Brian couldn’t help it; he snickered. “Did you think eggs came out of chicken butts pure white and sterile?”
“I try not to think of eggs coming out of chicken butts at all.”
He shook his head. “City girl.”
“If that means I want my eggs in a carton, pasteurized milk, my chicken deep fried and all the sheep behind a fence, you got it.”
“Shh, they’ll hear you.”
The two of them shared a smile, and for a minute Brian saw what their life might have been like if she hadn’t hated everything he cared about. But he’d had foolish dreams once—dreams where she’d loved him enough to stay. He would never be so foolish again.
“You thought I was going to leave, didn’t you?”
He tilted a brow. “It crossed my mind.”
“Mine, too,” she admitted. “But I’m not. I said I’d stay until you were able to take care of yourself, and I will. Don’t think you can get rid of me by making things tough, either.”
He hadn’t considered that. In truth, he wouldn’t have to make things tough. Everyday life on the farm was tough enough. Maybe it would be good for him to see firsthand how incredibly wrong for this life she was now and always had been.
“Forget the eggs,” he repeated.
She shook her head. “I may be a city girl, but that doesn’t make me a pansy. No chicken is getting the better of me.” She wrinkled her nose at her hand. “Or chicken slime, either. I’m going to finish in here, then I’ll make scrambled eggs and you will eat them.”
As if to emphasize her resolve, she shot her hand underneath a chicken, came back with an egg and placed it in the basket without so much as a second glance. Her smirk of triumph had him smiling, too, before he stepped out of the chicken coop.
“About before.”
He stepped back in. “Yeah?”
Methodically she robbed each chicken of its egg. Nary a squawk was heard and no more eggs landed anywhere but in the basket. She caught on quick when she wanted to.
“Do we have a deal?”
“Deal?”
“Um. You know. I don’t touch if you don’t talk.”
Understanding dawned. Brian hesitated. He could agree, but he’d be lying. He planned to talk and talk a lot. However, if he told her that, she would clam up worse than she already had.
They had several weeks to spend in close quarters until his hands were functional. Brian was betting Kim wanted to talk about the past as much as he did; she just didn’t know it yet.
She needed time—preferably time free of dissension and anger. A truce was in order.
“I tell you what,” he offered. “I won’t talk about—” The glance she shot his way was alarmed, even fearful. He sighed. “Anything. Unless you ask me to.”
“I won’t,” she said too fast.
“Fine. Then we’re all set.”
Her eyes narrowed. “So it follows that I won’t touch you—except to help you—unless you ask.”
“And I won’t.”
She muttered something indistinguishable.
“What was that?”
“Baaa!”
The sheep stuck her head into the chicken coop and absently Brian rubbed his elbow between her ears.
Kim stared at Ba with a sullen expression. “She hates me.”
“Sheep can’t hate.”
“A lot you know. I can see it in her eyes.”
“You’re imagining things.”
“I’ve never had much of an imagination.”
Now, that wasn’t true. Kim had been very imaginative in certain situations.
Brian straightened and backed out of the chicken coop again. Here he was saying he wouldn’t ask her to touch him, then remembering all sorts of fascinating details about how spectacular she’d once been at that touching. He’d never be able to stick to their deal if he kept that up.
“I’ll see you inside.”
She waved and continued with her egg hum.
“Go on now,” he told Ba. “Run off and chase squirrels.’’
Her head tilted. Brian made a shooing motion. “Watch ‘em.”
She trotted toward the oak tree behind the chicken coop and stared upward hopefully. Ba had never chased squirrels. Some canine mannerisms were beyond her. But she did like to sit beneath the tree and pretend the ones that were up there were terrified to come down with Ba on patrol.
Satisfied that they were all where they belonged and no imminent disaster loomed. Brian headed for the house. He should have known that disaster was never far away on a dairy farm.
He had one foot on the porch, when Ba erupted with a furious, “Baaa, baaa!”
He froze. Ba never made that particular sound unless she was pissed off and planning to—
Brian cursed and spun about just as the ewe sprinted around the corner of the chicken coop, lowered her head and butted Kim in the back.
Kim flew forward, the eggs upward. Then she hit the dirt on her hands and knees. As if in slow motion, the basket upended, raining eggs all over Kim and the ground. Not a single one hit Ba. Every last egg broke.
Kim lifted her head. Yolk dripped down her cheek.
“Sheep can’t hate, huh?” Her green eyes glinted at the retreating woolly rump. “But they certainly know how to declare war.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
The slamming of a car door woke Eleanor from the deepest sleep she’d enjoyed in months. Of course, she hadn’t fallen asleep until well past 4:00 a.m. and then only after she’d cried herself silly.
To top that off, her bedroom had been so hot she’d woken up several times, heart thundering, mind searching for the reason she was dripping with sweat. She needed to remember to turn down the thermostat before she went to bed, although she could have sworn that she had.
Eleanor turned over. Nose clogged, throat dry, eyes swollen, her head pounded to the beat of her pulse. If she recalled correctly, this was what a hangover felt like. Too bad she hadn’t had the pleasure of a drink first.
