A SECOND CHANCE ROMANCE BOXED SET

by Lewis, Laurie

  Indignant, Agnes threw the door open and asked, “What are you doing? You said you were just going to make a list!”

  Sarah nearly fell off the chair upon which she was standing. “W-w-when I checked the cupboards I noticed that some mice had gotten into this bag of cornmeal. I was trying to clean up the mess.”

  Agnes’s initial ire abated somewhat as she walked over to inspect the bag for herself. “I just cleaned my kitchen.”

  “I’m sure you did.”

  “It is a farm. Farms have mice.”

  “Of course they do. I have to fight them all the time at my place. You’re so busy. Let me handle this. We’ll feed the meal to the chickens, all right?”

  “We can save most of this bag. They ate through the bottom. The top is still good.”

  Sarah shuddered and made a face. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Agnes.” Sarah stepped off the chair and headed for the door, but Agnes grabbed the bag of meal from her hands, tearing it and sending yellow powder onto the floor. Sarah stared at the mess. She closed her eyes as if she were going to cry, so Agnes stormed back outside.

  “Je ne comprends pas! Why is she upset at me?” Agnes posed to her chickens. Her French intonations grew deeper when she was upset, and she was upset! Her embarrassment and frustration eventually turned into a string of French expletives. Guilt caved in on her until her eyes burned over her crass release. This was not who she was. Not how her father and mother raised her to act. It was not how she raised Angeline. Agnes remembered what her dignified father told her when they left their old life behind to become farmers in America.

  “Hold your head up. It is not the soil on our hands that defiles us, but that which is on the inside.”

  “Non,” she concluded. “I am not myself today, and neither is Sarah. Something is wrong.”

  Compassion filled Agnes. Determined to act on her instincts, she returned to the house and opened the door, finding Sarah at the sink, filling a bucket. The scent of bleach filled the air, and on the table sat stacks of every canned food item Agnes owned.

  “Did you call the bank?”

  Sarah glanced at the stacks of cans and visibly braced. “I tried, but they wouldn’t talk to me about your account. The teller did confirm that no new deposits have been recorded to your account in the last twenty-four hours.”

  Agnes began pacing frantically as she lectured Sarah. “Four thousand seven hundred and fifty-three dollars. It was four thousand seven hundred and fifty-three dollars!”

  Agnes picked up her checkbook, flipping pages, growing more anxious with each repetition of the amount. “Never mind. I’ll take care of it myself.” She grabbed the phone and went to the fridge where her important numbers were posted. As her finger slid down the list of names and numbers she murmured, “Maryland Bank . . . Maryland Bank . . . Maryland Bank . . . Hooper’s Mill.”

  She glanced at Sarah, who looked worried and sad as she continued scrubbing the shelves. Unable to bear watching the scene, Agnes headed for the porch, trailing the phone’s long cord behind. But, when she turned the knob, the old swollen door wouldn’t budge. When she pressed against the handle, it fell off into her hands. She captured the loose screws and turned back toward the kitchen, digging in the junk drawer for a screwdriver. Finding none, she growled in frustration, then tried using a table knife to refasten the hardware. Eventually she got the handle attached, but surrendered any further effort to open the door, settling for turning her back to Sarah as she dialed.

  “I want to discuss my bank account.” Agnes’s French voice boomed then quieted. “This is the feed mill?” She stalled and tapped the phone against her head. “Yes, this is Agnes Keller. No, I am not all right. There was a mistake with my last delivery.” She moved to the calendar, read a note there, and counted days. “It has only been ten days and I am already out of feed and calves’ milk. That order should have lasted two weeks. I think you had better check your scales.”

  Agnes watched Sarah sort her cans into two piles while she moved up the mill’s chain of command to the plant manager, securing a promise that he would not only check the scales but that he would send a few complimentary bags of feed over right away.

  Pleased with her victory, Agnes hung up the phone. “They are sending more feed . . . for free.”

  “You’re a sharp businesswoman. I’ll take you to the bank tomorrow, okay?”

