The Farmer's Wife

by Lori Handeland

  There were ways to prevent pregnancy—though none of them was foolproof, as Mose had so morosely informed him when John had pointed this out. The only sure thing was nothing.

  His fear was irrational, but that didn’t make him any less afraid. In fact, the older he became, the more that he knew, the more he seemed to fear things that had never bothered him before.

  “John?” Ellie murmured, then she kissed him.

  Panic flared along with his desire. Nevertheless, for a moment he kissed her back, lost in the taste of her, captured by the magic that had always been his Ellie. Suddenly, abstinence wasn’t so easy anymore.

  One time couldn’t hurt. Just one more time.

  Ellie trailed her mouth along his jaw, then whispered in his ear, “Let me help you to bed.”

  Help. One tiny word reminded him of all he had so easily forgotten.

  Only an old man needed help. What an old man did not need was another child.

  His belly clenched as his chest went tight. He tore himself from her arms. “I don’t need help!”

  As soon as the words came out of his mouth he wanted to snatch them back, because her face, which had been dreamy and soft, so much like it had been so many times before, became tense and hard.

  “Ellie—”

  She smacked the heel of her hand against his chest, and when his breath caught, she paled. “Oh, John, I’m sorry. Your chest, does it hurt?”

  She reached for him, and he stumbled back before he could stop himself. “I’m fine. Forget it.”

  Her lips tightened and two bright spots of color appeared in her white face. “All right. Are you coming to bed? It’s late.”

  He didn’t know what to say. If he went to bed now, he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to keep himself from touching her. When he’d had his heart attack all he’d been able to think about as the pain intensified and the darkness overcame him was that he didn’t want to leave her. He loved her so much.

  John was torn, more uncertain than he’d ever been in his life. He wanted to touch her, but he was afraid. What if he couldn’t anymore, or worse, what if he could?

  Either way, he was doomed.

  “Maybe I should sleep in the guest room for a while.”

  She gasped, staring at him as if he’d slapped her. John reached for her, but she’d already turned away and stepped into the house. The slam of the screen door held a finality he didn’t much care for. His hand drifted back to his side.

  He could not continue to sleep in the same bed with Ellie and not go back to the way things had been. But things were different.

  And the sooner both of them realized that, the better.

  Kim’s door rattled at 7:00 a.m. Even though she’d felt safer on the second floor behind closed doors, with Brian near at hand, having the object of many a nightmare dropped on her pillow did not make for pleasant dreams.

  Groggy, at first she thought someone was knocking. But when her head cleared a bit, she saw the tiny gray paw shoot beneath the door, curl upward and jiggle a bit. Precious just might be too smart for anyone’s good.

  Kim let her in only after checking to make sure there were no gifts waiting on the other side of the door or perhaps hidden in her mouth. The kitten curled around Kim’s feet, rubbing her head against Kim’s ankles. Begging for food, or showing true love? Kim had a pretty good idea.

  “All right, all right. I’ll get your breakfast.”

  Kim glanced around for a robe, then remembered she’d left everything downstairs when she’d fled the invasion. She’d been too shaky then to worry about what she was wearing. Now, staring down at her bare legs and practically translucent T-shirt, she blushed. No wonder Brian had looked at her last night as though he wanted to swoop in and have a taste.

  She’d thought he meant to kiss her, breaking his own foolish rules, and she’d tensed—both wanting the kiss and fearing it, too. Because if he touched her as she wanted him to, would he then expect her to talk about the past?

  She couldn’t. Not even for the promise of the best oblivion she’d ever known.

  But he’d turned away and disappeared into his room without even saying good-night, and Kim had decided that she was merely projecting her needs and wants onto him. She’d convinced herself in the quiet loneliness of another fitful night that the desire in his eyes had only been the magic in the moonlight or a trick of her mind.

  As if she’d conjured him, Brian appeared in the doorway of his room. Dean had helped him change again into fresh sweatpants and a clean T-shirt. Today Kim was glad. The less temptation the better—for them both.

  “’Morning.” he said, his voice rough, as though he’d slept a little or smoked a lot. The sound trilled along her skin like a warm, summer wind.