Footsteps sounded on the staircase. Groaning, she pulled the covers over her head. She felt awful and most likely smelled worse if the slightly stiff state of her sweat-encrusted nightgown was any indication.
The door opened; silence drifted through the room. Eleanor breathed in, then out slowly, hoping the hulking lump of her body appeared asleep to whoever might be watching. At last the door closed.
She was hot beneath the covers so she threw them back, sat up and screamed. John leaned against the door, staring at her.
Her scream didn’t even make him jump. Instead he regarded her calmly, curiously. She’d always loved the way he looked at her, telling her everything without saying a word. Or so she’d romanticized about his tall, dark and silent manner. Right now that stare made her want to shriek until he said something, anything at all.
He must have seen the intention in her eyes. He’d always been pretty good at reading her—back when she wasn’t on the verge of madness.
“You forgot to pick me up.’’
“No, I didn’t.”
Confusion flickered across his face. “But I was released, and you didn’t come. I thought maybe you were running late, though you hardly ever . . .” His voice trailed off. He cleared his throat, shuffled his feet, continued. “So I stood in the lobby for quite a while. Then I called Aaron.”
In the end John hadn’t really needed her. Did anyone? He’d called sturdy, reliable, always-there-in-a-pinch Aaron. Tears burned at the back of Eleanor’s eyes, and she viciously rubbed them away.
“What happened?”
“I overslept.”
“You?”
The shock in his voice reflected her own. Eleanor Luchetti never overslept. There was too much to do on any given day to waste even a minute snoozing. But lately she had plenty of time to get everything done and plenty left over to think far too much about far too little.
“Yes, me. I didn’t sleep well.”
“To tell the truth, El—” He broke off, shuffle
d his feet. “Um, Eleanor. You don’t look too good.”
She was sure that she didn’t, but hearing him say so hardly helped matters. And hearing him call her Eleanor, even though she’d told him to, only made the distance between them loom wider. There were so many things they’d never talked about, so many things they’d never shared, and, as his heart attack had made her so viciously aware, too little time left for any of it.
“I came home to an empty house last night,” she blurted.
His expression became full of concern. “You told me that at the hospital. Remember?”
He thought she was losing her mind. Yeah, join the club.
“I meant,” she enunciated, “when I came back from the hospital.”
“Oh.”
Eleanor rolled her eyes. For John, oh meant just about anything—or maybe everything. Oh was sorry; oh was terrific, how awful, leave me alone and I’m not even listening.
In her current state, if he said oh one more time, she just might throw something at him, so she continued with her story.
“I walked around in the dark, and I remembered how I used to dream about being alone in the house. It was quiet, as I’d always imagined, but also strange, even spooky. I didn’t like it.”
Talking, sharing what had never been shared, felt good. She’d been the best wife, mother and farmer’s helper she knew how to be. She hadn’t complained. She’d done her job and kept any disappointments to herself. That was what women of her generation did. But she didn’t want to keep quiet anymore. She wanted John to understand how her life had been.
“They never took naps at the same time,” she murmured. “Did you know that?”
His only reaction to her sudden and—most likely to him—inexplicable change in topic, was a slow nod. Lately her mind flew from subject to subject the way birds flew between the trees.
“I would long for a single minute of silence. The closest I got to that was every afternoon at three. Do you know what I used to do every afternoon at three, John?”
His face and voice were wary. “What?”
She almost said, Danced naked on the rooftop.
But John wouldn’t think that was funny. The only thing he did consider funny was his knock-knock jokes, which she considered stupid.
How had they managed to stay married for over thirty years and create six children when they had so little in common? She’d loved him, desired him, but she realized in that moment how little she knew him and how little he knew her. Could they change, or was it already too late?
“What did you do every afternoon at three?” he repeated.
She cut him a glance. He appeared interested, or maybe just concerned. She rarely went off into her own inner world as she’d just done, mainly because as a mom and a farmer’s wife, her inner world had been slim to none.
“At three I would take every child who wasn’t asleep—and there was usually at least one or two. I’d divvy them up between the playpens and the cribs, then I’d go outside and walk around the house ten times.”
He shrugged. “Okay.”
Well, at least okay was better than oh, but not by much.
Eleanor sighed. “I felt guilty about leaving them, but I put them where they were safe, and I looked in the windows every time I went by. I had to be alone for a few minutes.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“But I felt there was. Felt I couldn’t handle what was my job to handle.”
“You always handled everything just fine. I never knew you were unhappy.”
“I wasn’t unhappy. Just overwhelmed now and again.”
“And guilty about it.”
She shrugged. “Mother’s curse.”
“That was a long time ago. The kids are fine. No harm, no foul.”
“Are the kids fine? I worry, John. I worry a lot.”
“Is that what made you cry last night?”
No wonder he continued to stare. He might not be the most sensitive man, but he wasn’t blind. He had to have known she’d been crying from the moment he’d seen her puffy, old face. She had never been much for crying. What good did it do?
