The Farmer's Wife

by Lori Handeland

  The man in question nodded agreeably, then grabbed the cup of coffee his mother nearly dumped in his lap while she frowned fiercely at her husband.

  Ignoring everyone else, John swung his attention to Aaron. “What about you?”

  Aaron tapped his fingers on the table, taking several moments to consider before he answered the question. “There’s no reason Dean and I can’t both run this place along with you.”

  “With a robotic milking system, he won’t need you or me.”

  Aaron shrugged. “I can live with that, too.”

  “Sometimes, boy, you’re too accommodating for your own good.”

  Aaron smiled serenely, and took a sip of his coffee, clearly done with his part in the argument.

  “How does it work?” Brian ventured.

  Dean’s face lit with eagerness, before he glanced at his father and the light faded.

  “Go on and tell him,” John said. “I want to hear what’s so damn wonderful.”

  Dean hesitated a moment longer, but in the end his excitement won out. “The cows are trained to come in when they want to be milked. Each wears an ID collar, which a computer reads and records. Not only is there less physical work but less paperwork.”

  “You expect cows to know when it’s time to be milked?” John snorted.

  “Don’t they already? By force of habit, they all head for the barn morning and night. With the robotic system, the cows could be milked three times a day, which is ideal anyway.”

  “What if a cow shows up five times in one day?”

  Dean shook his head. “No more than three. The computers wouldn’t allow it.”

  “And neither will I,” their father said. “I still can’t believe you went behind my back like this.”

  “They’ve been using robotics in Europe for years already. Canada, too.”

  “What do foreigners know about dairy farming?”

  “Quite a bit,” Dean muttered.

  Their father’s eyes narrowed and his face darkened. But before he could explode, his wife intervened. “All he did was ask how much it would cost, John. Where’s the harm?”

  “This is my place. Not his. At least not yet.”

  “That’s what’s really bothering you, isn’t it?” She stood. “That he took some initiative. But sooner or later you’re going to have to let this place go before it kills you.”

  “When it kills me, you can pry it out of my cold, dead fingers. But until then—” He broke off at her shocked intake of breath. “Aw, hell, Ellie, I—”

  But she was already gone, rushing into the kitchen with her hand over her mouth. The sound of her crying filled the room.

  They all remained still, shock visible on their faces. Even if Kim hadn’t already been apprised of her mother’s odd behavior she’d know about it now. Because Eleanor Luchetti cried over nothing and no one.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The kitchen door swung open behind Eleanor. She swallowed her tears, scrubbed her palms over her face and turned.

  Her eyes widened. Eleanor had expected Aaron, maybe John, though truly she knew better. Instead, Kim studied her with a wary, concerned expression.

  “I’m fine,” she said, and turned around again.

  Eleanor plugged the sink, twisted the taps and squirted dishwashing liquid in a long, steady, wasteful stream. Then, because she felt like it, she started tossing silverware and plastic cups into the water so the suds flew up like flakes of snow before floating downward once more.

  The muffled clip of Kim’s heels on the vinyl floor announced her approach seconds before she grabbed a dish towel. “You wash—I’ll dry,” she said. “You can talk, and I’ll listen.”

  The offer was more tempting than it should have been. Eleanor wasn’t a talker. She was of the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” generation and geographic location Illinois farm wives did not whine; they did not go on Oprah and tell their secrets; they did not need to discuss every blasted twitch and twinkle in their lives.

  But right now Eleanor wanted to share all the jumbled feelings and fears inside her with another woman. And in Luchetti land, Kim and Eleanor were all the women to be had.

  Even though she wanted to talk, Eleanor wasn’t sure how to start. So while they washed and dried, the clink of silverware and dishes were the only sounds in the room. After a few minutes Eleanor realized those were the only sounds in the house.

  “Where did everyone go?”

  “Brian took Dean for a walk.”

  Eleanor smiled. No matter what had happened between Brian and Kim, he had always been a good friend to Dean, and that wasn’t easy.