  Her nipples hardened, pressing against the worn cotton of her shirt. Goose bumps rose on the bare flesh of her thighs. She crossed her arms over her chest, the movement only making her more self-conscious. She didn’t bother to answer his greeting, afraid she’d say much more than she should.

  “I have an appointment in an hour for these.” Brian lifted his splints.

  “Oh. Okay. I’ll get dressed.”

  “Great!”

  He sounded far too enthused. Maybe she hadn’t been projecting so much after all.

  Uncomfortable silence descended. Neither of them moved. Kim felt she should say something more, but she wasn’t sure what.

  Precious shot out of the room, skidded across the hallway and slammed into the far wall. She shook her head, lifted one paw and rubbed her ear; then, without sparing them a glance, she stuck her tail in the air and walked down the stairs as if the embarrassing moment had never occurred. Kim wished she could be that nonchalant whenever she made a fool of herself.

  Brian snorted. Kim smiled, and just like that the unease dissipated. She saw what life might have been like if she’d stayed instead of run, and it wasn’t bad. In fact, waking up to Brian, a cat, perhaps a dog, even that blasted sheep, held a certain appeal. And that thought brought about the usual need to be anywhere but there.

  “Shower,” Kim mumbled. “Coffee. Preferably coffee in the shower.”

  Brian didn’t answer, merely raised a brow as she fled downstairs in the wake of her kitten.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Kim put on the coffee, then showered and dressed in plenty of time to make scrambled eggs and toast. She managed not to burn the eggs; however, their taste was reminiscent of dry grass. She’d always thought wrecking scrambled eggs was pretty hard. But she managed it.

  So they ate toast and cereal. Brian didn’t seem to mind. In fact, he didn’t say anything, just opened his mouth and swallowed what she fed him like an eager baby bird.

  Despite her failure with the eggs, the time was peaceful and relaxed. Back in Savannah Kim was always running late by the time she got to the office. This caused her to begin the day frazzled before she even dealt with any of the craziness associated with her job. Knowing she and Brian did not have to run out the door and race into town, Kim found herself enjoying the simplicity of the morning.

  Precious chased dust motes through the golden slants of sunlight spraying through the kitchen window and onto the floor. The back door was open and in another patch of sunshine Ba sprawled, belly skyward, hooves cocked like a big black dog.

  From another part of the house drifted an oldies radio station—eighties, her favorite. Brian hummed along to the Bee Gees as he read The Agricultural Journal.

  If the pace in Savannah was lethargic, the pace here was downright bucolic. As it should be.

  A short time later Kim ushered Brian into the waiting room of the orthopedic surgeon, located in an office building attached to the hospital. Since Brian had the first appointment of the day, the waiting room was deserted. Kim checked him in, filling out the forms, after asking him the questions.

  “Are all the doctors’ offices in this building?” Kim handed the nurse the clipboard.

  “As far as I know.” The woman’s gaze swept the
papers and she gave a slight nod at finding everything completed to her satisfaction. “Easier for everyone that way.”

  Easier for Kim, too. She would stop by the OB-GYN and make an appointment for her delinquent mother. She might not be an ellie-phant, but Kim wasn’t going to forget what she’d promised, either.

  She shook her head, remembering Dad’s confusion over Mom’s indignant reaction to his joke. The changes in her mother’s body were in a large part to blame for her behavior. Still, Kim had to admit she wouldn’t have liked being called an elephant, even in jest. She was seeing her mother’s side of things more and more as each day passed.

  “Thanks, Mrs. Riley.” The nurse glanced up from the clipboard with a big, Barbie-like smile. “You and your husband can come back now.”

  Kim blinked. “Oh, I’m not—”

  But the nurse had scurried off to open the door that led from the waiting room to the exam rooms.

  She snapped her mouth shut. Mrs. Riley. How many times had she imagined being called that? And why did the same sense of fear, joy and anticipation bubble within her now?

  Because the temptations were mounting. Staying with Brian and taking care of him had turned into living with Brian and lusting after him. Doing a job had turned into being a wife—in theory, anyway. What would tempt her next?