“No. Last night I cried because all those years I dreamed about quiet, about an empty house, and when I had it . . .” Her sigh was long and hitched in the middle with the echo of tears. “It was the worst thing I could ever have hoped for. The quiet. . .” She shuddered, remembering. “It was awful.”
A door slammed downstairs. Heavy footsteps thumped into the kitchen. Chairs rattled. Outside, the purr of a tractor warred with the barking of the dogs.
“It’s not quiet now, and probably won’t be that quiet or lonely here ever again. There’s no reason to cry any more, Eleanor,”
Calm, sure, logical John. She wanted him to hold her and help her, but he didn’t know how.
In her opinion, she had quite a few reasons to cry. She’d spent years wishing her children would grow up, and now that they had, she wanted them back the way they’d been. She wanted a second chance with Kim—although she still wasn’t certain what it was she’d done to ruin the first chance. Eleanor wanted someone to need her, but no one did.
John cleared his throat. “Hey, where’d you go?”
She blinked—wool-gathering again. But she didn’t want to admit she’d gone off somewhere twice in one conversation. So she shrugged, then she lied. “Nowhere.”
His brow creased. “You’re starting to worry me.”
Eleanor didn’t answer, because she was starting to worry herself.
Kim left the eggs where they’d fallen, except for the ones in her hair. Brian watched as she picked out the shells with her fingernails. At least those daggers were good for something. They weren’t going to last much longer around here.
With egg on her face, her hair, her hands and feathers pretty much everywhere, Brian had a hard time not laughing. He would have, too, if she hadn’t lifted the hem of her pajama top and wiped her face.
No touching, no talking, but neither one of them had said anything about looking. Which was good, since Brian’s gaze was irresistibly drawn to the firm, smooth plane of her belly. The last time he’d seen that part of her—
He closed his eyes to shut out the sight—both past and present—and when he opened them again, Kim had dropped her pajamas back where they belonged and turned away.
She tossed the empty egg basket into the chicken coop and slammed the door on the infernal squawking. Then she marched across the yard, up the steps and right past him without a glance. The sound of running water drifted from the open doorway, and he followed her into the kitchen, where she washed the blood and egg slime from her hands.
“Why don’t you take a shower?” he asked.
“I will. But first I’ll feed you.”
“I can wait.”
“Won’t take long. I can do cereal like nobody’s business.”
In less than a minute she placed corn flakes—just the way he liked them, lots of milk, lots of sugar—on the table. That she’d remembered made him misty again and he resorted to teasing. Something that, as an only child, he’d also learned about with her.
“Eggs are good for your hair, I hear. Skin, too.” He kept the smirk off of his face if not out of his voice. “But I think you’re supposed to eat them, not wear them.”
She tapped the spoon against her palm as her spattered slipper slapped against the floor. “You got a death wish?”
He fought a grin. “No, ma’am.”
“Then sit, eat, like it.”
He sat, snatched the spoon from her hand and promptly dumped the first helping into his lap.
Without comment, Kim took the utensil and pulled a chair closer. She scooped up soggy cereal and poured it into his mouth. Her face suddenly wrinkled and she sniffed, then sniffed again.
“You know we removed your other shirt because it was going to smell like old milk. Can’t you find something better to wear than one that smells like—”
He swallowed. “Smells like
what?”
“You don’t smell that?”
He took several deep sniffs, plucked a feather out of her hair and held it in front of her nose. “I smell chickens.”
She batted the thing to the floor. “That’s it?”
“Scrambled eggs?” He opened his mouth for another bite and she upended the spoonful down his chin.
In the old days he might have dumped the bowl of cereal over her head; then, laughing, they would have kissed. If his parents had been away from the house, they’d have done a whole lot more.
“Was that necessary?” he asked.
“I enjoyed it.”
Brian used his shoulder to rub the milk off his chin since she didn’t appear eager to do it.
“You’re honestly going to tell me you don’t smell manure?” she asked.
“You do?”
“I think I know what manure smells like, Brian.”
“No doubt from all those years spent in a courtroom.”
“Very funny. Take off that shirt!”
“Uh-uh. Been there, done that. The shirt stays.”
“It smells.”
“Kim, that’s not my shirt—it’s my farm. The wind is from the east today. That doesn’t happen often, but when it does—”
“Oh!” Understanding spread across her face. “The fields. You fertilized them.”
“Bingo.”
“I can remember Daddy spreading the fields every fall. Until the snow covered it . . . She waved her hand in front of her face. “Whew!”
“Manure might not smell nice, but it has two big advantages.”
She lifted a brow. “What might those be?”
“It’s free and there’s a lot of it.”
“Both on a farm and in the courtroom.”
“Now you’re catching on.”
The clink of a spoon against the side of the bowl was the only sound for quite a while. Brian found himself curious about her life in Savannah. He’d promised not to talk about “that night.” But he hadn’t promised not to talk about anything else.
“You spend a lot of time in the courtroom? That must be interesting.”
Her face reflected surprise. “I didn’t think you approved of bottom-feeding scum suckers.”
He winced at the words he’d once used to describe her chosen profession. He’d been eighteen; she’d been picking a college and he’d been terrified.
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