  “Evan said he had an appointment.”

  “Hmm.” Evan had been having a lot of appointments lately. Knowing her son, that meant a woman.

  “Aaron went to bed.”

  “And?”

  “Daddy’s on the porch.”

  Stiffening, Eleanor removed her hands from the dishwater, planning to sneak a peek out the front window and make sure he wasn’t smoking.

  Then she remembered. She’d taken every cigarette she could find and methodically broken each one in two before lighting a nicotine bonfire in the fire pit behind the house. While that burned, she’d upended all the beer into the sink and rinsed it down with the last of the liquor. She hadn’t had so much fun in a long, long time.

  “He’s worried about you,” Kim continued, “and I am, too.”

  The idea of having someone worry about her for a change was such a novelty Eleanor snickered.

  “Mom?” Kim was staring at her as if she’d just belched or farted in church. The image made her choke on another laugh.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  “You aren’t yourself. Or at least the self I know. One minute you’re crying, the next giggling.”

  “Is that a crime?”

  “With you? Maybe.”

  She peered down her nose at her daughter. Kim grinned. “That’s more like you.”

  Eleanor had perfected her evil eye over many long years of raising little boys. Unfortunately, the same look had only made Kim laugh. She’d forever been at a loss with her little girl.

  “I do feel out of sorts,” she said slowly.

  “In what way?”

  Eleanor lifted one shoulder, lowered it. “I get distracted. Forget things. I suppose I’m just getting old.”

  And what if, right when life should be getting better, she couldn’t remember what life was all about? Could a woman go senile at fifty? She’d seen worse things happen.

  “Mom?”

  Eleanor started. She’d been drifting again. Washing the plates, rinsing them and rambling along happily in her own little mind.

  “What else?” Kim pressed.

  She tried to focus, lost the thread of the question and tried harder. How was she out of sorts? How wasn’t she?

  “Uh, well, I wake up with my heart pounding. Must be bad dreams, but I can’t remember them. I get so hot. Especially at night. Sometimes I sweat so badly the sheets are damp.”

  Eleanor shuddered. She really, really hated when that happened.

  “I’m tired a lot, achy, too, but then, I’m not sleeping well. Especially while your dad was in the hospital.”

  Kim stared at her. “I think I know what the matter is.

  Dread filled Eleanor’s heart. The symptoms were so common her daughter could diagnose them? That couldn’t be good.

  “What is it?” she whispered.

  “Nothing to worry about.” Kim patted her shoulder, squeezed it quick before letting her hand drop. “Just menopause, Mom. I’m surprised you didn’t figure that out for yourself.”

  Eleanor blinked. She couldn’t seem to focus— again. Something was off about Kim’s diagnosis.

  “But . . . but . . . No.” She shook her head, hard, and the fog cleared a bit, as did the sudden, chest-compressing anxiety. “That can’t be. I haven’t. I mean I still—”

  “Just because you haven’t quit, doesn’t mean you ar
en’t about to.”

  “But I’m only fifty. That’s too soon.”

  A little voice reminded her that she hadn’t figured fifty was too soon to go senile. She ignored the voice; sometimes that even made it shut up.

  “Not really,” Kim answered. “Women can begin menopause as early as forty.”

  “How do you know so much about it?”

  “My partner’s mother, Rosie, went through menopause last year.”

  Eleanor’s mouth sagged. “And she told you all about it?”

  “Rosie isn’t shy. She thought Livy and I should be prepared, so she told us everything. Ad nauseam sometimes.”

  The fondness in her daughter’s voice when she spoke of this Rosie, someone else’s mother, caused a twinge of jealousy to flare in Eleanor’s belly. Well, she’d always known that Kim would have preferred any other mother but her.

  “You need to see your doctor,” Kim said. “There are medications that will make this easier on you. On everyone else, too.”

  “Doctor?”

  The panic fluttered to life again. If she went to a doctor, that would make this real.

