep on the way you have been.”

  “This life was good enough for my father and his father before him.”

  “Grampa stroked out at sixty and Great-grampa dropped dead in his living room at fifty-eight.”

  “Happy as clams with a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other.”

  “Daddy . . .”

  “Fine. I take it this comes from the doctors.”

  “No, I made it up.”

  He’d forgotten her smart mouth, which had always gotten her into trouble with her mother and amused the hell out of him—though he’d tried his best to hide it. Right now, he could understand why Ellie had wanted to smack Kim stupid from the age of thirteen until . . . Well, knowing Ellie, she still wanted to smack Kim. She never had, never would, but she’d probably always want to.

  “Not going to be easy,” he observed.

  “Nothing worthwhile ever is.”

  True enough. Getting her to stick around wasn’t going to be easy, either, but it would be worthwhile. If only to erase the shadows from her eyes, which the longer he looked at them the more they reminded him of the shadows that haunted Brian Riley’s eyes, too.

  Kim went to bed early. Not only because she was exhausted from flying halfway across the country, then driving a few hours more, but because she was weary of trying to be nice. She’d lived alone too long, or maybe not long enough.

  She walked on eggshells with her mother. She’d never been sure what to say to her. They had nothing in common but a blood type.

  Her brothers were loud. They always had been. But even with just three of the five at the table, the volume was so much more than Kim was accustomed to these days that she had to fight the urge to press her palms over her ears.

  So she’d pleaded exhaustion and fled. The bright fluorescent bulb in her room revealed too many things—pictures, pom-poms, purity. She snapped off the light before rooting out an oversize T-shirt from her suitcase, putting it on, then climbing into bed. Tomorrow was soon enough to face the past, wasn’t it?

  But her mind had other ideas. She came awake in the tiny space of time between night and day with a damp trail of tears from her eyes to her neck.

  Memories flickered; voices drifted from the past; feelings she’d tried to deny, prayed to forget came back to haunt her in the place where everything began.

  How long had it been since she’d had the dream? Not long enough.

  Experience told Kim she wouldn’t sleep any more, so she tugged a pair of sweatpants over her legs and crept downstairs. Planning to make coffee and watch the sun rise, instead she became sidetracked by a photograph on the wall in the hall.

  Senior prom forever frozen in time. She’d worn a red dress and black patent leather slings with three-inch heels. Even so, the boy in the black suit and red cummerbund towered over her. Tall and slim, he nevertheless had amazing muscles beneath that suit. She could still recall the shape of every one, the texture of his skin, the beat of his heart. Those memories had tortured her for months after she’d left. Until she’d learned how to make them fade with a combination of loud music, tequila and pretty men.

  Eight years had passed, but she hadn’t forgotten Brian Riley’s face. How could she when saw it so often in her sleep? In the picture he stared at her as if his world lay right there in her eyes. His expression had always thrilled Kim, even as it had frightened her. She couldn’t live up to that, and she’d only proven it in the most horrific and painful way.

  Kim frowned and stepped closer, peering at the photograph. She blinked, then blinked again, but what she saw in the picture did not disappear. She’d never noticed that she looked at Brian the same way that he looked at her.

  “What are you starin’ at?”

  She gave a squeak of alarm and leaped away from the wall, spinning around and slamming straight into Dean.

  “You always were a sneak,” she whispered fiercely.

  “I wasn’t sneaking. You were just too fascinated with your boyfriend to hear me.”

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” she snapped before she realized he was baiting her. Honestly, the next thing she knew she’d be chanting, “Na, na, na, na, na,” and ducking behind the sofa when Dean threw something at her.

  “In that case, you won’t need to see him at all while you’re here. If I were you, I’d be afraid to face him.”

  She was, but to let one of her brothers smell her fear was to beg for trouble. Kim had learned that lesson very young. Once they had discovered her aversion to mice they’d devised many ingenious ways to ensure that she became outright and irrationally terrified of them.

  She might have lived in the laid-back South for eight years, but that didn’t make her brain dead. Never let them see you sweat was a very good motto for the little sisters of the world.

  “I’m not afraid of anyone,” she lied. “How are they? The Rileys?”

  Dean hesitated just long enough for Kim’s heart to thud with dread. “Well, hell, now that you’re here, you’ll find out anyway. His parents died about six months ago.”

  She gasped, shocked and saddened. The Rileys had always been kind to her. Much kinder than she had been to them. Why on earth had no one told her?

  “Car crash,” Dean answered before she could ask. “Brian wanted a very quick, very small, very private funeral.”

  “But—”

  “He’s had a hard time. So stay away from him, you hear?”

  She wanted to stay away. Oh, how she wanted to. But she couldn’t. Kim turned toward the stairs.

