Evenfall (13 page)

“Hey, are you all right?” Cort’s rubbing her shoulders, and she takes a step away from him, crosses her arms in front of her chest to soften the blow.

“Just tell me,” she says.

“You look angry already,” he says, and when she doesn’t reply, he sighs. “Look, I didn’t say anything before because I didn’t want you to get the wrong idea.”

“Wrong idea about what?” she asks. As if there’s a right way to look at it.

“About why I asked you out that day.”

It’s clear that she’s missed something. “Tell me again,” she says, and he does. He and Chris want to create a country inn with a five-star restaurant, the kind of place where guests can harvest carrots in the afternoon and be served them that evening at dinner.

The relief that washes through her must show on her face, because Cort leans over and gives her a kiss. “It’s a good idea, right?” he says, and Andie’s so happy she nods, although she’s not convinced. But she’ll listen as long as Cort wants to talk about designer vegetables for the garden and organic sheets on the bed, his plans for a gift shop with homemade jams and breads, although the idea strikes her as essentially flawed. She’s heard of tourists paying money to sleep at lighthouses, polishing the brass and cleaning floors in exchange for reduced rates. But there’s a difference between falling asleep to the sound of the ocean and waking up in the morning to the prospect of spreading fertilizer, or worse. There’s a reality to farming that just doesn’t lend itself to glossy vacation brochures.

“What happens when roasted chicken is on the menu?” she asks.

“It won’t be the total whole farm experience,” he admits. “But they could help bring in the eggs, milk the animals, churn butter, the works. We’re talking about having some pick-your-own fields, like berries, and some beehives. Maybe even some grapes for wine.”

“Sounds interesting,” she says. “I’m not sure why I couldn’t be trusted with the news, though.”

“It’s why I was looking around here, that first day. I didn’t want you to think…When you said you’d go to dinner with me, I mean, it didn’t have anything to do with this.” He waves an arm around to take in the house and land beyond, and she finally grasps his point.

“If you have designs on Evenfall, you’re seducing the
wrong woman,” Andie says. “Everything here belongs to Aunt Gert.”

“Yeah, well, I like Gert and all, but she’s safe from me.” He pulls her close. “So you’re not mad?”

“No,” Andie says. “Not even a little bit.” She kisses him, just because she can, because he’s honest and belongs to no one but her. They kiss for a long while, and when they come up for air she opens her eyes and sees the posts and buckets in the back of the truck again.

“So does this mean you’ve found a place?” She nods at the truck.

“You mean one that we can afford in this market? Not yet, but Chris found some goats at a price he swears we can’t pass up. He wants to do goat milk and cheese, and somebody in Vermont is selling off their herd.” He rubs the back of his neck. “My dad’s going to have a fit when I bring them home. He hates goats—he’s always said that they’re for farmers too poor to buy a cow. He wouldn’t say that if he knew what I paid for them.”

“How many are you going to buy?”

“Two, for now. That’s about all I can afford.”

He looks so despondent, Andie can’t help herself. “Maybe you could keep them here, till you find a place.”

“Really?”

She thinks for a moment. It’s the kind of harebrained scheme her uncle would have loved, and in her head she can almost hear him egging her on. The farm is big enough that Gert might not even notice, if Cort puts the paddock far away enough from the house. It’s not as if she’s planning on
keeping the goats a secret from her aunt forever. She’ll tell Gert—eventually. But saying yes means she’ll see Cort again this evening. And most likely, he’ll be shirtless. It’s this last image that sways her.

“Sure,” she says. “But just till you find a place, or till the end of summer. After that, they have to go.”

“No problem,” he promises. “Just let me run home and give dad a hand feeding and I’ll be right back to build the pen. And if I finish up early enough, I’ll even take you out to Johnny’s for pizza.”

“Right,” she says, although she already has other plans in mind for their evening. The phone is ringing again, but Andie pays no attention to it. Summer is short, she thinks, watching Cort drive away. She might as well make the most of it.