  “Oh, no. No way.”

  “What do you mean no way? You don’t have to suffer. Just take a pill.”

  “That’s your generation’s answer to everything isn’t it? Take a pill. What if I don’t want to take a pill?”

  Eleanor could hear her voice rising hysterically, but she couldn’t seem to stop it. Kim was staring at her as if she’d gone insane. Maybe, at last, she had.

  “Mom, calm down. I’m just trying to help. You could at least call your doctor.”

  “What doctor?”

  “Yours. Dr. Halloway.”

  “He died, Kim. About five years ago.”

  “And you haven’t been to a doctor since?” Now Kim’s voice escalated, until the last word was very high and very loud.

  Eleanor shrugged. “Haven’t been sick.”

  “Mom, you need to get regular checkups. Blood tests. Mammograms.”

  “I’m not sick,” she repeated.

  Kim smacked the heel of her hand against her forehead. “Mom!”

  Then she closed her eyes and appeared to count to ten—a familiar trick of Eleanor’s from the days when Kim had lived at home. She had to smile at the similarity—the first she’d ever noticed between the two of them.

  “Tomorrow.” Kim took a deep breath and opened her eyes. “I am calling a doctor. I am making an appointment. I will take you there.”

  “I don’t think—”

  “Just a checkup, Mom. Please?”

  The intensity of Kim’s voice and the pleading expression in her eyes made Eleanor pause. She didn’t want to go. She didn’t want to hear that the one thing she’d always been very good at was over. Not that she’d planned on having any more children, but—

  “I’ll go if you promise me something.”

  Kim’s forehead creased. “What?”

  “Don’t tell your father.”

  “But—”

  “I mean it! I don’t want him to know.”

  “Won’t he figure it out on his own eventually?”

  The question made Eleanor pause. Had he already? That would explain why he didn’t touch her anymore, why the physical relationship they’d always enjoyed had gone the way of itty-bitty baby socks.

  When cows could no longer have calves, John sold them. Eleanor had to wonder what John had in mind for her.

  Kim patted her hand gently, but Eleanor started nevertheless. “Relax, Mom. It’ll just be between you and me for now, okay?”

  She nodded and Kim turned away to finish drying the dishes. Eleanor wrapped her arms around herself and admitted the truth. She’d suspected this for quite a while, but she hadn’t wanted to face it. While she might not have planned on more children, she would miss the possibility of ever having another child. Some women looked forward to the time after menopause as a new beginning, but Eleanor would mourn all that had ended.

  Brian was still trying to talk Dean out of packing his bags and decamping immediately, when Kim stepped onto the porch and joined her father. Framed in harsh yellow light from the front window, Brian could not see her face, but from her gestures and the way she leaned in, put her hand on her dad’s shoulder, then hugged him, something wasn’t right.

  Dean’s curse brought him back. “It’s just like it was before. The minute she walks into a room you can’t think of anything else.”

  “I can think just fine. You can’t.”

  “Can, too.”

  Brian ground his teeth. If he had raving only-child syndrome, Dean was the poster boy for rabid middle-child neurosis.

  “Your father isn’t the kind of guy who can sit around and do nothing without feeling useless. His life’s changing. He’s changing. So he wants everything else to stay just the way it is, in the place he loves the most. Now is not the time to push the robotics. Now is not the time to walk out on him.”

  “When did you become a psychologist?”

  Figuring out the Luchetti family dynamics didn’t take a doctor. Only someone who’d been on the outside looking in for as long as he had.

  Brian remained quiet. He’d learned over the years that if he kept his mouth shut, Dean would eventually spill everything Brian wanted to know. He didn’t have to wait long.

  “You heard him,” Dean continued. “He wants to give the place to Aaron. Why should I kill myself for this farm if I’m going to end up with nothing.”

  “Because this farm is your life, and you know he would never cut you out.”

  “How do I know that?”

  Brian shook his head. “The two of you are so much alike, but neither of you can see it.”

