do you mean?”
“Your daddy just lost all interest in fishing and hunting overnight. They were crazy in love. Sometimes he’d bring her up here to visit awhile, then they’d run down that pasture to the woods like spring lambs.”
Annie stared out the kitchen window, trying to see her grim father skipping down the meadow, crazy in love with a red-haired girl running beside him.
“He got religious to make up, when your mama died having you.”
“Make up for what?” she asked, wary.
Cora vigorously ran a dishrag over the spotless oilcloth on the table.
“Make up for what?” Annie demanded, determined to get the answer.
“For loving too much, too soon. For not waiting to start you.” She kept her head down, the gray curls in the home permanent Annie had helped her with seemed to bristle.
Loving too soon. Not waiting. “You mean they had to get married? I was a mistake?”
Cora’s broad face crumpled like a ripe puffball mushroom after you stomped on it. The setter paced, toenails clicking on the scarred wood floor, and began to whine.
Annie exploded out the screen door and stumbled down the meadow behind the house, blinking in the sudden sunshine. She ran, trampling bluets and spring beauties in the grass. Safe in the shady woods she slowed down. The setter found her and bounded ahead, nose and tail quivering as he chased scents. She sat on a log and inhaled the loamy air. A woodpecker drummed on a tree trunk. May apples speared straight through last year’s fallen leaves, white blossoms hidden beneath the green parasol of leaves. A few early trout lilies gleamed yellow. Purple violets bloomed by the stream.
Annie climbed down the bank to the water. She crouched, turning over rocks, startling hidden salamanders, searching out stones inscribed with the twisted trails of fossil worms. Once this had been the Appalachian Sea according to the geography teacher.
The setter splashed up the stream, shaking off wetness in a rainbow shower. He raced through the trees to the bright margin of the meadow. She followed to the edge of the woods. Cora’s house perched at the distant top of the steep slope, like a ship sailing across a high green wave. What would it be like to sail away?
Cora’s small figure appeared on the porch. Her voice wafted down the hillside.
“Annie, Annie. Come on up! Jeff’s here!”
Annie fell back into the shadows. She paused beside the old walled spring where cows had been watered, before there was well water on the ridge. The spring was held on three sides by stone walls set into the hillside, a mossy hearth for water instead of fire. There was always water here, even on the late dry days of summer, mysterious water from the deep earth. She knelt and rested her head on her knees.
Leaves rustled. Annie froze still as a stalked deer. Footfalls crackled, a stick broke. From the corner of her eye she saw his work boots approach.
“Cora sent me. She’s making tea,” Jeff said.
She tried to answer, but her throat locked.
He knelt beside her. “Are you okay?”
Her eyes burned. She dropped her head between her knees, hunching her shoulders to strangle the tears. His hand touched her shoulder, gently. She held her breath. His hand traced circles on her back—wide, firm circles.
His arm cradled her; she rested on his flannel shoulder. He tipped her chin up, stroked a finger across her forehead and down her cheek. He kissed her. The sounds of the woods faded away. Liquid warmth spread inside her. His tongue slipped sweetly into her own mouth, his hand was moving down her belly. She felt as though a combination lock was being turned, tumblers clicking; she was opening. Then she pushed his hand away.
“No, I can’t,” she whispered, and pulled back.
“I’m sorry. It’s just—I’ve been wanting to kiss you since I first saw you come out of the barn last winter.”
She had never seen him before without his generous smile. He looked sad. Annie almost reached out to touch his lips.
The woodpecker drilled its lonely song. Jeff stood, brushing off his jeans, and held out his hand for her.
“We should get up the hill now. Cora’s fixing to cut your pie.”
“You go. I’ll be along.”
“What about that ride to the dairy? I won’t bother you, I promise.”
“No, I can’t. Not today, anyway.”
“Alright then. I guess I know how it is,” he said.
She heard him walk slowly away. When he was safely distant, she looked up and watched him disappear, limping slightly, through the shade into the bright meadow.
Like a fish on a line drawn tight and tighter, she felt a sharp pain in her throat where a hook would lodge. Soon the line must break, or her throat would burst.
Annie peered into the clear, still spring. Her reflection stared back. She picked up a long stick and stirred the water fiercely, disturbing the mirror. Murky clouds of mud and debris swirled and slowly settled, like tea leaves in a fortune teller’s cup.
She could not read any message in the clotted foliage floating in the water.
Surprise Boxes
The dean approved my petition to withdraw; I stripped my room in the freshman dorm. The Greyhound bus carried me home to Bedford through a freak April snowstorm.
I slept like a hibernating beast the first week and would have liked to sleep straight through the spring, hiding in my room, but my mother pushed me out of bed. Heavy and slow, as though walking underwater, I dressed and brushed my limp hair to please her. I felt erased, the past months flushed away without a trace.
“Enough moping. Go make yourself useful to Mr. Westervelt,” my mother said.
It was easier not to refuse, so I walked to the church Mr. Westervelt had converted to his home and antique shop. He had retired and moved to town the year I was ten. I’m a retired minister living in a retired church, he liked to say. My mother said he had retired early and wasn’t old, but he seemed old to me. His shop was my after-school refuge until high school. I abandoned him for drama club, year book and a summer job at the Frosty Bear selling soft serve ice cream to blond boys on the football team.
Now I walked through his church door again. The bell on the doorknob announced me just as always. He was reading at the cash register and put down his book. He looked more like Lincoln than ever, thin face and deep-set eyes, until he smiled.
“Margaret, my pearl,” he said, as he used to. My name, he had explained, meant pearl in Greek, which he studied in seminary. “Your mother said you were home. Care to answer an old man’s prayers and help out?”
“Okay,” I said.
“Let’s have a cup of tea before I press you into service.”
We walked