IT’S been years since Gert’s walked the meadow, but for the past two weeks, she hasn’t been able to stop. There’s plenty she should be doing instead. There are bills for Frank’s estate that need to be paid, insurance questions that ought to be looked into, a meeting with the assessor to be arranged. But each morning, she comes out just after dawn, when the sun is up enough to light her steps but before the heat of the day begins. This morning the tall grass moves in the wind like the glossy coat of an animal. Mist floats above the ground, a wispy reminder of the departing night’s cool air.

Ahead, she can just make out the tip of Buddy’s black tail, twitching determinedly as he makes his way through the field. The cat keeps a few steps in front like an advance scout. He’ll lead anywhere, stopping only when he comes to
the deep end of the creek. There he crouches, hissing, as if at memories of his own.

For Gert, the meadow’s open space is surprisingly peaceful. Her cottage has come to feel too small, a skin she’s outgrown, and she no longer finds solace in its order. In the big house, there’s a pressure, a weight that makes it hard to breathe. Only out here, in the rustle of the grass and the feel of the breeze, is there room for memories.

The milestones of her life have always been present, shaping her path like the bumps and hills that contour this land. But lately other memories, events she hasn’t thought of in years, are coming back with a clarity that’s frightening. This morning, for example, she awoke with the face of a boy she’d treated more than fifty years ago in her mind, his image as clear as though he were standing before her.

For hours she’s been trying to recall his name, but it hides in the dark recesses just out of reach. The boy was southern, she remembers that. His words had a honeyed drawl she’d found soothing after a lifetime of clipped New England syllables. His face was dark with stubble, and when she took his boots off he’d groaned in relief. He’d asked her how such a pretty girl had wound up in such poor company. His ward mates shook their heads, told him not to waste his time.

“That one’s got ice water for blood,” the man in the next bed said, pretending to shiver.

She took the southerner’s pulse, and he placed his own hot fingers gently against her wrist. “Naw, she’s just spent too many years north with you Yankees is all,” he said, and
smiled up at her. “A few days down south would warm her up just fine.”

Instead of the steady, reassuring beat she wanted, his pulse fluttered. She pulled down the blankets to look at his wound.

“What do you southerners do for fun?” she asked. The bullet had grazed his groin, the wound still covered by a field dressing; the bandage was clotted with blood and speckled with dirt and grass.

“Oh, we know how to show visitors a good time,” he said, white-faced as she carefully pulled the bandage away. Bits of dirt and shreds of fabric from his trousers were buried deep in the soft tissue, and a bubble of blood rose in the corner. She swabbed it gently and the boy bit his lip to keep from crying out.

“Is that right?” she prompted. She stopped her work long enough to give his hand a light squeeze, low, by the side of the bed, where his buddies wouldn’t see.

He smiled weakly, grateful for the distraction. “Oh, yes, ma’am. Come Saturdays, we get some of the finest bands around playing at the church hall. You can dance all night if you’ve a mind to.”

“It’s been a while since I’ve danced,” Gert said, scribbling a note on the boy’s chart.

“You come down to Georgia, then, anytime. Summer’s best, though. There’s an old stone quarry we use to cool off in after a high time. The water feels so good, you wouldn’t believe it.” He closed his eyes and Gert moved on to the next bed.

She’d been with the Army for a year, in Italy for a month, paying off her tuition debt to Uncle Sam with bad dreams and sleepless nights. Not even working in Boston’s emergency room prepared her. Her first week, she cut off the mask of her long hair, scissored away the strands that dying boys grasped at, that tangled in blood no matter how many pins she used to put it up. The short bob left her little to hide behind, but it didn’t matter. She’d stripped away everything that wasn’t useful: emotions, longing, hope.

The physical hardship wasn’t the problem. In Hartman, growing up, she’d spent the first years of her life in a house without running water, crouching in the one-holed outhouse and pouring in lime to keep the stink down. Bathing out of her helmet, using the leftover liquid to sponge a stranger’s blood out of her uniform was no worse. At least someone else hauled the water, she told the girls who complained, and they looked at her curiously. Behind her back she knew they called her “the Boston Brahmin,” mocked her reserve, wondered how a woman they believed meant for a life of oysters and little black dresses wound up eating chipped beef on toast and wearing olive drab.

