Laughter in the Wind (4 page)

By the end of the meeting, Rebecca had learned of several resources available through the Genealogical Society and at the local library which could be useful for her. After the meeting officially ended, she and Olivia spent an hour searching through some of the materials the Society made available to them, including documents on land ownership, local club memberships from decades past and cemetery listings.

Rebecca usually found it difficult to be around strangers. Growing up in a small town, going to school with the same bunch of kids, she wasn’t used to being around someone she didn’t know. Surprisingly she found it easy to work beside Olivia. They settled into a relaxed companionship as they followed their individual paths through the available material. Rebecca looked up a couple of times to catch Olivia looking at her with a soft smile on her lips. She would smile back then return to her work, warmed if not puzzled by the exchange. Occasionally, their hands would make contact as they reached for books from the common pile between them and Rebecca noticed the same tingle with each contact.

Finally, they had exhausted the texts available for research and both had several pages of notes. Rebecca had a busy week ahead with school and work, so she knew she would probably not get to do more research until the weekend.

As they picked up their notebooks and headed outside, she asked Olivia, “Where do you go to college?”

“Oh, St. Louis University,” Olivia answered quickly. “I’m in my second year, majoring in English literature. What about you? Didn’t you say you were in college too?”

“Yeah,” Rebecca said. “I just started at the community college here in Rockford but plan to transfer after a year or two, when I know what I want to study.”

“Still undecided, huh?”

“Yeah. It’s not that I’m not interested in any certain area,” she explained. “It’s more like I’m interested in too many different areas to make up my mind.”

“Well, a lot of people change their minds after they pick a major, so maybe it’s better to wait until you’re sure before you take too many classes you may not need.”

Rebecca was encouraged that Olivia agreed with her. It was a subject that she and her mother had frequently and contentiously discussed, with her mother urging her to make a decision and with no resolution between the two sides.

“So, are you coming back to hit the local library next or did you find all you needed?”

Olivia looked a little disappointed as she admitted, “I found a few leads but not what I was really looking for. I have to go back to St. Louis tonight and won’t be able to return until Saturday. I skipped out on a class to be here today and had a friend take notes for me, but I need to be there the rest of the week.”

Rebecca brightened. “I was planning on going to the library Saturday too. Let me give you my number and maybe we can meet and help each other out.”

Olivia was smiling as she punched Rebecca’s number into her cell phone, then immediately called her so that Rebecca would have her number also. As she turned to get into her car, Olivia turned to her with an enigmatic smile. “You know, I had thought that maybe tonight was a waste of time but now I think maybe it was more productive than I originally thought.” She held up the phone, then slid into the car, winked at Rebecca and drove away, leaving Rebecca to puzzle over her words.

* * *

It had been a busy week with classes and work taking most of Rebecca’s time. Despite all of the other demands on her time, she had been able to review the information she had gathered the night of the meeting. The book of cemeteries for the county had shown Mary Farthing and an infant Farthing with a birthdate two years after Mary’s birthdate both buried in the small cemetery. However, she had not found other Farthings in any of the cemeteries in the book, which was consistent with Grandma’s memories of the family moving out of the area.

She had looked through copies of old deeds from that township and had discovered the one for the property near the cemetery where the house was located. The property had been owned by John and Elizabeth Farthing from July 21, 1905, through March 30, 1938. This also matched with Grandma’s recollection of the Farthings leaving the area after Mary’s death. All her digging and searching had failed to find any more information about the Farthing family either before or after those dates. Rebecca looked forward to going to the library Saturday to look for more information.

When she was being honest with herself, she admitted she was also looking forward to seeing Olivia again. Since starting college, Rebecca still hadn’t made many new friends. She still met with Sandy and sometimes one or two others of her old friends every month or two, but they lived further away from Rockford than she did. And most of her time now was spent in Rockford. Many of her friends had moved from the area anyway, either going away to college or chasing jobs or men in bigger towns.

Thinking back through her senior year, she realized there had been a distance growing between her and her friends for a long time, she just wasn’t sure why and whether it was they who were changing or her, or both. While her friends were caught up in cruising, dating, engagements, wedding plans after graduation or going to the college closest to their boyfriends, Rebecca had skirted the edges of it all, spending more time with the sophomores or even the teachers. It seemed like her friends were living in a different world and what they did seemed to make sense to them but it sure didn’t make sense to her. From her perspective most of her friends were following the same paths as the parents they liked to complain about so much. She loved her parents but knew she wouldn’t be content with the same lives they had. But, she also knew she needed to learn more about herself and the world around her before she understood what would make her content.

Maybe that was another reason, aside from career uncertainty, that she had opted for the local community college. She’d been in the top five in her high-school class and had received partial scholarships at several public and private universities but by staying at home and by paying the lower tuition of the local school she was able to save money. Also, by taking general classes, she was learning about a variety of things and could learn more about people, life and, most importantly, herself before choosing a career.

Olivia struck her as someone she could learn from. Her background was different from anyone Rebecca had grown up with and she seemed unafraid of doing things that weren’t cool. None of Rebecca’s friends from high school would have been caught dead at a Genealogical Society meeting regardless of the reason. Olivia also seemed to exude self-confidence, like she knew a secret about life that Rebecca had yet to learn. This intrigued her and she eagerly waited for Saturday morning to arrive.

Friday after classes, Rebecca had a thirty-minute break before her work-study job started. She texted Olivia, “Still on 4 Sat?”

She was pleased to receive an immediate response, “10 ok?”

Rebecca quickly typed in her response, “c u at library at 10:)” As an afterthought, she immediately sent another message, “how about pizza 4 lunch?”

