The Baby Gift

by Bethany Campbell

  Then Josh Morris came out of the house, holding Nealie by the hand. The kid was buttoned up, a muffler wound around her neck, big furry boots, a cap pulled down nearly to her eyes.

  Josh strapped Nealie into her car seat in his rented car, got in, and they, too, disappeared down the lane. Good riddance, thought Harve. It was time for him to move.

  He put his screwdriver into his tool belt. Without looking at his aunt, he said, “Think I’ll go down to Briana’s and start on that sink now.”

  “Better late than never,” Inga said, but she sounded happy, not disapproving. “I’ve found some more things for you to do around here when you get back. I’m just determined to see this house put in order.”

  Harve put on his heavy jacket and zipped it to the throat. He put on his wool gloves and his cap with the earflaps. He got in his pickup and drove the short distance to Briana’s house.

  He took a deep breath, and when he knocked at the door, he tried to make the knock sound authoritative and masculine. The door swung open almost immediately, and Penny Pfeiffer stood there, all five feet two inches of her.

  She pushed a red curl out of her eyes. “Well, look who’s here,” she said. “I heard you drive up. I knew it was you.”

  “I came to fix the sink,” Harve said, drawing himself to his full height. He was well over a foot taller than she was. It gave him an unfamiliar feeling of machismo.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “My orders are not to let you fix the sink. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is. If you want to come in and have a cup of coffee, that’s fine, but then you have to go.”

  “But I even got a new U trap in case she needs one.”

  “Nope. And that’s the final word from headquarters.”

  Penny’s air was resolute, but he thought when he looked into her green eyes that he saw something like fellow feeling.

  “Oh, come in,” she said, opening the door wider. “I’ve got a fresh pot of coffee and I’m not good for anything until I’ve had my second cup.”

  Harve wasn’t sure. Having coffee was like settling for a consolation prize. But she had such a natural, no-nonsense air about her that he found himself inside the house and once again sitting beside her at the counter.

  She made coffee so strong a horseshoe would float in it. “Good coffee,” he said.

  “Caffeine,” she said, “nectar of the gods.”

  A silence settled between them. An uncomfortable silence.

  At last she planted her elbow on the counter and leaned her cheek against her fist. She regarded him with sympathy that seemed half kindly, half amused. She said, “You’ve got it bad, don’t you?”

  Her words startled him. His coffee cup stopped in midair. “What do you mean?”

  With one forefinger she traced a heart on the countertop. “Briana. I’ve been watching you this past week or so. You really do have it bad for her, don’t you?”

  He tried to recapture his dignity. “I’m kind of partial to her,” he said.

  Penny laughed, but not in a mean way. “Kind of partial,” she mocked. “Oh, Harve,” she said. “Sometimes you’re just too Jimmy Stewart.”

  “Whadya mean by that?” he sputtered.

  “I mean, you’re this big, tall, gentle guy who’s so impossibly shy about his emotions. You come courting with a lug wrench.”

  “You mean I’m comical?” he asked. “Stupid?”

  She shook her head, and the fiery curls bounced. “No. I’m sorry. It’s kind of sweet, actually.”

  Embarrassment flooded through him. “But it shows? How I feel?”

  “Is a bluebird blue?” she asked with a wry look.

  “Of course, it’s blue,” he said. He set down the coffee cup. “Do people talk about me?” The thought was almost too horrible to bear.

  She made a dismissive gesture. “A little tiny bit. This is a small town. Everybody gets talked about. Even me.”

  “You?” he asked, still more confounded. “What do they say about you?”

  “Oh, that I went off to Branson and lived the wild life of a musician.”

  “Did you?”

  “No. I was pretty square. I dated a drummer once. That was about it.”

  A drummer. That sounded fairly wild to Harve. Drummers were known to have long hair and smoke marijuana.

  “So what do they say about me?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” she said, and her voice was kind. “Except that you’ve liked her a long time.”

  “But that she doesn’t like me,” he said, plunging into dejection.

  “It’s just she’s got this thing she has to resolve with Josh,” Penny said. “They saw each other and it was kismet—you know, fate.”

