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Was she sure she didn’t want to see the place where Sam grew up?
A niggling curiosity had her putting one foot on the clutch, the other on the brake and her hand on the signal light.
What if he’s not going to the farm?
She had little else to do today. She geared down and turned onto the gravel road, following the dust from Ethan’s truck.
She passed a dairy farm and a few other yards. Some neat, some messy. Some of the houses were newer, some old. She passed an abandoned farm site, the graying timbers of the house sagging sadly toward the earth as if missing its previous owners.
And space and space and more space.
She came to the next crossroad and slowed down. A faint cloud of dust hung over the road going left. South of the road, she thought she saw a yard. She caught the glimpse of a house roof tucked against a clump of trees and beyond that, a hip roof barn painted green.
And parked by the barn, a red pickup truck. Ethan’s truck.
Hannah put the car in gear, spun the wheel and almost popped the clutch as she gunned the car around the corner, stilling the second thoughts spinning through her head as her tires spun on the gravel.
The sign at the end of the driveway, an exact replica of the one at the entrance to Dan and Tilly’s place, assured her that this indeed was Sam’s place.
Doubts immediately assailed Hannah. What was she doing here? She had no intention of sticking around; why check the place out?
But Sam had come from and had returned to this place. Why not discover more about the place the man she once loved had spent much of his life? Why not find out what she was turning down, just so she’d know for sure she had made the right decision?
Sam’s place had the same treed driveway. But as she came closer to the house, her heart lightened.
Where Dan and Tilly’s house clearly said no money had been spared, this place created an entirely different ambience.
The house was a simple cottage style, with a covered veranda, two bay windows flanking a main door. Above the veranda, two dormer windows broke the steeply pitched roof. The house was perched on a hill and, behind and below it, Hannah caught the glint of sunshine bouncing off a small lake.
The place was like a tiny jewel. The classic country house in the classic country setting.
So this is what I’m turning down. Hannah rested her hands on the steering wheel, her eyes taking in the flow of the land, the way the house was set so perfectly on the low rise above the lake. And above it all, a deep blue sky, broken only by faint wisps of cloud.
Was she crazy?
The Westervelds wouldn’t want her intruding into their memory of Sam. She and her mother were an anomaly in Sam’s life.
She should go.
Not yet, she thought, putting the car in gear and turning off the key. She wanted to have another look at Sam’s place and imagine him here. She wanted to fill in the blank spot of the “before us and after us,” the part of Sam’s life that had called him back.
As Hannah stepped out of her car she heard the sound of a door slamming shut. She turned in time to see Ethan charge out of the house, buttoning his shirt as he ran.
He slowed down as he saw her, then walked her way, tucking the faded plaid shirt into old, worn jeans.
“Hey, there,” he said as he came nearer. “Come to check the place out after all?”
“I was just going for a drive.”
He stopped on the other side of her car and leaned on the roof. “You want a tour?”
“No. It looks like you’re busy. I was just…” She lifted her chin. “Just curious.”
Ethan nodded, drumming his fingers on the roof.
Hannah looked past him to the house with the lake shining in the background. “It’s a beautiful spot,” she said quietly.
Ethan glanced back in the same direction she’d been looking. “That it is,” he agreed. “I spent a lot of hours on that lake. I think I know every drop of water it holds.”
“Does the lake have fish?”
“Uncle Sam and I have been trying for the past couple of years to stock it with trout. My cousins and I used to fish on it.”
“Cousins.” She digested that thought a moment. “How many are there of you?”
“I was blessed with two parents, Morris and Dot, one sister, Francine, a bunch of girl cousins and two male cousins. Sam, of course, had no kids.”
And there it came again. The faint backward slap of dismissal. She and her mother were never a legal part of the Westerveld clan, hence they didn’t count.
Did the whole family see her and her mother this way? Some shadowy interlude? A mistake rectified only when Sam returned to the Westerveld bosom and all that messy business back East was cleared out of his life so he could move on?
Did they even think about her and her mother and what had happened to them when Sam left?