  Agnes had forgotten about the bank. She was now focused on what was happening in her kitchen. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m finished scrubbing. We can start putting the good food back in here now.”

  As soon as the words crossed Sarah’s lips, fire returned to Agnes’s eyes. “Good food?” Agnes’s hands moved to her hips in a huff. “All my food is good!”

  Sarah closed her eyes as if she were praying. She took a deep, calming breath. “Agnes, some of these canned goods are well past their expiration date. They won’t taste good, and they could make you sick. Look at this one. It’s eight years old and rusty.”

  Agnes snatched the can from Sarah’s hands to challenge her statement. “It is not bulging. It is fine. People today are too quick to toss things out. During the war, we were grateful to have any food.”

  Agnes had explained this to Sarah many times before, when Sarah tossed out partially rotted fruit, perfectly good though expired condiments, and miscellaneous items that still had use left in them, like slightly stained linens, plastic tubs, paper bags, old magazines, and boxes of buttons.

  “I don’t want you to get sick, Agnes. I care about you.”

  “You meddle. You think I do not see, but I do. Like when you come with your laundry, asking to use my garment steamer. I see your clothes leave as wrinkled as they were when you arrived. What are you really doing?” Agnes swirled her arms in the direction of the cans. “More of this?”

  Sarah’s shoulder slumped and her voice broke. “Agnes, you’re eighty-two. You could use a little break. Sometimes I clean your bathroom, or change your bed linen, or scrub floors or the fridge. I’ve been trying to help you the way you helped me. Remember when I had my last two babies? I had already lost my mother and John’s mother worked and couldn’t come to help. But there you were, bringing meals, helping with the laundry. You cared for us as your own. I want to return the favor.”

  Sarah’s gratitude temporarily warmed Agnes’s heart, but then she glanced at the judgment sitting in piles on her kitchen table and her pride flared up. “The difference is I do not need your help.”

  “Fine,” Sarah answered sharply as she began removing her rubber gloves. “Put back whatever you want. I’ll go home and shower. I’ll be back in an hour.”

  Agnes stepped back at Sarah’s rebuff, suddenly confused. “Now you’re angry with me.”

  Sarah slumped and sniffed. “I’m not angry, Agnes. I’m just . . . I’m just tired.” Her voice cracked. “I’m sorry I snapped at you. Especially today.” She blinked rapidly but the tears still came. She sank into a chair, placed her elbows on the table, and allowed her head to fall into her hands.

  Agnes hovered near, tentative and unsure. She slid a loving arm around her friend’s shoulders and, in return, Sarah placed a hand over her friend’s.

  “Oh, Agnes. Forgive me. I’m not myself today. I came to comfort you, and you’re comforting me.”

  “There, there, are we not friends? Is this not what friends do?”

  “Oh, Agnes. I love you. The truth is, John’s very sick. It’s cancer. I’m so frightened.”

  Agnes knew this measure of sorrow. She had lost her Tony, and her Angeline. Her own eyes began to burn. Agnes swept Sarah into her ample arms and rocked her, rubbing her hand over Sarah’s head. “My poor, sweet, Sarah. There, there, my friend. Agnes is here. Agnes is here.”

  “I’m so exhausted from worry and from failed attempts to pry some accurate medical information from John . . .” she took a long shuddering breath, “. . . or from my own son. Sam should owe his mother the benefit of his medical trai
ning.” She sniffed and offered a morose chuckle. “John has sworn Sam to secrecy. All I get from either of them are vague answers and wishful cheerleading, but I see the toll John’s chemo treatments are taking on him. All I think about is the possibility of losing him. So you see, we’re each grieving over someone we love today.”

  The two friends clung to each other until Sarah was wrung out and empty. When her crying stilled, she pulled back and took a deep breath. “Now you know my terrible secret. On this of all days.”

  The older woman went to the bathroom and returned with a wad of tissue, which she handed to Sarah. “Your secret is safe with me. To prove it, I’ll share a secret of my own.”

  Sarah dried the corners of her eyes and blew her nose. “What’s your secret, Agnes?”