  “Kim?” Brian stood in the doorway; the nurse hovered behind him.

  “You don’t need me, do you?” she blurted.

  The nurse frowned. Brian shook his head, shrugged. “It’s not like you can hold my hand.” He wiggled his splints and winked.

  Kim gaped. In that moment he looked exactly like the young boy she’d been unable to resist. In some ways Brian was different, so remote and solemn she couldn’t fathom her continued attraction; then he would say or do something that reminded her of every single reason she had adored him.

  Temptation beckoned once more. She could stay, help him pick out colors for his casts, pretend to be his wife and continue to be seduced by everything she had put behind her. Or she could do what was best for them both.

  “I said I’d make an appointment for my mom with the OB-GYN. I’ll take care of that while you’re in there.”

  “Okay.”

  The door closed, removing him from her sight. Kim found it much easier to breathe when Brian wasn’t staring at her as if he wanted to kiss her goodbye. Or maybe she was just projecting again.

  She slipped out of the room and moments later located the office of the local OB-GYN. Kim stepped inside and froze.

  The place was full of women in every stage of life and pregnancy. Children of all shapes and sizes tumbled across the carpet. The noise level rivaled a McDonald’s Playplace.

  “That’s it,” Kim mumbled. “I’m going to stop drinking the water.”

  Now she understood why the orthopedist’s office had been empty. Everyone in town was here—or at least the female population and any children under twelve. Didn’t they have school?

  “Oh, my God! Kim! Is that you?”

  Kim had been contemplating escape, but now it was too late. Becky Jo Sopol had seen her.

  Though Becky Jo was a few pounds heavier, a bit pale and tired, she was still the perky, blond beauty she had always been. With wide blue eyes and creamy skin, she presented the picture of innocence, even though she was anything but. Whenever Kim and Becky Jo had acted up—cut class, skipped school, swiped a cigarette from Kim’s father’s stash to share under the bleachers—and gotten caught, Becky had batted her blues and walked, while Kim took the fall.

  Kim hadn’t minded. She’d always been searching for trouble—until she’d found Brian and discovered what trouble really meant.

  “I heard you were home.” Becky Jo jiggled the baby in her arms with the absent air of a mother of four. “But why are you here?”

  Although the children continued to laugh and cry and argue, everyone else became quiet. Kim’s gaze swept the room, to discover far too many eyes on her. Several of the faces struck familiar chords, but Kim had been gone so long and tried so hard to forget so many things she could put names with none of them but Becky Jo.

  “Kim?” Becky Jo prompted when she continued to stare at everyone mutely.

  “I—uh, well, I’m—you see, Brian—”

  “Brian?” Her friend’s innocent eyes went shrewd. “What about Brian?”

  “Oh, I just heard this morning,” said a woman who, from the size of her middle, appeared eight years pregnant. “He fell off the barn roof.”

  A collective gasp swirled about the room. Some of the children stilled and glanced at their mothers, no doubt wondering what on earth they had done this time. Seeing the women occupied elsewhere and not bearing down on them, they resumed whatever anarchy they were engaged in.

  “Is he all right?” questioned an older woman, who peered at Kim from behind inordinately thick glasses.

  Kim needed another few seconds to recognize Señora Stonefield, the high school Spanish teacher. When she did, she quickly looked away, hoping the señora wasn’t the kind of woman to hold a grudge.

  In retrospect, the whoopee cushion she’d placed on her teacher’s chair before general assembly had probably not been the best idea.

  “Two broken wrists,” the incredible pregnant woman informed them in a stage whisper.

  She struggled to sit up straighter, winced, gasped and put a hand to her stomach. The others held their breath. But after a moment, she shook her head and collapsed back in the seat, legs splayed out in front of her. In that position her belly rose up like the back of a whale breaking the ocean’s surface.

  No wonder the woman was camped in the doctor’s office. She was going to pop at any minute and give the community’s children a lesson in childbirth they could probably do without.

  “What does Brian’s fall have to do with you, Kim?”

  There was no moss on Becky Jo Sopol. Never had been.