  “That’s movie stuff. Life isn’t like that,” grumbled Harve. “What else do people say?”

  She tapped the countertop thoughtfully. She gazed toward the kitchen window. “They say—well, they say if Briana doesn’t, shall we say, return your affection? That it’s her loss. There are plenty of other girls who wouldn’t mind if you came calling.”

  He blushed so hard his ears burned. “W-what other girls?”

  “There you go, being Jimmy Stewart again. Don’t you ever notice anything?”

  “I notice things. Your tailpipe is rusty. Your right rear wheel wobbles. I notice lots of things.”

  She laughed again. She rose and filled his coffee cup. He didn’t object. The conversation was uncomfortable, but it was also interesting. Hardly anyone had ever sat down with Harve and talked to him about himself. Except Inga, and she talked to boss him.

  He said, “You didn’t answer. What girls?”

  “Lots.” She sat beside him again.

  “Name one,” he challenged.

  Penny put her elbows on the counter, knitting her fingers together. “She’d kill me for saying this….”

  “Yes?” Harve prodded.

  “She’d never admit it in a million years….”

  “Yes?” He leaned closer.

  “She’s never actually come out and said it, but…”

  “Yes?” His curiosity was rising to flood tide.

  “I just sort of suspect,” she said slowly, “that my sister might kind of like you.”

  He recoiled. “Tammy? The schoolteacher?”

  Tammy was short like Penny, and she wasn’t bad looking, but she had no more personality than a fence post. Also, she sang soprano in the church choir, and when she hit high notes, she made Harve’s ears hurt.

  “You and Tammy are a lot alike,” Penny offered. “You’re both quiet, sweet-natured, dependable. That’s an important quality, dependability.”

  Harve had gone from excitedly curious to depressed. “You think Briana doesn’t want me, and you’re trying to matchmake.”

  “No. I’m just saying there are other fish in the sea.”

  Harve was obdurate. “I don’t want another fish. I want Briana.”

  “Okay, okay,” Penny said, throwing her hands up in surrender. “It’s just that I wanted to let you know other women have said you’re attractive. You’ve got this kind of puppy-dog charm—”

  “I’m tired of talking about fish and puppy dogs,” he said, pushing away from the counter. “Look, is there something around here I could fix? Just so I don’t feel like a complete fool for coming?”

  She looked at him a long moment, as if having an argument with herself. “Maybe the doorknob on Briana’s office,” she said at last.

  “What’s wrong with it?” he asked, mollified only a bit.

  “It’s hard to turn. For her, it’s nothing, but me, with this trick wrist? Sometimes I have a real problem with it. It tends to swing shut.”

  He sighed. “I can fix that with no problem. Will she get mad at me?”

  She stood and motioned for him to follow her upstairs. “Don’t worry. If she gets mad, I’ll take the blame.”

  He followed her upstairs. She wore jeans and little black slippers. He imagined her in her little blue skirt with white stars swinging
back and forth from her hips like a bell. He imagined her in white cowboy boots.

  I’ve got a certain puppy-dog charm, he thought irrelevantly. There are women who would welcome my attentions….

  WHEN JOSH CAME BACK to the house after taking Nealie to school, it seemed achingly empty without her and Briana. Penny was upstairs working, but she kept to herself, did her job. She said Harve had come to fix the sink, but she hadn’t let him.

  Josh was at loose ends. Bored. He decided to hike around the farm and take some art shots in black and white. He was checking his camera equipment when Glenda phoned.

  Larry had a chest cold and was staying home. He could watch the kids while she went down to the greenhouses. The tomatoes were due for another transplanting, and she needed to get in all the work she could.

  Would Josh like to come and keep her company? He said he would. He met her at the oldest greenhouse and tried to help. But his hands, so clever with a camera, were awkward with the seedlings. Glenda expertly transplanted six in the time it took him to do a bad job of one.

  He knew, for the thousandth time, he wasn’t meant to be a farmer.