Hannah looked back at the house again and an old yearning trembled awake. She remembered Sam talking about the farm. About the garden he used to grow.
One spring, when she was eight, they bought some potting soil, a huge planter and some bedding plants. They planted and watered them. June and July their balcony was a cornucopia of flowers and scents. But best of all, in August, they plucked sun-warmed tomatoes for their salad. Sam made BLTs every night for a week. Hannah easily remembered the sweet tang of those tomatoes.
And she remembered the wistful look on Sam’s face when they pulled the dead plant up and took the pot to the Dumpster in the parking lot of the apartment.
This was what he’d been missing. Hannah surveyed the yard, the house, and that perfect little lake behind. Was this why he had stayed away from her and her mother?
To her surprise and dismay, tears pricked her eyes. She turned away, pretending to look at another part of the yard while she swiped the tears from her cheek.
“Did Sam have a garden here?” she asked, trying to sound normal and contained.
“Yeah. Behind the house. But the past couple of years, he didn’t do much gardening. Do you want to see it?”
“Look, you have work to do and I’d better get back to town. Thanks for the offer though.” She gave him a quick smile and ducked into the car.
But before she put the car in Reverse, she looked at the house again, trying to imagine Sam sitting on the porch, looking out over the lake.
Well, this was it. Her last look at the place he’d come to. She’d probably never see it again.
Hannah sat bolt upright in the bed, pulling herself out of a busy, fretful dream. She blinked as she looked around, her mind trying to make sense of where she was. The light coming into the room was all wrong.
Cheap prints on the wall, thin curtains at the window.
Hannah rubbed her eyes. The motel in Riverbend.
She glanced the clock radio beside her bed and blinked at the numbers.
Eight forty-five in the morning.
She pulled her hands over her face as sleep still dragged at her mind. She couldn’t believe she had slept that long. Of course in Toronto the screeching of the GO train past her window in the morning got her up well before her alarm clock rang.
The day slowly registered. The day she was supposed to tell Dan Westerveld that she wouldn’t be staying. Yesterday she had done what Lizzie suggested and driven around town. She walked down Main Street, had coffee at the coffee shop, listening to the chitchat of the local people as they wandered in and out. The owner, an attractive woman of indeterminate age, had glanced at her with curiosity from time to time, but had left her alone.
She had driven around some more, but had avoided going down the road with the Farm for Sale sign. A puzzling restlessness had clawed at her, keeping her on the move.
Now it was Sunday morning and this afternoon her plane was leaving. She stretched across the bed, snagged her cell phone off the bed and punched in Lizzie’s number again.
Yawning, she walked to the window of the hotel room and tugged one curtain aside. As with all motels, her window looked out over a parking lot, but beyond that she could see a field and above it all the blue bowl of the sky wisped with clouds.
Another beautiful day in Alberta.
She frowned as the phone kept ringing. Where was Lizzie? She had tried to phone Lizzie a couple of times yesterday, but had been shunted to Lizzie’s answering system each time. Hannah snapped the phone shut, folding her hand around it as she leaned in the window, her eyes following the path of a hawk in the sky above.
The sprightly tune of Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” jangled from her fist and she snapped open the phone, glancing at the name.
“Taylor. Hello.”
“Hey, congratulations, beautiful.” Taylor’s fake heartiness annoyed her, as it always did. “I heard you inherited half a farm. Lizzie told me not to call you, but I couldn’t resist. I’m trying to imagine you slopping hogs and feeding chickens.”
His faintly mocking voice irked her, as well. Ever since she had turned Taylor down for a date, he’d treated her with a veiled measure of disdain. Just enough to grate but not enough to call him out on it. “I only get the farm if I stick around for six months, which I’m not.”
“You’re not? Lizzie said you were moving out there.”
Hannah frowned as she tried to make sense of what Taylor was telling her. “Lizzie told you wrong.”
“But…I thought…That’s why I signed the deal with her and Pete.”
“What deal?”