  “Well, he fell. And I—well, really I didn’t, but then I had to—”

  “She’s living with him.”

  This time even the children went quiet and stared.

  Kim glared at Chatty Cathy, as she’d dubbed her in her mind. Much better than Huge Hannah, she rationalized, which had been her first choice.

  “Do I know you?” she asked. “Because you seem to know a hell of a lot about me.”

  The woman gaped; so did several of the others. Becky Jo smirked. No one seemed to know what to say now. Good.

  One of the things Kim did not miss about a small community—was there something she did miss?—was the seemingly telepathic ability to know everyone else’s business.

  Though Savannah was a small town in theory, in practice it was pretty big. That Kim was a stranger, and a Yankee to boot, had allowed her to escape a lot of the censure and gossip. Once a Yankee, always a Yankee, and therefore outside the notice of the folks who had lived there forever. Another reason she loved the place.

  Something tugged on Kim’s jeans. She glanced down and a sudden, shocking wave of longing broadsided her. About eight years old, blond hair in braids, freckles on the nose, the child was the image of Becky Jo, except for the lighter blue of her eyes.

  “You swore,” the child informed her.

  “I did?”

  “H-E-double toothpicks. That’s a swear.”

  “You’re right. Sorry.”

  “My dog died.”

  Kim frowned at the inexplicable change in subject. But when the girl’s eyes filled with tears, moisture brimming over and dripping down her cheeks like a flash flood, she cast a panicked glance at Becky Jo, who shrugged.

  “Sorry,” Kim repeated. Her mind searched for something, anything, to say. “I’m sure he’s in heaven. With God.”

  Kim wasn’t sure of any such thing, but it sounded good, and the child stopped leaking.

  But instead of being comforted by Kim’s words, she appeared confused. “What’s God gonna do with a dead dog?”

  Kim didn’t have an answer for that.
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br />   “Never mind, Cindy,” Becky Jo admonished. “Go watch the video with your sister and brother.”

  “That show sucks.”

  Kim blinked at the vehemence in Cindy’s voice. In her opinion hearing sucks from the mouth of a little girl sounded worse than H-E-double toothpicks from an adult.

  She waited for the explosion from Becky Jo, but none came. If Kim had have spoken like that to her mother, or Becky Jo to hers, they’d have had their ears blistered along with their backsides.

  “The video is what you get,” Becky Jo said calmly.

  “It’s stupid, stupid, stupid. I wanna watch Jerry Springer.”

  Becky Jo blushed and glanced furtively at the other women. “I keep falling asleep with the television on. You know how it is with a new baby.”

  “Why don’t people like transvestites? They’re pretty.”

  Becky Jo mumbled something that sounded viler than H-E-double toothpicks and got to her feet. Cindy, no dummy by a long shot, ran behind Kim.

  “She’s going to beat on me,” the child cried in a dramatic falsetto. “Save me.”

  Kim half expected her to clasp her hands to her breast and beat her sooty dark lashes. She couldn’t help but smile. Until Becky Jo thrust something into her arms.

  “Hold this a minute.”

  Kim bobbled the baby, earning a collective gasp and several glares from the assembly. Thankfully the child was fast asleep and didn’t start to wail.

  “School’s out for teachers’ convention,” Becky Jo muttered, “and I’ve had about all I can take of togetherness.” She turned her attention to the ducking, bobbing Cindy. “I’ve never laid a hand on you in your life, Cynthia Jane, though I haven’t put it completely out of my head yet.”

  Cindy froze. “But—but—if you don’t beat on me we can’t be on the show ‘Mothers Who Are Very, Very Sorry.’”

  Becky Jo snatched her daughter by the arm before she could duck behind Kim again. “I tell you what, if you don’t go watch the video, we can rehearse the show ‘Daughters Who Are in Big, Big Trouble.’”

  The two of them moved off toward the corner television, where a purple dinosaur danced and sang in the middle of a classroom full of smiling cherubs. Kim had never seen that many children that happy to be in school. Maybe she could interest Jerry Springer in the topic—real life versus the world of Barney.