  “Alike?” Dean’s forehead crinkled. “I don’t think so.

  “You’re both workaholics, both brick-headed stubborn. For you and your dad, farming isn’t everything—it’s the only thing.”

  “Oh, man, don’t quote Lombardi around Dad.”

  Brian smirked. “There’s another similarity. You both hate the Packers, love the Bears.”

  “That isn’t called being alike. It’s called being born in Illinois.”

  “And you would both do whatever it takes to make this place last. Your dad might threaten—that’s just the way he is—but he’d never follow through.”

  “What makes you so certain?”

  “Because he knows that the best man for his job is you.” Brian put his hand on Dean’s shoulder. “Which only makes him feel outdated and replaceable.”

  Understanding dawned in Dean’s eyes. “Kind of like the old milking parlor.”

  “Bingo!”

  Dean glanced at the house and the anger faded from his face. The tension leaked from his body, until the shoulder beneath Brian’s hand no longer vibrated with suppressed emotions. “Maybe I’ll just let the robotics idea slide for a while.”

  “Couldn’t hurt.”

  Brian released Dean, then couldn’t help himself— his eyes strayed back to Kim. The entire time he’d been dealing with his friend, he’d known she was there. Like a match in the darkness, a whiff of fire amid the rain, like a single patch of wild iris adrift in a field of planted clover, was Kim dropped into the quiet fabric of his life.

  She stood at the porch rail, her gaze searching the night. Brian stepped forward, out of the shadows cast by the roof of the milking parlor and into the halo of the spotlight glaring from the corner of the barn roof.

  She saw him and she smiled. His heart slowly rolled toward his feet, and his chest began to ache.

  Or perhaps she was the sore tooth that just had to be probed, the pain he knew was there, waiting to erupt at the slightest touch. Yet he was helpless to resist the temptation.

  “Your mom didn’t say what was wrong?”

  Captured by the intensity of Brian’s gaze, Kim heard her father as if from a long way off. When Brian looked at her like that the years fell away. She was eighteen again, and all she could think about was how many
hours she had to endure before she could be in his arms.

  “Kim?”

  “Sorry, Daddy.” She pulled her gaze from Brian’s and met the worried eyes of her father. “Mom’s fine. I’m sure of it.”

  “She said that?”

  Kim sighed. Why, oh, why, had she told her mother she’d keep secrets from Daddy? Because for the first time that Kim could recall, her mom was in trouble, and it was Kim to the rescue. Once a champion of the underdog, always a champion, and it seemed she could do nothing less for her mother than she did for perfect strangers back in Savannah.

  Kim gave her dad a noncommittal mumble and kissed him on the cheek. “I have to take Brian home now. Thanks for supper.”

  “Kimberly . . .”

  She was avoiding the question. Well, too bad. The only way she’d ever keep her mouth shut was to get her mouth out of there.

  So she did what she’d been wanting to do since Brian had stepped into the shiny white circle of light. She ran to him.

  Even across the distance of the wide front yard, he must have sensed something was wrong, because he nodded to Dean, who made a nasty face in her direction and went into the barn, then he met her halfway.

  “Ready to go?” she asked brightly.

  His eyes narrowed. She’d never been very good at hiding things from Brian, either.

  “All right. Sure.”

  They waved goodbye to her father and made their escape. No sooner were they on the road and headed toward his house when the questions began.

  “Your mom all right?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “She didn’t seem all right.”

  “She’s stressed, upset. She doesn’t like things to be any different from what she’s used to.”

  That wasn’t a lie; just not the entire truth. Something Kim had become adept at. As Livy always said, Kim would have made an excellent lawyer—if she’d ever learn to keep her emotions off her face.

  “You know, but you aren’t about to tell me.”

  And Brian would have made an excellent cop. He had the probing questions and the stoic demeanor down pat. Although she had to say, lately she’d seen a few softer feelings hovering in his eyes. Or maybe that was merely a trick of the shadows and a temptation toward hope.