Tracie Peterson (6 page)

Brook laughed and shook her head, her dark hair falling just below her shoulders. “And I thought my world was preordered.”

Ashley finished unpacking and slipped the suitcase to the side of the armoire. “Don’t get me wrong, Brook, I wouldn’t trade what I have with anyone else. I love my family and cherish my house—it’s just that sometimes I wonder if I’ve given up my freedom.”

“I know I have. I’m in bondage to the proper beauty products and clothing designers. I have no say over my life or my schedule—my manager sees to all of that, and she’s a rigid taskmaster. I go where they send me. I dress in what they give me, and I walk and talk as they tell me to, all while they snap their pictures and sell their products.” Brook leaned against the footboard, a rather distant look in her eyes. “I don’t know what I’ll do when it’s gone. I’ve never had to make my own decisions. I mean, I went to college and landed this career right off the bat. Ever since, people have been taking care of me.”

Ashley shook her head. “No, Brook. You’ve been taking care of yourself, and you’ll go on taking care of yourself until you decide
otherwise. You’ve always been that way. I realize you have all those people between you and everyone else, but that’s just your way of having a safety net.”

“Hey, are you two going to hide in here all night?” Erica questioned from the doorway.

“I was just unpacking,” Ashley said, giving Brook one final lingering glance. She knew her twin was deeply troubled and wished nothing more than to be able to ease her mind. However, she knew it wasn’t a matter Brook would like shared with everyone else.

“And I was just complaining,” Brook said, getting up off the bed. “So how have you been, Erica?”

Erica frowned. “Just peachy. I’ve been sending audition tapes out to every major orchestra on the East Coast, but so far no one needs another flutist. Sometimes I think my big break will never come and I’ll have to settle for a career in fast food.”

“You still playing with the community orchestra?” Ashley asked.

Erica nodded. “Yeah. I suppose I should be grateful that they want me.”

Brook stretched and shoved her hands into her jeans pockets. “What about your love life?”

“What about yours?” Erica countered. They all grinned, easily recognizing the uncomfortable subject. Relationships came hard to this group of sisters, and no one liked to admit to the fear they faced in dealing with other people—especially men.

Erica finally let out a nervous little laugh. “Well, the truth is, Sean wants me to give up the idea of going elsewhere to play and stay in Kansas City and marry him.”

“Do you love him?” Ashley questioned.

“Yes,” Erica said reassuringly, “I do. I’m just not sure how I can fit him and my music into the same life.”

“So here you all are,” Deirdre and Connie said in unison. They came into the bedroom and for a moment everyone fell silent.

“Just like old times, eh?” Ashley finally said. She couldn’t help but feel the hands of time slip away as she looked into the faces of
her sisters. Oh, they had all aged and changed their hair and style of dress, but somehow they were just the same as they had always been.

“Seems like I never left,” Connie said, looking around the room. “I don’t know how Grammy keeps up with this place. Everything looks like it did when we lived at home.”

“I know,” Brook said. “My room looks virtually untouched. It’s as if I only went to town for a day rather than left the state for years.”

“I think Grammy works too hard,” Ashley commented, sitting down at the end of her bed. “I mean, I know what goes into keeping a house this size. It isn’t easy at my age, and I have a housekeeper. Grammy has no one but herself now.”

“She ought to sell the place.” Connie paused, as if feeling guilty for voicing what they were all thinking. “Harry’s bought up all but sixty acres of the original homestead. With the house and remaining sixty acres, Grammy could probably get a good price—especially with it positioned on the lake like it is.”

“A good price isn’t what Grammy’s after,” Deirdre said, lightly fingering the white sheers bordering Ashley’s window. “Grammy keeps this place for us.”

“No doubt about that,” Connie agreed. “She thinks the farm will keep us coming back.”

“As if we wouldn’t come back for Grammy herself,” Ashley threw in, knowing even as she did that her own trips back to the farm were few and far between.

Connie frowned. “I think Grammy keeps the farm to keep her tied to the past. I mean, this is the place she came to live as a bride. She and our grandfather probably had some wonderful times here.”

“She had some bad times here as well,” Brook said rather dryly.

“True,” Connie agreed. “But the farm is the only link she has to most of her memories—good or bad.”

Ashley watched her sisters as they discussed the reasons for their grandmother’s devotion to the old homestead. She thought how odd they all looked. Connie with her short bleached hair, looking as different from the rest of them as was humanly possible. Erica had
permed her hair and colored it a beautiful shade of auburn, but even that didn’t have her looking so very different from her brown-haired siblings. The one feature they all shared were those wonderful brown Mitchell eyes. A birthright passed down from their mother—the only thing she’d bothered to leave of herself.

“Did we lose you, Ashley?” Deirdre questioned.

“I guess I’m just tired. The funeral took more out of me than I thought,” Ashley replied. “What did I miss?”

“Not much. I guess we were just hoping that maybe this time we could encourage Grammy to think about moving.”

“I don’t think that would be a wise idea,” Ashley replied, casting a quick look to her twin. They were so very close—they always had been. And often it seemed that when something happened to one, it happened in some fashion to the other. Even now Ashley could sense her sister’s feelings on the matter and continued with her thoughts, knowing that Brook would agree. “Grammy has just buried Rachelle. She loved her, even as she loves us. I don’t think asking her to give up the farm would be kind or considerate of her needs.”

“I guess I hadn’t thought of it that way,” Connie said.

“Me either,” Deirdre admitted.

“It’s just that Grammy has her needs too,” Ashley said, smiling as she studied the room. “If she keeps the farm in order to remember the past, then I say let her. What’s the harm in it? If the gardening and yard and even the house itself get to be too much, Harry will let us know.”