  “They’re giving you a tough time, aren’t they?” Glenda asked. “It’s like they’re trying to keep you and Briana apart.”

  “Trying,” he said. “They’re doing a damn good job, if you ask me.” He accidentally snapped the stem off a plant and swore. He said, “I don’t get this sudden ascendance of Inga. It’s like she appears and is the puppet mistress, pulling everybody’s strings.”

  “She’s cast a spell on Leo, that’s for sure,” Glenda said. “But in a way it’s good. She’s getting the place cleaned up. She’s getting him to eat right and even exercise a little more.”

  And she’s keeping me away from my wife, he thought with acrimony.

  He said, “She’s pushing Harve at Briana for all she’s worth.”

  Glenda tossed him a sad glance. “She’s really fond of him. He’s the only relative she has, you know. And she’s convinced you won’t stay around.”

  He broke another stem and spilled potting soil on the counter. “I don’t quite fit in here, do I?”

  “If you want Briana, keep fighting for her,” Glenda advised. “They’ll keep trying to come between you. You’ve known that from the start. It’s just gotten more obvious. A lot more obvious.”

  They were silent for a moment. Then Josh said, “You wouldn’t mind if she went away, would you? Briana, I mean.”

  Glenda looked at the tray of plants and picked up another seedling. When she spoke, it was with an air of reluctant confession.

  “She’s my sister-in-law, and I love her, but Larry will always be in her shadow. I’d like to see him come into his own. He never will with Briana always here. Leo never listens to Larry’s ideas. It doesn’t help Larry’s disposition.”

  Uh-oh, thought Josh. He gave her a sidelong glance. “You and Larry. Are things okay between you?”

  She nodded. “Mostly. But we—we’ve had words. I told him after this baby, no more children. He finally agreed. I think the babies were one of his ways of proving he’s a man. I told him there are other ways.”

  “Yeah,” Josh said.

  “Harve’s wrong for Briana,” Glenda said. “I’ve always known that.”

  Josh stopped mutilating plants for a moment. “But am I right for her?”

  She looked at him searchingly. “I wish I knew. Sometimes love just isn’t enough. You know?”

  Her cell phone rang. She wiped her hand on her apron and answered. “Yes, honey,” she said. “Yes, honey. Well, make him stop. You’re his father. Just make him. Yes. I’ll be right there.”

  She tucked the phone into its holder and untied her apron. “Larry. He can’t hold the fort any longer. I’ve got to go back.”

  He helped her into her coat, put on his own and walked her to her van. He watched her drive off. She was a brave woman in her own way.

  He hiked uphill against the wind to Briana’s house. Tonight he would somehow get her to himself and talk to her the whole night long, if necessary.

  He vowed he would.

  But it was not to happen.

  Instead, it was the night Harve Oldman’s farmhouse caught on fire.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  AT EIGHT O’CLOCK, Harve heard his dog, Queenie, barking madly at something. Harve rose listlessly from the sofa and moved to the window. He blinked in shock.

  Black smoke poured from his old machine shed, the outbuilding closest to the house. He blinked in surprise, and in the space of that blink, the first flames shot through the shed’s windows.

  “What is it?” Inga asked, stifling a yawn. She had been sitting beside him, watching television and darning his socks.

  But Harve could not speak. He stood at the window as if rooted, watching the shed disappear in the growing fire and roiling smoke.

  Grandpa’s tractor, he thought, sick to the heart. The shed held only a few pieces of equipment, including the ancient tractor Harve kept for sentimental value.

  The tractor had belonged to his grandfather, and Harve kept it in good working order and sometimes brought it to farm exhibits or let people drive it in parades. He was too shy to drive it in public himself.

  Then the graveness of the situation hit him. Far more was at stake than the antique tractor. The night was cold but dry, the wind stiff and blowing straight toward the house. Already orange sparks flew through the night air like swift imps, intent on destruction.

  “Fire!” cried Harve as he leaped for the phone. He called nine-one-one and babbled that his shed was on fire and his house in danger.