Olivia sent back her reply, “it’s a date:)”

Chapter Four

Rebecca was up early Saturday. She threw in a load of laundry before breakfast then washed dishes and cleaned the kitchen before her mother could even ask. Her mother was a part-time counselor and teacher at a school for troubled boys in a town on the other side of Rockford. If she had a busy week, she often allowed some of the housework to accumulate until the weekend. On those occasions, she expected Rebecca to pitch in a little more. Before today, Rebecca always had to be prodded and usually several times.

“Wow! What’s gotten into you this morning?” her mother queried, giving her a sideways glance around the edge of her newspaper. Rebecca looked at her mother, sitting at the kitchen table still in her robe and slippers with her hair maniacally twisted around her head, and wondered if the boys at the school would ever take her seriously if they could see her at home like this. She shook her head, knowing better than to speak her thoughts aloud.

“I arranged to meet Olivia Harmon today at ten at the Rockford library. Didn’t want to keep her waiting,” Rebecca explained.

“She’s the girl from St. Louis, right? That means you’re still obsessing over the cemetery thing. I’d forgotten about that. Well, while you’re in town, can you pick up a few things for me?” As usual her mother didn’t wait for a response but set her paper down and picked up a pad and pen from the center of the table to jot down a short list, knowing Rebecca hated to shop but would do it for her anyway, even when she gave that exasperated sigh and rolled her eyes like she was doing now.

“Okay, but I don’t know what time I’ll be back,” Rebecca replied.

“How long can you spend looking at old books in the library? Or do you have other plans too?” her mother prodded.

“No. Well, pizza when we’re done. I thought I might offer to show Olivia around if there are places she finds in her research that she wants to see.”

Rebecca pulled up her insulated bib overalls over her jeans and flannel shirt then checked her pockets for her knife. She often needed it to cut the netting free from the bale of hay when she fed the cows. After grabbing her jacket and gloves, she snatched the tractor key from its spot on the rack. “I’ll be back in a few minutes. I’ll get your list then.”

* * *

While Rebecca fed the cattle, her mother made her shopping list then stood in the back doorway watching her daughter on the tractor. It seemed to her that she was becoming a distant spectator in her daughter’s life, sitting up in the nosebleed seats and all she could do was watch her through binoculars, not knowing how to get close enough to actually help her. Even if she could bridge the growing distance, she wasn’t sure how to advise her youngest one, how to make things easier for her, so she did the only thing she knew to do: watch and wait for an opportunity to close the gap and stay prepared in case she was needed.

At the boys’ school where she worked, she watched the students try to set their course in life, some more successfully than others. Many of them turned to her for advice or support but some were fiercely independent and all she could do was watch and wait, hoping they would come to her if they needed her. Over the years she had witnessed many of them make poor decisions that had set the tone for the remainder of their lives, too proud or too stubborn to accept her assistance. Her greatest fear was that Rebecca would do the same. When she saw Rebecca jump down from the tractor, she returned to the table to sit down with her paper again, not wanting her to know about her concern.

Rebecca burst back into the house with a blast of cold air following her. She removed the insulated bibs and exchanged the rubber boots for Nikes. She hung her old coat in the hall closet and pulled out the new hooded Carhartt coat she had purchased last month to wear when she wasn’t working on the farm. It was heavy and not exactly dressy but her mother knew she was comfortable in it and she knew of no other coat which would keep her daughter warmer.

She took the list and two folded bills from her mother’s outstretched hand, scanned the list quickly and shoved the thirty dollars into her front jeans pocket.

When she sensed Rebecca had turned to leave, Beth lowered the paper again, watching her retreating back. She was glad to see Rebecca this interested in something, even if it was a pile of dirt in an old graveyard. She had spoken with Rebecca several times about trying to narrow her focus on things, especially her career choices. But Rebecca seemed to jump from one thing to the next, quickly losing interest in one thing and moving on to a new topic with no warning. She would catch her sitting quietly at times with a strange look on her face, mulling over things, she supposed. Maybe the fact that she was actively following up on something that interested her was an indication that Rebecca was settling down a little and would be able to focus on things better.

* * *

It was ten-fifteen when Rebecca walked into the library. She had seen Olivia’s car parallel parked in front of the building with an open spot at either end. Two years earlier, she had nearly flunked her driving test due to parallel parking and her Buick wasn’t exactly economy-sized. Had there been two consecutive spots available she would have taken one, but instead she had circled around the building and parked her 1995 hand-me-down Buick in the angle parking lot behind the library. She wasn’t sure she wanted to try parallel parking today, especially not with Olivia’s car in danger from any mistakes she might make.

Rebecca walked past the small foreign car and took the library steps two at a time.
Olivia’s car might be easier to park.

The librarian directed her to an alcove of the building dedicated to local interests. She recognized one of the older women from Monday night’s meeting sitting at a table near the window leafing through some papers. She was a little disappointed to not see Olivia right away, although she did see a notebook and pen on a small table in the center of the alcove. Nearby, a leather jacket was slung over the back of a chair and the thin strap of a small purse hung across it. The notebook looked like the one she had seen Olivia carrying the night of the meeting so she placed her notebook opposite it on the table and walked over to the nearest bookcase. After scanning the books, she pulled out a volume on early history of the county. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed movement on the other side of the bookcase through the small gap left by the book she had extracted. She placed her face close to the bookcase and was startled to see an eye peering through at her. Below the eye, she saw one corner of a smile and couldn’t help but chuckle as she said, “Olivia, I presume?”

“But, of course!” Olivia laughed as she replied. “You are late,” she said, trying for a stern voice.

“Traffic slowed me down,” was the best excuse Rebecca could find.

“Traffic must be really bad on Saturday mornings in a big city like Rockford.” Olivia smiled mockingly at Rebecca as she rounded the end of the bookcase and approached her. “I thought you’d stood me up.”