  “I think I am losing my mind.”

  Chapter 3

  After hearing the news of her parents’ deaths, Tayte Donnelly spent the first two days in bed in the fetal position, bemoaning her pride, crying apologies to a blank wall. She replayed the last conversations she had shared with each of them, regretting the cavalier way she had blown them off. New adventures took precedence back then, when the time for making reparations seemed limitless. She now knew she would give anything to hear their voices again. To have another few words with each of them. To be someone’s daughter once more.

  The one consolation was the news that her grandmother was, apparently, still alive. Though Tayte hadn’t been there in over a decade—since she’d been told her grandma died—getting to her and her beautiful farm had been Tayte’s only solace. She was therefore, undeniably beholden to Tyler for skipping classes to accompany her to Maryland for the funeral. She liked this heretofore-elusive aspect of her friend: this take charge, knight-in-shining-armor side. He was a professional student working on his third degree in another obscure major—rendering him a fascinating conversationalist, though seemingly unemployable. Still, he was Viking handsome, smart, and rich, and with some encouragement, she felt he could succeed at anything to which he gave a decent effort.

  His lack of ambition didn’t overly concern Tayte. After all, she wasn’t planning her future when she looked in his eyes. He was annoying at times, and utterly irresponsible, but he had been good for her in unexpected ways. In the few months since they’d met, he had been a social pry bar, forcing her out of her artist’s seclusion and back into the world. They’d met that first day at the beach, when he placed his blanket a few yards from where she’d positioned her easel. It was soon obvious he hadn’t chosen the spot by accident. And his teasing had broken her defenses. Now he was her best, and truly only, friend—a friend who wanted to be much more. The irony didn’t escape her that despite her dislike of the havoc that accompanied her parents’ non-deliberate “go with the flow” life choices, she was taking a similar approach, as was Tyler.

  The GPS advised them to take the back way north around D.C. to Frederick, the Maryland city closest to her grandmother’s farm, and the location chosen for her parents’ funeral. The news that her parents had each built new lives with new people she had never even heard about was another agonizing reminder of how deep her estrangement from them had been. The awkward phone calls from these grieving strangers only added to her feelings of loneliness, but their offer to handle the funeral arrangements was a tender mercy she gladly accepted. All she wanted now was to see her grandmother, and reclaim some semblance of family.

  They stopped by attorney Nathaniel Briscoe’s office to take him up on his offer to drive them the last few miles to the farm itself. Tayte sat in the back seat on the ride to the farm, nervous, squeezing the blood out of Tyler’s hand. New construction had changed so much of the landscape that little seemed familiar. She wondered if her grandmother would welcome her. If Agnes had forgiven her parents for locking her out of their lives—if she would see them in Tayte and love her for it. Or if her arrival would dredge up old hurts and cause her more pain.

  Whether she’d forgiven them or not herself, Tayte missed her mother and father. For all the craziness they had wreaked upon her, they loved her in their own broken way. There might not have been order and stability in her life, but there had been adventures most children could only imagine, like being awakened from an empty-bellied sleep for a three a.m. apology supper of burgers and fries, or theatrics that transformed a scanty meal like sugared bread or pork-and-bean sandwiches into a five-star dinner show.

  They had managed to stay one step ahead of Child Protective Services, which seemed to know she was alone most of the time, and basically raising herself, with only rare medical or dental care, when both had been needed many times. She often longed for toys and days with a positive balance in either the milk jug or her mother’s wallet. But there had been constructive trade-offs when one of her parents’ get-rich schemes did succeed, like being pulled out of class in the middle of a spelling test for a trip to Hershey Amusement Park or to New York on a three-day lark. She smiled at the wonder of those days, whose magic had the life expectancy of a firecracker. Brief momentary success caused money and happiness to flow like water from the tap until it was gone, and then, the want began anew. She learned to be resourceful.

  In most ways, her parents failed her, but they did one thing right. Her father passed his squandered artistic gene to her, and her mother made sure Tayte at least had paper and pencils in her life. These simple items had been her sole companion, her security. When she had no one, and nothing but a beam of moonlight to comfort her, she would sketch out her fears, her longings, her anger. Bright dreamers, her parents recognized even then that she had a gift.