“The salon deal. Lizzie said Pete came in as a partner when she found out you were staying out West. He had a bunch of money he wanted to invest. I signed everything up with her yesterday. She’s the new owner.”
She couldn’t marshal her thoughts as protests, shock, dismay and anger, then fury, fought with each other to be articulated.
“You sold the salon to Lizzie?”
“She and Pete will take possession in a week and move in upstairs. She told me she wanted to tell you herself but I thought I’d call anyway. I was curious about the farming thing. Whatever made you want to stay in redneck land?”
His words simply slipped past her—noises requiring words she couldn’t formulate. Shock still held her in its thrall.
Lizzie had done the deal behind her back? Lizzie and Pete now owned the salon? Lizzie and Pete were going to move into the apartment she had envisioned as her own?
Then, as the enormity of what her friend had done finally registered, she realized she didn’t need to talk to Taylor anymore. He had nothing to give her now.
Hannah hesitated in the foyer of the church, her hands clenched at her sides. On the way here, fury at Lizzie’s betrayal had taken over the initial shock, keeping her feet and hands ice-cold.
Each time her mind replayed Taylor’s conversation, her anger smoldered and grew, seeking an outlet. And she had found it as Lizzie’s betrayal resurrected older, deeper betrayals. Alex. Sam.
At least Sam had acknowledged his mistake and had tried to make amends. And as the heat of her anger cooled, it was replaced by a steely determination to take care of herself and not be concerned by what others thought.
Meeting Dan Westerveld at church had not been the plan, but when she had called the Westerveld home and gotten no answer she could only surmise they were here.
But as she entered the foyer, her moment of rebellion lost its punch. What was she doing in a church? She had no right to be here.
Well, she’d just have to go out and wait in the—
“Welcome to our services.”
Hannah bit back a startled scream and spun around to face a very friendly, smiling man.
“If you’ll wait a moment, I’ll find you a place,” he said.
Hannah took a step back, waving her hand over her shoulder as if to indicate that someone was waiting for her. “No. That’s fine.”
“Follow me.” The usher checked back to see if she was coming. What else could she do but follow in the wake of his helpfulness into the sanctuary?
A sense of twisted, divine humor assailed her as the usher finally stopped, indicating an empty spot right beside Ethan Westerveld.
Ethan was talking to a young woman beside him. A different one than the girl she’d seen with him in town. As Hannah plunked down beside him, he turned to look at her, but his welcoming expression froze and turned into a polite nod.
The minister greeted the congregation, urging them to rise and sing.
As the music started up, Hannah looked for the proper book. She felt an elbow nudge her and glanced sidelong to see Ethan holding out a book. “Here.”
Hannah took the book and, as she opened it, the young woman beside Ethan leaned forward, giving Hannah a once-over and a frown.
Okay, so her jeans and suede jacket over a T-shirt wasn’t the best outfit for church, but she hadn’t counted on being in the middle of the action. She wasn’t going to let this woman intimidate her. Hannah gave her a beatific smile then turned back to her songbook.
The woman pulled back and, though Ethan wasn’t looking at her, she caught a flash of a dimple on his cheek. So he thought this was funny?
Maybe another time it might be. But she wasn’t about to make a fool of herself in the community in which she was going to be spending the next six months.
Panic gripped her at the thought. Six months. One hundred and eighty-some days. And what about her apartment? Her stuff? Her clothes?
What if Dan said she had waited too long? Had she lost her chance?
Hannah gripped the book as her eyes scanned the music of the song, trying to focus her scattered thoughts.
“…the ripe fruits in the garden,” Hannah sang, and her mind immediately sprang to Sam and the farm and his garden.
Her garden now.
She repeated the words, cementing them in her mind. She knew she faced the objections of Ethan and the Westerveld family. With a shake of her head she dismissed the thought. Sam had willed her half of the farm. She would stay—had to stay, thanks to her two-faced friend.
“…the Lord God made them all.” She ignored Ethan’s sidelong glance as she finished the song and closed the book with a decisive snap.