Gert let them wonder. A year before, she might have been amused by their assumptions. Two years ago, terrified they’d find her out. But now when she looked in the piece of polished tin that served as mirror in her tent, the face that stared back had ice-sharp cheekbones and a gaze cool as death. Whether the other nurses thought she was aloof because of background or breeding didn’t matter, so long as they left her alone.

Kenneth, that was the boy’s name. It comes to her as suddenly as a blow, but her memory stalls before she recalls his fate. Dead, most likely, but from that wound or another, she doesn’t know.

She’s crossed the widest part of the meadow, and pauses for breath at the top of a knoll that marks the halfway point. A birch stump, the tree struck by lightning years ago, offers a resting spot. From here she can see the Wildermuth family cemetery, bone white stones rising from within a rough fieldstone wall. Volunteer saplings sprout along the wall’s edges and the grass is high.

The cemetery holds—or rather, doesn’t hold—its own secrets. Two bodies have escaped its grasp, although not death itself. Frank’s grave is marked with a granite headstone that bears both his and Clara’s names. But Clara isn’t there. She rests in the church’s cemetery, next to a weeping cherry tree. After years of living on the farm, she told Frank she wanted to be buried like civilized people, in a proper town cemetery.

The other secret lies beneath a simple white stone, gone gray with time and furred with moss. It’s where Abe Wildermuth, Frank’s older brother, should be. But Abe is missing as well, killed at twenty-two when the boat ferrying him to Italy came under attack. There’s nothing beneath his headstone but cool dark earth.

Gert can no longer recall Abe’s face, but she remembers his hands from school. Broad, strong hands, the hands of a farmer. Not like Frank’s, with his long, slender fingers and narrow wrists. Although after his brother died they became callused enough.

Rested, she descends to the graveyard. She skirts the edges, considers going in but decides against it. She’ll spend more than enough time there, after all, although if she has her way she’ll be cremated. Might as well save the cost of the coffin, and it’s not likely many people will feel a need to visit when she’s dead. It’s ironic, really: the two people most responsible for her flight from Hartman and this farm are irrevocably lost to it. Yet she’ll be here for all eternity.

She thinks of the day she left, of the way the air smelled of pine and earth, even though it was high summer. There was a coolness to the air, although perhaps that’s her imagination playing tricks after so many years. She sees the walk to Frank’s house clearly: the way the scrub roses lined the road, scenting the air with clove; the gravel that stuck in her shoe as she turned into the Wildermuth’s lane; the way the house itself reared out of the early morning mist, as sudden and shocking as a gravestone.

She’d paused to get her breath at the top of the driveway, resting her hand on her belly. Wonder and dismay competed as she realized how clearly the signs were visible. She’d been a fool not to have seen them before, with all her training. She pushed the worry from her mind, concentrated on filling her lungs with air. Standing there, panting a little, she was struck by how quiet the house seemed, the blankness of the windows. It was early yet, and she was counting on being able to catch Frank alone, before his mother saw them. She needed that time to convince him that they had to leave now. If they left earlier than they’d planned, if they didn’t wait for the end of summer, everything could still be all right.

What she hadn’t considered was that Frank might have news of his own. The door to the house was open, so she’d stuck her head inside and whispered his name. He was sitting at the kitchen table, and she’d known even before she saw the black-bordered telegram between his fingers that something was wrong. It was in the way he stood when he saw her, as if it were an effort, as if at almost eighteen he were an old, old man. The blue eyes she loved were hooded, and when she heard the smothered wails of his mother from up the stairs, there was no need for him to speak. Abe was dead.

Looking back through the years, Gert has the gift of prescience. She can see the moment that doomed them, pinpoint the exact second that sent them in separate directions. Watching as the scene plays out, she’d like to tell the girl she was that it will be all right, that she will survive this, that it will make her stronger. But in her heart, she’d be lying.

The girl takes a step forward into the kitchen, then stops. If she touches him now, she will never leave. They will spend their lives together on this farm, weighted down by work and by years, by the stares and whispers of the townspeople, by the reproaches of their families. If she touches him now, he will come with her, leaving behind ruin and wreck, the loss of the farm, the death of his mother, who has already given one son to war and will not survive the absence of the other.