a minute. We haven’t asked the blessing,” he reprimanded.
She put her spoon down. He washed his hands and stood by his chair, head bowed.
“Almighty God, we thy unworthy servants thank thee for our creation, preservation, and above all redemption. Amen.”
“Amen,” she echoed, grabbing up her spoon.
“Annie, never be in such a hurry that you neglect your prayers.”
They began to eat in silence, his reproach twanging in the air above the table. He sugared his oatmeal heavily and added a big pat of butter.
“Cora called last night. Her basement flooded. Needs you to stay overnight and help clean up.”
Annie kept her eyes down, not to appear too eager.
“Should I?”
“Long as you’re back right after you do her chores tomorrow morning.”
She finished breakfast and shot up the stairs for her nightgown, back downstairs to the kitchen. Still at the table, he stared into his empty bowl, shoulders slumped.
“You’ll be alright here for dinner without me? There’s meatloaf.”
“Take a pie. She wanted apple. Make sure she pays for it, and for the extra time.”
He resented her working out, even for an old friend like Cora, but they needed the money. She selected a pie from the pantry, leaving half a dozen for him to take to the bake shop.
“I’ll be going now.”
She hesitated on the door sill. He would be alright without her, wouldn’t he?
He fixed her with his gray gaze as though taking aim. “Drive careful. God bless you.” He looked away, releasing her.
Annie slammed free out the door and jumped into the old sedan. She opened the glove compartment and reached deep in, touching Jeff’s note. Yes, it was real. She closed the glove compartment and turned the key in the ignition. The engine caught and she smiled, it had been unreliable these cool spring mornings. She hurtled down the rutted mud drive, past the rusty mailbox, flying up the ridge road to Cora’s.
Mist rose out of the valley like boiling steam. Annie rolled the car window as far down as it would go and breathed in the moist morning. Bare branches in the woods blurred with new leaves, the hillside was painted with streaks of soft green. Annie would ask Cora the name of the white tree that was blooming all through the woods. Cora knew every wildflower and tree as well as she knew every family up and down the ridge. Annie pressed down the accelerator, racing over the last rise. Cora’s big white barn stood strong and solid beside the road. The dogs barked as the car stopped; the setter bounded over as she climbed out. She knelt to tousle its ears. He’d been abandoned on Cora’s porch not long ago, not unusual since everyone knew Cora never turned a stray away, but a lucky break for the setter. Short, sturdy Cora came down the porch steps, pushing aside her dogs.
“Morning, Annie.” The warm smile stretched across her square-jawed, weathered face.
“Here’s your pie.”
“Take it on in. Meet you in the barn.”
Annie found room for the pie on the crowded kitchen counter and went upstairs to change. She considered the spare room hers and kept a stash of nail polish and cosmetics on the vanity. Tonight she’d give herself a manicure, stripping it off like always before going home. Maybe take a bubble bath. Downstairs on the sun porch she slipped on mud boots. The setter tagged behind her across the road, whining when she shut him out of the barn. As her eyes adjusted to the dimness, she breathed in the warm scent of cow and hay dust and listened to the soothing stir and murmur of cows shifting back and forth.
“Back here with the calf,” Cora called from the box stalls. She was on her knees beside the calf. Annie remembered the day it had been born, breech. The vet couldn’t get there in time. Cora, bloody, triumphant, saved calf and mother, too.
“Looking good,” Cora said as she slowly got to her feet. Annie helped her out of the stall. Back in the main barn they attached the milking machines.
“What’s the pretty white tree all over the woods?”
“Sarvis. They say when the sarvis blooms, it’s time to plant the oats. Another thing I won’t get to this year,” she sighed.
Annie hated her to talk like that. Cora was past sixty, older than Annie’s grandmother had been when she died three years ago.
“Wish I could help you more.”
“I get by.”
Somehow farm people didn’t, or couldn’t, get old the way town people like her grandparents had. Cora just kept getting up every morning and doing what needed to be done.
Milking finished, Cora leaned on the fence by the small cemetery plot.
“Keep meaning to get a marker for Frank. They cost. Little Cora’s pink peony is forty years old now, like she would have been.”
Cora let the setter inside the house, but the rest of the dogs had to stay in the yard. The kitchen radio crackled, tuned to the local police channel. She said hearing the police reports made her feel safer. Annie wouldn’t listen now to ambulance dispatches if she’d had a drunk husband die, like Cora’s Frank, flipping his car over on the ice slick road two winters ago coming back from his night job at the turnpike. Cora poured coffee. Annie reached for a slice of toast.
Cora fiddled with the knob on the toaster. “This came out too light. Want yours down again?”
“No, it’s okay. I don’t like mine too crunchy.”
Toast and coffee finished, Annie filled the sink with suds and washed the dishes.
“So, want me to start on the basement? Least it’s sunny today, dry the stuff out.” It was sure to be a mess. Cora’s cellar had a dirt floor and was always dank and cold. Annie had seen mushrooms growing there.
Cora smiled. “Well, I told your Daddy a little white lie. There wasn’t a flood. I asked for you to stay over so you can ride along with Jeff to the dairy like he asked you.”
“He told you?”
“I told him to. The two of you, making eyes over the fence.”
Annie stood very still at the sink, watching soap bubbles pop, one by one.
“I can’t. Cora, you know I can’t.”
“Seventeen years old. Old enough to work right alongside me, and plenty old enough to go with Jeff if you fancy.”
“But I don’t know him.”
“You spend some time together. Get acquainted. He’s a good boy from good people, hauls the milk dependable. Might have got to college and played football if he hadn’t busted his knee.”
“Daddy wouldn’t let me. You know how he is.”
“Well, I know how he
