left home when I was six,” he said offhandedly.
Beth wasn’t fooled by his attempt to be casual. Tenderhearted, she was immediately sympathetic. How awful to lose your mother when you were little more than Amy’s age! And he hadn’t said she’d died, he’d said she’d left home. Had she willfully abandoned him? Is that what he was saying? She was tempted to put voice to her questions, but thought better of it. Jack Stokes didn’t seem like the kind of man who would share confidences easily, and certainly not with someone he barely knew. Mind your own business, she told herself.
But she was still wondering about him later that afternoon as she prepared supper. He was back working at the sweet gum tree. She could hear the intermittent whine of the chain saw as he cut the trunk and branches into pieces small enough to easily move.
Walking to the sink, she peered out the window. He sure didn’t look like a man down on his luck, she thought again, yet what other reason could he have for offering to work for room and board? It wasn’t as if Beth had anything else he might want.
She took an onion out of the wire bin hanging over the sink and, laying it on her cutting board, peeled it, then cut it into hunks. Using the food chopper her best friend Dee Ann had given her, she minced the onion, then added it to the ground meat mixture she was preparing to turn into meat loaf.
Still thinking about Jack, she rooted around in her spice cupboard for the bottle of Worcestershire sauce she was sure she had. Finding it, she sprinkled some over the meat mixture.
Could he be running from the law? Somehow he just didn’t seem like the type. Besides, if he was, Rose Hill wasn’t the kind of place he’d go. People running from the law usually tried to lose themselves in big cities where you could be anonymous. In little towns like Rose Hill, everybody knew everybody else’s business. Beth would be willing to bet just about every one of the nearly three hundred souls who called Rose Hill home knew that a man in a red pickup truck had been hired to work out on the Johnson place. And in a day or two, they’d probably know the terms of his hiring, too. There were no secrets here.
Maybe she’d been crazy to hire him. And yet, there was something so solid and reassuring about him.
She added two eggs and bread crumbs to the meat, then washed her hands and dried them carefully. Once she was sure they were clean, she stuck them into the bowl and mixed everything by hand until all the ingredients were well blended. There was something very satisfying about mixing meat loaf by hand, she thought, remembering how her grandmother had done it the same way.
“Mama, I’m hungry.”
Glancing around, Beth smiled at Amy, who had walked into the kitchen. “Supper won’t be ready for a while, but you can have a banana or an apple if you want.”
“Okay.” Amy walked over to the table and reached into the bowl sitting in the center. Inside were two bananas and one apple. She took a banana out and began to peel it.
Beth shaped the meat mixture into a loaf. Once it was a neat oval, she placed it in the pan she’d prepared earlier. The oven was already preheated, so she stuck the meat loaf inside and turned her attention to the potatoes that needed to be peeled.
While the meat loaf baked and she prepared the mashed potatoes, green beans, and butterscotch pudding that would round out the meal, her thoughts returned to the man outside.
Maybe she was crazy for hiring him, but right now she really didn’t care. It was comforting to have a strong, masculine body on the property, someone who could do the things she couldn’t do herself, so no matter what he might be hiding, she wasn’t going to look this gift horse in the mouth.
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