Homecoming (5 page)

She finished her spiel, then urged the group to continue up the path to the main house. Striding along at the back of the group, she put her hand down by her butt and wiggled her fingers, acting like she had a tail. Jill burst out laughing, and when Scott Simmons, the University Budget Director came up beside her, he said, “Do you know that woman?”

“Yeah. Old family friend.”

“Cute,” he said, narrowing his eyes as he checked her out.

“Yeah, she is. She’s looking for a husband. Interested?”

“Why not? How old?”

Jill turned to him, and tried to guess the point of his question. “Is there an age limit?”

“Yeah,” he admitted, laughing a little. “I want to have kids, so I’m not interested in anyone who’s down to their last egg.”

“Really nice,” she said, patting his cheek a little harder than she should have. “I’m sure Lizzie has plenty of eggs, but I don’t think I want her to waste them on you.”

“Come on,” he insisted. “I’m a great guy, and she’s got a really nice caboose. Introduce me.”

She stepped back to get a good look at him. “Caboose? Seriously?”

He turned to watch Lizzie’s group move up the gentle hill. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

Jill refused to even look. “She’s my friend’s little sister. As far as I’m concerned, she’s caboose free—if I were crass enough to use that term. Which I’m not.”

“Uh-huh,” he said, his soft laugh annoying her. “It’s all right. I won’t tell anyone you were looking at her ass. Your secret’s safe with me.”

“I was not!” she said, drawing looks from a few people. “I was not,” she added, quieter this time. “How would you like your friends checking out your sister’s ass?”

“Fine by me. It’s her ass to do with as she sees fit.” He leaned close and shook his head mournfully. “I believe in treating women like mature adults. Maybe you should talk to someone about your need to control other people.”

“What?” She started to snap off a retort, then realized he was screwing with her. “Okay, okay.” She took in a breath, embarrassed at her reaction. “I’ll see if she’s interested in a nice looking guy with a good job”—she gave him a big, fake smile—“who thinks of women as parts of a train.”

***

The party was still rocking as the sun started to set. It had been unseasonably warm, probably over seventy, but Jill knew people would begin to head for their cars as the temperature dropped. She was sitting at a big table of people from various parts of admin when someone tapped her right shoulder. When she turned her head, no one was behind her. Another tap, this time on the left, and she whipped around to see an impishly grinning Lizzie. Maybe she did still have a little of Beth the Brat hiding inside that mature facade.

Jill stood and tried to decide, in a split second, whether to offer a hug. Lizzie didn’t lean in, so she let it pass. They really didn’t know each other well enough to make one an automatic gesture. “What are you doing here on a Saturday?” Jill asked.

“I work weekends a lot. Especially during the spring and summer. That part kinda sucks.”

Jill moved away from her table, mostly to avoid having to introduce Lizzie to a bunch of people she’d never see again. “I thought you were going to call.”

“I’m going to. It’s only been a couple of…months.” She shrugged, not looking embarrassed in the least. “Busy season.”

Jill let her gaze travel around the rolling landscape, the year’s first grass crop rendering it a stunningly beautiful shade of green. “It’s gorgeous around here. I’ve been in Burlington on and off for twenty-two years, and this is my first visit.”

“You’re kidding!” Lizzie looked like she’d confessed to never having tasted maple syrup. “Everyone comes to Hollyhock Hills.”

“Not everyone, since I haven’t. But my co-worker, the bride over there getting her groove on, decided to get married here, so I finally had a reason to come.”

Scowling, Lizzie said, “She didn’t just
decide
to have her wedding here. She won the lottery.”

Jill laughed. “It’s a nice wedding, but I don’t think she had to win the lottery to pay for it. She’s got a good job.”

Lizzie rolled her eyes. “When I was a kid, I was sure you were really, really smart. I guess age gives you better perspective. You know, like how your grade school seems tiny when you look at it years later?”

Jill play-punched her in the arm. “So my brain seemed big then, but its shrunk?”

“It must have.” She took Jill by the elbow and led her out of the tent. “Let me walk you around. You’re not going to get the whole picture if you stay here.”

Jill almost begged off, but the party was winding down, and she was about to do her fade out anyway. They started to walk towards a very large, beautifully constructed house, sitting proud on a small hill.