  “You’re going over there?” Dean’s voice was so incredulous she would have laughed in his face, were she capable of laughing anymore.

  “It’s the decent thing to do.”

  “Since when have you been decent?”

  Though she deserved that, it didn’t make the words any easier to take. The truth only intensified her guilt.

  Kim ran upstairs so that Dean wouldn’t notice how just the thought of seeing Brian made her want to crawl back in her bed and mewl like a newborn kitten.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Brian Riley began his day as he had begun every day for the past twenty years—milking cows.

  Of course, a few things had changed over time. As a child he’d followed his father from cow to cow while he swabbed off udders and attached milking machines. Dad would pour the milk from the machine into a pail, change the filter, toss the used one to a barn cat, then methodically hook up another cow before dragging the full pail to the milk house and emptying it into a cooler.

  In the intervening yea
rs, a genius had come up with the idea of bringing the cows to a milking parlor and pumping the milk from the machine directly to the cooler.

  Brian stretched his back. The new way was worlds better than the old one, but it still meant bending to hook up the milking machine. New and improved dairy farming still hadn’t figured out how to move the udder any higher on a cow.

  The sun was just peaking over the horizon, spreading golden fingers of dawn across his shorn cornfields, when Brian slapped the last bovine rump and lifted his face to the sun.

  The red barn proved a stark contrast to the bright-blue sky. The weathervane at the highest point turned slowly. There was a bite in the air this morning. He smelled snow in the future. Better repair the hole in the barn roof while he still could.

  He had just hoisted himself onto the far side of the building when a car turned into his lane. The crunch of gravel beneath tires grew louder as the vehicle came closer.

  Since the visitor had to be Dean, one of Dean’s brothers or another area farmer, he shrugged and got to work. Whoever had come would search for him or leave him a note.

  Brian didn’t have many friends, which was just the way he liked it. He had a farm to run and little time for fooling around. Not that he was the fooling-around type—at least, not anymore.

  His fingers clenched on the hammer as memories of when life had been full of fun, and so had he, flickered. His throat went thick; his stomach churned. He slammed the hammer onto a nail with undue force, and then he did it again.

  As always, when he began to remember, began to feel and to mourn, Brian turned to the farm, to his work, to his legacy. Over the past eight years this place and his responsibilities to it had saved him more times than he cared to count.

  The sudden and strident bleat of a sheep made him pause, lift his head, frown. Ba sounded seriously pissed, which meant trouble.

  His mother had started raising Shetland sheep as a hobby. The breed had been placed on the endangered list in 1977 and Clara Riley had taken up the cause, becoming one of the premier breeders in the Midwest. Brian had continued the tradition, unable to get rid of the animals his mother had doted on.

  Most Shetlands were calm and easygoing, no problem to raise or to keep. But Ba had been different from the beginning. Though she did like to be petted, even wagged her tail when he did so, with strangers she was cranky and often aggressive. Such behavior was more common in a ram than a ewe, but even so, unusual in a Shetland. Still, Ba could distinguish friends from enemies better than any watchdog he’d ever had.

  Since enemies were few and far between in the Illinois countryside, Brian moved nearer the edge of the roof. He leaned forward, trying to get a glimpse of the visitor just as a black sheep butted a woman around the corner.

  Suddenly he couldn’t breathe; he couldn’t move; all he could do was stare.

  Oh, God, no, he thought. Please, not now. Not ever. Don’t make me see her again.

  As if she’d heard him begging, Kim looked up and straight into his eyes. He stiffened. His foot slipped.

  Suddenly he was falling down. Brian grabbed for the edge of the roof, caught it for an instant, slowing his momentum, but he couldn’t keep a grip, and over the edge he went. Right before he struck the ground with a bone-breaking thud, Brian remembered.

  God had started ignoring him a long time ago.

  Kim screamed as Brian tumbled off the roof and hit the stretch of cement beneath. He landed face first, his hands taking the brunt of the blow. Still, the force with which he’d fallen brought his head forward, and his temple connected to the ground with a sickening thunk. He lay still.

  Kim took one step, and the psycho black sheep butted her back.

  “Baaa,” the thing admonished.

  “Baaa yourself.”

  Kim sidestepped the walking wool ball, and when it would have butted her again, she shoved the animal with her hip. The sheep’s hooves scrambled and slid on the cement and Kim made good her escape.

  She might be small in stature, but she’d learned how to best bigger animals than this. Eighteen years with the Luchetti brothers had honed her survival skills. Kim glanced over her shoulder and smirked as the hunk of mutton retreated around the corner of the barn. She hadn’t lost the hard-won talent.

  Brian turned over with a groan. Though Kim’s heart beat so fast she couldn’t think, couldn’t hear, could scarcely breathe, that he was moving on his own calmed her a bit.

