Barbara Gale - The Farmer Takes A Wife

“Strange. I wasn’t expecting him.”

“He brought me some Scotch broth.”

“How interesting,” Louisa murmured.

“It was delicious! Unfortunately, I couldn’t eat too much, but not for want of trying. My stomach just wasn’t ready.”

Following the old woman’s lumbering steps down the path, Maggie listened to Louisa’s cane tapping on the uneven slate pavement. Since the rain had stopped, the path had become less muddy, but it was still a slippery slope. She wondered how safe it was for Louisa to live alone but didn’t like to pry. She had made enough demands on the poor lady.

Louisa’s home turned out to be a small apartment situated above the store. Following the old woman up a rickety flight of stairs, Maggie was welcomed into a living room filled with a lifetime of memories and mementoes.

“How nice,” she said, taking a close look at the fading pictures on the wall.

“If I had a housekeeper, now that would be nice,” Louisa chuckled as she set a pitcher of iced tea on the kitchen table. Set for two with pretty, speckled blue dinner plates, Louisa apparently hadn’t expected a refusal. The tumblers were old jelly jars, and the forks and knives had long since lost their sheen, but the tablecloth was snow white. And whatever Louisa was cooking smelled terrific.

“Beef stew,” she announced, as she placed a hot pot on a trivet in the center of the table.

Maggie was thrilled. “That smells amazing! It’s been a hundred years since I had a home-cooked meal, and now, two in one day, I feel spoiled. Although I have to warn you, my stomach is not up to par.”

“Eat what you can. I won’t take offense.”

“Good. Then I’ll start with that terrific-looking bread,” Maggie said, reaching for a thick slice. “Back home, I eat mostly cafeteria food. I spend a lot of time at the hospital,” she explained when she saw Louisa’s questioning look. “Boston Mercy Hospital. That’s where my office is. I have a small private practice, too.”

“So, you run around a lot. No family?”

“No family,” Maggie admitted.

“It sounds lonely,” Louisa observed.

Maggie was startled. Sometimes it was, but how could Louisa know? Disconcerted, her thoughts wandered as she buttered her bread. It was true. Although she had not put it into so many words, loneliness was at the core of her dissatisfaction, many months, now. It had begun to manifest when she allowed herself to be talked into mountain climbing—when she knew darned well she hated hiking! It had been the reason she had joined a gym, wondering if she needed more exercise. It was the reason she had joined a book club, thinking that perhaps she needed the intellectual stimulation. She knew she needed something, she just didn’t know what, was only sure of a restlessness come upon her, the last year or so.

“Is this bread homemade?” she asked, wanting to escape her somber thoughts.

“Sourdough,” Louisa said, unaware of the nerve she had hit. “My mother taught me how to bake bread. I’ve been doing it longer than I care to remember.”

“Well, she did a good job,” Maggie approved. “This is heavenly. I take it you were born here in Primrose?”

“Most folk hereabouts were.”

“Rafe and Amos, too?”

Louisa nodded.

“And Amos’ mother?”

“That one,” Louisa huffed. “Long gone, is Mrs. Rose Burnside. She left soon after Amos was born, seven years ago. Stayed around long enough to wean her baby, then, whoosh, disappeared into the night.”

Maggie was shocked. “She left her baby? Where did she go?”

Louisa shrugged her massive shoulders. “Don’t ask me. No one knows.”

“Not even Rafe?”

“If he does, he isn’t saying. So many questions…” Louisa tsked.

“Oh, come on, Louisa,” Maggie protested. “I stumble into a town that hasn’t had a visitor in months—your words—somehow, I feel compelled to ask questions.”

“I suppose, but Rafe would hate knowing we were talking about him. Not that there’s all that much to tell. He came in from the fields one day looking for his dinner and found a note instead, Rose gone, and all his savings, too. A year later, he got a big, brown envelope from some fancy law office. Divorce papers. He never heard from Rose again.”

“But that’s so sad.”

“Abandoning your baby is sad, too.”

“I suppose,” Maggie agreed slowly. “But—”

“No buts about it, dearie. To tell the truth, though, there were signs, Rafe just didn’t want to see them. You ever hear the phrase a fool for love? Well, that was Rafe Burnside. See, Rose wasn’t like everyone else. She was beautiful, movie-star beautiful, and didn’t she know it. Long blond hair and big, blue eyes will do it every time. Always hounding the postman to deliver her those movie star magazines from Bloomville. Then she’d spend all her time reading them, cover to cover, copying the hairstyles, doing her nails—and not much else! Not that having clean nails is a bad thing.” Louisa laughed as she sliced them more bread. “But it was suspicious-like, you know? Only, Rafe couldn’t see it. And another thing. Of course, it’s only my opinion,” she said low, even though there was no one else to hear, “but I think she married Rafe for his money! Think what you will, child, but money is mighty important to those that don’t have. Poor as church mice, her family was. And Rafe had just finished building himself a sweet log cabin up in the hills. Real handsome too, he was, in his younger days. A big, strapping lad…Like my Jack,” she sighed, but quickly shook away the past. “Anyway, ten months after they got hitched she had that baby, but she was gone soon after Amos was born. I guess that log cabin wasn’t to her liking.”

Poor Rafe. Poor Rose. Poor kids, both of them. Married so young…Then, suddenly, a baby on the way…

Rafe…Rose…Amos…Three shattered lives. Part of the fabric of a town that wasn’t even on a map.

“So, Louisa, what do you think?” The words popped out of Maggie’s mouth before she could stop them, as she stood at the kitchen sink a few days later, soaping up the breakfast dishes. She did not want to give the old woman extra work if she could help it.

Having called her office, Maggie now awaited their decision whether she should remain in Primrose and provide the medical care the town had missed. But beyond that, no matter what her office decided, she decided to spend another few days in Primrose. To recuperate, she told Louise. To catch up on her sleep, finish the murder mystery buried somewhere in her van. It might have had to do, too, with the long walks she’d been taking around the beautiful countryside. Perhaps, too, the simple pleasure she found having breakfast in the early morning sun. But suddenly, and she could not explain it even to herself, she was in no hurry to return to Boston. So, she watched as Louisa toddled around her kitchen, wondering if she could read the answer in the old woman’s stooped shoulders. Maggie had a vague feeling that the opportunity to act the mother hen might appeal to the elderly woman, that and the fact that the old woman was starved for company. She waited quietly as the old woman mulled things over, watched as Louisa wiped down the kitchen table and put away the salt shaker.

“I suppose it would be okay,” Louisa began slowly.

Having learned a little about Louisa, Maggie knew to wait quietly as the old woman chose her words. Maggie detected a note of shyness in her voice. “I mean, why own a motel, if you don’t want guests?”

A good question. Maggie had wondered the very same thing herself.

“A paying guest at that,” Louisa observed. “I’ve had some that scooted away in the middle of the night,” she explained. “But I can tell you’re not the type.”