  “Fire?” echoed Inga, jumping to her feet and dropping her darning. “Fire here?” She ran to the window. There was no more shed to be seen, only flames, and the flames were cloaked in great clouds of black smoke that rolled toward the house.

  “Hurry,” Harve ordered her. “Grab what you need, and let’s get out of here!” She ran to her bedroom, and Harve looked wildly about his living room, at the furniture and framed pictures and vases and knickknacks he had known for years.

  He snatched the family Bible, the photograph albums, the farm’s account books and a metal file box of records. He ran to the garage, threw everything in the bed of the pickup and backed the truck out of the garage and upwind of the fire. He saw Inga running from the house carrying an armload of clothes, a suitcase banging against her knees, her laptop case slung over her shoulder.

  He helped her stow her things in the truck and told her to stay where she was. He raced to the house. It still seemed safe, for the fire had not yet touched it. In the distance, he heard sirens. Wildly he ran inside and gathered things that had sentimental value.

  He forgot to take any clothing but stripped from his bed a quilt his mother had made. He snatched a candlestick that had belonged to his grandmother, an old framed print of a dog howling over a lost lamb.

  He threw everything into a dresser drawer and carried it outside. As he stumbled to his truck, the pump engine pulled up. The firemen, volunteers, were all neighbors, some he knew well.

  The men spilled out of the truck and ran across the snow, dragging hoses. Something exploded in the shed, and they all staggered back. Pieces of the fiery shed sailed through the night sky. Some landed on the roof of the house, still burning. The wooden shingles caught fire almost immediately.

  Harve had to be restrained from going into the house, and the man who held him back was Briana’s brother, Larry. He rasped, “Damn it, Harve, I’m sick as a dog, and I don’t want to wrestle you. Settle down!”

  Inga stood, weeping into her hands. Queenie, her tail between her legs, came whining to Harve and tried to lick his dangling, helpless hand. Harve wanted to be like Inga, to cover his eyes and not see what was happening. Something else in the shed exploded, and more fire rained on his house. The whole roof seemed ablaze.

  Harve knew how hard it was to fight a fire in cold this intense. The water would freeze almost as fast as it came ou
t of the hoses. He shook his head in dazed disbelief. “My house,” he said. “Where will we go?”

  Larry gripped him more tightly. “You’ll come stay with us. That’s what neighbors are for.”

  “WHAT DO YOU MEAN, they’ve come to live with you?” Josh demanded.

  He’d been hoping to be with Briana tonight, but not this way.

  Briana stood in the upstairs bathroom, the door open. She hadn’t bothered taking off her jacket. She was filling an overnight bag with extra shampoo, toothpaste and other personal supplies.

  She stopped and met Josh’s disapproving eyes. “Josh, they’ve had a fire. Where else could they go? They’re our neighbors.”

  Uncharitably Josh thought, Don’t they have any other neighbors? Does he have to move in practically on top of the woman I love?

  “Did the house burn all the way down?” he asked, leaning against the door frame, watching her.

  “Not completely,” she said, reaching for a bottle of lotion. “But they couldn’t save much.”

  “Did the roof cave in?”

  “Most of it,” she said. “And I guess most of the upper story’s gone.”

  “But does he still actually have a house?”

  She gave him an impatient look. “Not really. Maybe there’s enough to save. I don’t know. Larry tried to explain, but he had a coughing fit. I got what I know from Glenda, and she didn’t know details.”

  “But he’s got possessions?” Josh asked, hoping against hope.

  She put a fist on her hip. “I doubt it. Whatever’s there has water and smoke damage. They really need help, Josh. Please don’t begrudge it.”

  But Josh did begrudge it. There was Briana, all rosy-cheeked and agitated and full of kindly sympathy—for Harve. And his meddling aunt.

  “How long will they stay?” Josh asked. To him it was as if Leo’s farm was suddenly teeming with Oldmans, dozens of them, not simply two.

  Her eyes flashed. “Good grief, don’t tell me you’re jealous. How petty—they may have lost everything.”

  “I’m not jealous,” lied Josh, feeling the very incisors of the green-eyed monster sinking into his heart.