  But when she knelt at his side and he reached up to touch her cheek, her composure fled. She’d feared coming home would bring back all the pain. Then this morning as she’d stared at the last picture ever taken of them together, she’d discovered the true danger was in remembering the joy. Now she realized a more potent threat. His touch could still make her yearn.

  “A dream,” he murmured. “Gotta be.”

  He looked so much the same, yet incredibly different. His light-brown hair curled tightly—something he had always hated and she had loved. How many times had he shorn his curls ruthlessly away, only to have them curl ever tighter as soon as he washed them?

  Her fingers had often tangled in those curls, straightening then releasing, allowing their softness to brush at the sensitive junctures where one finger curved into the next. She wanted to touch them now, trace a fingertip along the streaks left by the sun.

  His eyes were an odd shade of gray that could turn blue or hazel depending on his mood and the depth of his tan. Right now they were astonishingly light against his summer-bronzed skin.

  He was older; so was she. Experiences they had shared and those they had not marred his face and flickered in his eyes. He was taller, broader, stronger, but he was Brian and she remembered . . . everything.

  She reached up, not sure if she meant to press his palm closer or pull him away before she begged. But as she touched his wrist he caught his breath on a hiss of pain and jerked his arm in toward his belly.

  Lustful thoughts fled, chased away by mortification that she could feel such things still, and feel them for a man who’d just tumbled fifteen feet to the ground. She was pathetic.

  “Where does it hurt?”

  “Where doesn’t it?”

  “Where does it hurt the most?” she clarified.

  He tried to sit up and collapsed again. “My wrists. Damn.”

  She glanced at the hands he cradled protectively against his body. They were scraped from the cement, but they hadn’t started to swell. Yet.

  She lifted her gaze to his face, which was another story. “You’ve got a goose egg on your forehead the size of Chicago.”

  “Well, that explains the headache. I hate Chicago.”

  Her lips twitched. Brian had always been able to make her laugh—one of the things that had drawn her to him.

  Maybe this reunion wasn’t going to be so awful after all. Maybe they could be friends, or at least civil. Maybe he’d forgotten what she couldn’t seem to, gotten past what she would never overcome.

  “I’ll drive you to the hospital,” she offered.

  “No, thanks.”

  “You can’t drive yourself. Let me help you up.” She reached for his arm and he flinched.

  “Don’t touch me!”

  She gaped at the fury in his voice and on his face. The Brian she’d known would never have spoken to her, or anyone, like that.

  Her eyes glanced off the knot on his head. “Do you know who I am? What month is this?”

  He gave her a withering glare. “You’re Kim Luchetti. Or at least you were when you walked out on me. And it’s October. I haven’t lost my mind, not since I fell in love with you, anyway.”

  Kim sighed. He hadn’t forgotten. He hadn’t forgiven her, either. Could she blame him?

  “What the hell are you doing here, Kim?”

  “I—I came to say hello.”

  “Hello.”

  He struggled to stand, the task made difficult by the fact that he couldn’t use his hands, and he didn’t want her help. As soon as he gained his fee
t, Brian strode away.

  “Goodbye.” He tossed the word over his shoulder without so much as a glance.

  Kim stood there a moment, uncertain. She wasn’t sure what she’d been hoping for when she’d come here. Absolution? Perhaps. What she hadn’t expected was to find an angry and sarcastic man inhabiting the body of her once joyous and gentle Brian. He’d obviously been spending far too much time with Dean.

  “I just want to help you,” she murmured.

  He stopped, gave a sarcastic snort and shook his head as he turned. “I needed your help once and you weren’t here. I learned to live without you, Kim. I’ll take care of myself now, just like I did then.”

  He continued around the side of the barn, presumably in the direction of the house and his truck. Kim followed more slowly.

  He’d learned to live without her? That stung. But had she expected him to sit around moping? She certainly hadn’t.

  The memory of how she’d managed to survive the death of so many dreams made her uncomfortable in the presence of the one who had given them to her. She never wanted Brian to know what she had done on certain dark and lonely nights over the past few years. She had never learned to live without him—at least not sober.

  She slipped, slid and stumbled across the gravel driveway in her completely inappropriate lemon-yellow platforms. Before she could reach her car, the black sheep barred her way.

  “Baaa.” The animal lowered her head.

  “So help me, if she butts me again, Brian, she’s going to have intimate knowledge of a yellow high heel.”

  “House, Ba. Go on.”

  Amazingly, the animal clomped away, climbing the steps and collapsing in a wool heap on the porch. Kim had never considered sheep the brightest of beings. That was why people with no minds of their own were referred to as one of them.

  “What happened to Rebel?” she asked, alluding to the Rileys’ cow dog.

  She’d thought Brian’s face was expressionless before, but it became shuttered now. “He chased one too many cars.