“We only allow twelve weddings a year, so we have a lottery to choose the lucky couples. We get a few thousand entries, so your friends really did get lucky.”

“Thousands?” Jill looked back at the tent, now able to see how lovely the site was. “It looks better from here,” she mused. “You get a better perspective.”

“Yeah, you do. But people love this place from any perspective, Jill. They truly love it. If we allowed it, we could rake in truckloads of cash by just renting the place out for events.”

“Why don’t you?”

Lizzie gave her a gentle slap to the side of her head. “All of that traffic would screw with the animals! Damn, don’t you have a soul?”

“I think I do,” she said, looking down at her chest. “But I guess I’ve never seen it, so I can’t be sure…”

“Look,” Lizzie said, grasping Jill by the shoulders and turning her so they faced the broad expanse of land. “This is one of the prettiest places in Vermont. The preeminent landscape architect of his day—maybe the best American designer
ever
—laid the whole place out. This was a flat piece of unadorned land by the lake—nothing special—and now it has thousands of trees, every kind of native plant, hills, valleys, hidden paths, forested glens. It’s a goddamned showplace!”

Jill laughed at her exuberance. “Sell it, girl! I’m ready to rewrite my will.”

“You should,” she said, clearly miffed. “It takes a lot of money to keep the place going for its intended purpose, and I’m passionate about that.”

“Don’t hit me,” Jill said, moving away in case Lizzie didn’t follow orders, “but I don’t know what its purpose was.”

“It’s a damn model farm!” She kicked at a stone, leaving a white mark on her nice, navy blue heels. “If people who’ve lived here their whole adult lives don’t know that… Shit,” she grumbled, looking truly upset.

“I’m really unaware,” Jill insisted. “I get focused on the stuff I like and don’t look around. Really. I see ads for events out here all of the time, but I’ve never been interested in any of them.” She stepped back another foot, making sure Lizzie couldn’t reach her with a punch. “What’s a model farm?”

“God damn it!” She grasped Jill by the shoulder of her jacket and started off, quickly, back down the path. They passed the wedding, then kept going until they reached a large, low, red brick building. “This is the dairy barn,” she said. “You know that milk comes from cows, right?”

“Uhm…milk,” Jill said, squinting. “That’s the stuff they use to make ice cream, right?”

“Oh, you’re friggin’ hilarious,” Lizzie said, still scowling. “Around 1900, the daughter and son-in-law of a big industrial magnate spent a shit-ton of their own money to build this place. A lot of the country was still agrarian, but more and more people were leaving farming to move to big, industrialized cities.”

“I learned about that from your father,” Jill agreed. “He loves to talk about the Industrial Revolution.”

“Right. Well, our founders reasoned that using cutting-edge farming practices could keep the country fed, even if the number of farms continued to shrink. So they did all sorts of research to determine the best kind of cattle for milk production, the right way to graze them, the perfect feed—everything they could think of to optimize the land. We’re still trying to do that,” she insisted. “It’s important work.”

“You really care,” Jill was touched by her passion.

“I do. I care much more than I did about the museum—even though I’m crazy about art. I love having this big piece of gorgeous land, right on the shores of Lake Champlain, serving as a model of animal husbandry and agriculture and landscape architecture. This place shows how you can make land beautiful, while still making it productive.”

“Damn,” Jill said, thoroughly impressed. “It’s really cool they were so successful.”

Lizzie’s shoulders sank. “They kinda weren’t,” she admitted. “Farmers don’t like to take advice from rich city people who learned everything in books. They had a hell of a time even getting people to use Swiss cows, which really are great for milk production.”

“But it’s still here after a hundred plus years. It’s obviously been successful on some level.”

Lizzie still looked a little defeated, but with the setting sun highlighting her gorgeous reddish brown hair and the light making her pale green eyes shimmer, it was hard to focus on the damn farm.

Lizzie was still locked into her reverie. When she spoke, her voice had a wistful quality to it. “The property is mostly intact because the grandchildren of the founders refused to sell to developers. They’re the real heroes. They set up the foundation, which I work for, and we make some money selling cheese and knick-knacks. But we rely on government and foundation grants and individual bequests for most of our operating capital.”