“And if it keeps her tied to the future, with the hope that we’ll keep coming back,” Erica offered, “what harm is there in that? Personally, I like knowing the place is here and that Grammy has kept my room just as I left it. There’s a certain comfort in that.”

They all nodded. There was comfort in that, Ashley thought. Some things should never change, and the comfort of the Mitchell farm was one of those things. Ashley had only to conjure up images from days gone by, happy times when she and her sisters had spent lazy summer afternoons by the lake. Days when the only real worry
was whether or not it would rain and ruin their picnics or swimming fun.

We were all so innocent then
, Ashley thought.
Innocent and hopeful.
She almost laughed out loud.
I’m not without hope now. It’s just that life has gotten to be so very complicated and fast paced. I have so many routines that seem to revolve around me, and if I’m not there for them, they simply fall apart.

“I’m glad Grammy has the farm,” she whispered absentmindedly. “I’m even more glad that she allows me the privilege of calling it home.”

Chapter 6

Mattie Mitchell looked up from the churned soil of her flower bed to find Harry coming up the stone path from the boat dock. A large lake adjoined the two farm properties, and long ago both families had put in boat docks for the purpose of taking shortcuts across the lake for visits. Mattie no longer had a boat for such activities, but Harry used an old rowboat to keep up his exercise and visits. He had told her that rowing gave him time to think, and Mattie understood perfectly. Sometimes life refused to give a person time to think—unless they took it outright and forced time to wait.

Mattie smiled and waved. With the girls all sleeping in, Harry was welcome company for the early morning hour. Ambling up the path, Harry looked for all the world to be a man without purpose or worry. Mattie liked that about him. He seemed to take life in stride and not get overly worked up about a problem until it absolutely had to be addressed. He’d taken after his father that way, and he was a perfect addition to this delicious spring day—the day after Mattie had buried her only daughter.

“Why, Harry, don’t tell me you rowed over here.” She patted the dirt firmly around the newly planted rosebush, then dusted her hands.

“All right, I won’t tell you,” Harry said with a grin. “I see I’ve caught you on your knees again.”

Mattie laughed. “Prayin’ and plantin’ are the reasons God created knees, or so my mother used to say.” She slowly started to get up from the ground and instantly Harry was at her side, helping to ease her burden. With her seventieth birthday not so many years in the
future, Mattie had long ago begun to feel the effects of her age. Her knees ached from the constant kneeling required in planting her beloved flowers, and her fingers easily stiffened from the cold, damp soil. Harry had suggested on more than one occasion that she buy a good pair of gardening gloves, but Mattie loved the feel of the soil and so held off on that idea. Gloves, like many other things, were just unnecessary window dressing as far as Mattie was concerned.

“I tried to call. . . .”

“Oh, the girls unplugged the line. Some of the newspaper people kept calling, and they thought pulling the plug might discourage them.”

“After seeing the way they acted at the cemetery, I doubt anything could discourage them. Hopefully they’ll just pack up and go home now that the funeral’s over.” He shoved his hands into his pockets and leaned back on the heels of his cowboy boots. Harry’s denim jeans were well worn and faded, as was the plaid flannel shirt on which he’d rolled up the sleeves. Even at thirty-five he’d retained a certain amount of boyish charm, like an overgrown teen looking for a baseball game instead of a man with a field to plow.

Mattie looked beyond him, down the path to the lake that joined their properties. “With the breeze blowing up the way it is, I wouldn’t have expected you to brave the water today.”

“The exercise does me good—besides, it wasn’t that bad.” Harry glanced around as a stiff April wind picked that moment to prove him wrong. “I wanted to check up on you. Yesterday was pretty exhausting.”

Mattie couldn’t agree more. “The only good thing was having the girls back home. The house positively rang with noise until the wee hours of the morning. It was marvelous.”

“I’m sure it was just the thing you needed,” Harry said, pulling down his ball cap to keep it from blowing off his head.

“March went out like a lion and April decided to imitate it,” Mattie said, laughing at the wind. “That storm on the first was a doozy. Of course, you remember the old proverb, ‘If it thunders on
April Fool’s Day, you have good crops of corn and hay.’”

“Wouldn’t hurt my feelings none,” Harry replied.

Mattie nodded and for a moment she said nothing more, relishing instead the way the wind felt against her skin—the way it smelled of new grass and freshly plowed fields. She couldn’t imagine a time closer to heaven on earth than springtime in Kansas.

“Why don’t we go on up to the house. I put on a pot of coffee before coming down here this morning. I figured by the time I made it back into the house, the girls might even be up and around.”

“Coffee sounds good,” Harry admitted. “Your sour cream coffee cake would sound even better.”

“There’s some of that too,” she said, knowing how much he liked it. She knew, too, how much he appreciated their conversations and time together.

“You sure the girls won’t mind my being here?”

“I can’t imagine why. They seemed to enjoy your company yesterday. Besides, they know you spend a good deal of time over here.” Mattie gathered up her tools. “Just let me get things put away and we’ll go on up.”

All of her life, Mattie had adhered strictly to the instructions of her parents: Never start a job and leave it for someone else to finish. Never leave your neighbor in need. Never leave your tools out with the plan to come back to a job undone. Of course, there were other rules, little sensible rules that had helped Mattie’s quality of life to remain remarkably high, but those were three of the more important ones.

Pausing by a white wooden garden bench, Mattie lifted the seat to reveal the perfect place to stow her tools. The bench had been made extra long to accommodate the full length of the hoe and rake that were usually stored there.

“Looks like it’s holding up pretty good,” Harry said as he put the tools inside.

“It’ll outlast the both of us, Harry,” Mattie said with motherly affection. “The creator knew what he was doing when he fashioned it.”

Harry chuckled. “Nah, he just followed instructions and squeaked by with a B-plus on the project.”