  Powerful, raw potential. That’s what gallery owners said of her. As an older teen, some of her pieces had been sold to tide the family over between “revenue slumps.” The financial and emotional insecurities proved more daunting as Tayte got older. One day she recognized that she was raising herself. She was making most of the money, choosing her own classes, and getting herself up, dressed, and to school alone. She was doing most of the shopping and cooking, while watching her labor literally go up in illegal smoke. So one day, when her father’s failure at monogamy was revealed and the fighting swelled, Tayte finally had enough. She left. And she rarely looked back. Rarely, but sometimes. Like every six months. Like now.

  The thought caused her physical pain, and she almost asked Nathaniel to pull over, thinking maybe she couldn’t bear seeing her grandmother yet—that she couldn’t face another loss, more pain from another unmet expectation. But then she saw the cow-faced dairy logo painted on the side of a barn, and up ahead, a wooden bridge that spanned Monocacy Creek. The longing to see more overcame her—as if she were being pulled home after a long journey away. She looked ahead, hoping to recognize more familiar sights, and she was rewarded with an old brick church nestled into a wooded lot. Prickles rose on her arms as each familiar landmark passed, and then she saw the entrance to Alsace Farm.

  The faded sign and the distressed, neglected entrance made Tayte cringe. Shock-stressing, axle-deep ruts were framed by overgrown, paint-scratching brush that threatened the attorney’s sedan as they traversed the mile-long lane that snaked along a creek to a rusted, open cattle gate. The next half mile was even more distressing as the effects time and neglect had wrought on the frame house and farmyard further threatened Tayte’s pristine memories.

  The gates to the paddock and chicken coop were wide open and had been for some time, judging by the look of things. Two steers, a llama, a pot-bellied pig, and an ancient gelding all slogged through a muddy yard that had once boasted a beautiful flower garden and manicured lawn. A large flock of chickens squawked from under every possible overhang, sharing the space with a gaggle of heavy-breasted Toulouse geese, four peacocks, and a massive white turkey. A dozen or so pygmy goats bellowed from the barn roof, but most shocking were the two goats pounding on the hood of a green Ford truck.

  Tyler turned to Tayte with a gape-mouthed expression as they exited the car.

  “What on earth?�
� Nathaniel Briscoe mumbled as he shooed the goats off the vehicle. His left hand flapped another goat away from nibbling on his leather valise as the portly, middle-aged attorney picked his way past piles of animal waste dotting the foot tall grass that spread to the front door.

  Tayte stared as the chaotic barnyard eroded her perfect fairy-tale memory of that pivotal summer. It was as if the same demon who had taken her parents had also cursed her best childhood memory. She almost wished Briscoe would turn back before she saw what time had also done to her grandmother.

  But before she could act on this impulse, a stylish woman in her fifties stepped out from the house and strode toward Briscoe, her gray-streaked hair bobbing softly off shoulders that led to an extended arm and hand. She smiled apologetically. “Good to see you, Nathaniel.” She turned to Tayte. “You must be Tayte. I’m Sarah Anderson, Agnes’s neighbor.”

  “Thanks for coming, Sarah,” said Nathaniel.

  Still a little too shocked to get her bearings, Tayte leaned into Tyler as Nathaniel did the honors.

  “And this is Tayte’s friend, Tyler Foltz.”

  Sarah smiled, and when she returned her attention to Tayte, her face melted with compassion. “I’m so very sorry about your parents.”

  Tayte rallied enough to nod politely and Nathaniel quickly continued.

  “I asked Sarah to be here to help with the introductions.”

  Sarah cast a worried glance in the direction of the house. “The news about your mother’s passing and funeral has shaken Agnes pretty deeply, I’m afraid. She doesn’t want to go to the funeral. And she hasn’t been sleeping well, so she’s more confused than normal. Let me go in and explain who you are and then I’ll bring her out, okay?”