Jill put her index fingers up in the shape of a cross. “Don’t speak of grant-writing. That’s the work of the devil.”

“You don’t have to do that?”

“No way. I’m in charge of keeping track of money, not asking for it.”

“I’m pretty good at it, but I prefer charming people into leaving us money through trusts and estates.”

A gust of wind kicked up some clouds of dust, as well as Lizzie’s skirt. She was clearly used to wearing dresses, because she unconsciously put her hand down by her knee, keeping her hem right where it belonged.

“You’ve got a very impressive job for someone your age,” Jill said. “I mentor a group of young professionals at the U, and they’d kill to have that kind of responsibility.”

“If I’ve made it sound like I’m in charge, I’m full of it. I’ve got a manager, and he reports to a VP who handles the big fish. I’m the one sniffing around for loose change. Like those people I was taking around today. I was trying to get them to adopt an acre of land. Small potatoes.”

“Well, I would have whipped out my checkbook,” Jill said, finding she meant it. “How much for an acre?”

“Ten thousand.”

Nearly swallowing her tongue, Jill choked out, “Dollars?”

Lizzie laughed, then took Jill by the arm and led her over to the milking area. “Cheapskate. All talk, no action. Let’s go check out the women who really keep this place going.” She raised her voice and called out, “Hello, girls. I brought a friend.”

A few cows mooed, but most were too busy chewing their cud as their bulging udders were being tended to by a couple of kids in big, mud-spattered boots. One of them spotted Lizzie and offered a hearty wave before she went back to work.

“I never pictured you as being the farm type,” Jill said, as Lizzie waved back.

“How did you picture me?” Lizzie looked up at her and blinked coquettishly.

“Uhm…”

“You didn’t spend two minutes of your whole life thinking of me, Jill Henry. Don’t even try to lie.”

“You were a kid!”

“Right. But I’m an adult now.” She extended her hand and Jill took it, then Lizzie gave it a hearty shake. “If you’ll think of me as a fellow adult, I’ll try to stop thinking of you as the super cool big kid.”

“I can hold up my end of the bargain, but don’t be too quick to reduce my cult-like status.” She laughed to herself at the thought of Lizzie or anyone else thinking of her as super cool. “Hey, a guy I work with wants to ask you out. What do you think?”

“Someone here today?”

“Well, yeah. Where else would he have checked out your butt?”

Lizzie took Jill by the arm and marched her back to the party. “Why didn’t you tell me you had a lead in my marriage quest? I’ve been wasting my time talking about cows when I could be charming the pants off some prospect.”

Rushing to keep up with Lizzie’s pace, Jill said, “You don’t mind that he was mainly interested in your butt?”

“Hell no. Why penalize a guy for being perceptive?”

***

A couple of weeks later, Jill was sitting in her office, rushing to organize a series of reports to close the books on spring term. Scott, her friend from the budget office, walked in and dropped inelegantly into one of the chairs that faced her desk. He had a full head of dark hair that he’d obviously been running his hands through. A big hank that should have been on the left side had crossed over to the right, and was sticking up a little. “If I’m going to have any chance at a weekend, I need your numbers, stat.”

Without looking up, she moved her chair a little closer to the twin monitors that took up most of the center of her substantial desk. “Working on it.” He didn’t get up, so she added, “The end of a semester’s always a bear. What makes you think you’re going to get a weekend this time?”

He didn’t reply, and after a few more seconds ticked away, she turned to look at him. He was wearing his reading glasses, and he gazed at her over the tops of them. “I’m supposed to take Lizzie out tomorrow, and I don’t want to have to cancel.”

She scooted her chair away from the desk, then leaned back in it, studying him. “Is that right?”

“That’s right. Since you set us up, you’re invested.”

Humming a little tune, she focused on her monitors again, a smirk in place. “First date with a woman with viable eggs. Whoop-de-do!”

“Third date,” he corrected. “We got together a couple of days after we met, and again last Sunday.” He held up three fingers and wiggled them. “I make it a habit to cut bait if I don’t make some serious progress by date number three.”

Putting her fingers into her ears, she shook her head. “Enough! I’ll work through the night to make sure you’ve got my numbers. Just promise you’ll never give me any details about whatever you’re
not
going to do to that poor child.”