The Farmer's Wife Read online

  “Oh,” was all Brian could manage.

  “You thought I meant to have a serious talk? Maybe about Kim?”

  Brian’s throat was dry, so was his beer bottle. When had that happened? He managed a nod.

  “I’m not much for talk. Never have been. I figure if people don’t know how you feel, then you haven’t been showin’ ‘em right. I should have kicked your ass back then. Would have, but you were so busy kicking your own, I didn’t have the heart.”

  Heart? John Luchetti? Since when?

  “I’m not sure what happened between the two of you.” He held up his hand when Brian opened his mouth, though what Brian planned to say he wasn’t quite sure. “And I don’t wanna know! You still love my daughter, don’t you?”

  Brian didn’t answer. What could he say? The truth might get his ass kicked as easily as a lie.

  John didn’t appear to need any answer. For a man who wasn’t much for talk, he couldn’t keep his lip zipped today.

  “She loves you, too.”

  “No, sir, she doesn’t. I don’t think she ever did.”

  John smacked himself in the forehead. “I’m dealing with a half-wit.”

  “I see that you and your son have the same idea of sweet talk.”

  John’s green eyes narrowed, and Brian suddenly understood why the Luchetti brothers feared this man in a temper. Though John usually projected the cantankerous yet unflappable demeanor of a born farmer, there lurked beneath the surface a spark of temper ready and willing to ignite. Kim had been like this once, too. Back when he’d thought she loved him.

  “What gave you the idea Kim didn’t love you’?”

  “She left. That isn’t love.”

  John mumbled something that didn’t sound like sweetheart and patted his pocket again. He scowled when he came up empty.

  “She loved you then—she loves you now. I know my baby girl. She’s afraid.”

  “Of what?”

  “That’s for you to find out.”

  “Swell,” Brian muttered.

  “Nothing worth having is easy. Every farmer knows that.”

  John climbed into the pickup. Without so much as a goodbye, he turned the truck around and headed for town, leaving Brian with plenty to think about.

  Kim had always been closer to John than anyone else, until Brian. He was quite sure that John did know his baby girl, but did he know the woman she had become?

  If Kim had always loved him, did in fact still love him, then maybe there was a chance to have back all they had lost—or at least what was left of it.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  John tore into the parking lot of the clinic and wasted no time locating the office of the only OB-GYN in Gainsville. His heart was pounding far too fast for his age and his condition. But at least he was at the hospital already—just in case.

  He stood in the hall. He did not want to go in there. Back when he and Ellie were having kids, very few men in Gainsville went where no man had gone before—specifically, into the delivery room. They waited outside like the cowards they were until the screaming was done and the babies were clean. As a result, John had never stepped foot in the office of a doctor who dealt only with women—and he didn’t want to.

  But he couldn’t stand the suspense any longer. He was scared. Something was wrong with his wife, and he was afraid he knew exactly what.

  John shoved open the door. He wasn’t sure what he expected, maybe mauve carpet and rocking chairs, pastel wallpaper and lullabies to replace the Muzak. What he got was the same bland office decor he’d seen too many times before.

  “Mr. Luchetti!” An elderly woman with glasses so thick her eyes appeared magnified waved to him from the chair next to the empty receptionist window.

  John winced. He’d hoped to dash into a vacant room, ask for his wife, find out the truth and escape with no one the wiser. A foolish hope since everyone in Gainsville knew the office of the OB-GYN was where all the gossips congregated.

  Ellie usually avoided town, doctors and gossips. She had no patience for any of them. That she’d come here at all only proved she’d had little choice.

  The lady, who appeared to be eighty if she was a day, continued to wave at him.

  “Ma’am.” John nodded politely, even though his face felt on tire.

  “I’m the señora,” she informed him as if he should know her.

  His memory not what it used to be, John just smiled and nodded some more.

  “I had your daughter in Spanish 100.”

  John nearly groaned. He remembered her now. An irate phone call half in Spanish, half in English, something about a whoopee cushion and detention. Ellie had grounded Kim for two weeks, which only meant Kim had to shimmy down the drainpipe a lot.

  He’d most likely been too lenient with her, partly to make up for Ellie being so strict and partly because Kim had been too much like him. Thinking back, he should have been more of a father and less of a friend. But what was that old saying about hindsight?

  “Nice to see you,” he murmured, and craned his neck searching for the receptionist.

  “She’s helping the doctor, the señora said.

  John smiled, shuffled his feet, stretched his neck.

  “You trying to find your wife or your daughter?”

  “Both.”

  “They left a long time ago.”

  He frowned. Then why hadn’t Kim returned to Brian’s?

  “Your wife seemed upset.”

  Double damn.

  “She did?”

  The señora nodded eagerly, then lowered her voice to a conspiratorial level. “Your daughter said, ‘Are you?’ Then later your wife said, ‘Yeah.’”

  The sweat on John’s back turned cold. “Do you know where they went?”

  “They didn’t come home?”

  John shook his head, unable to speak for fear he’d whimper.

  “Your wife had a prescription. They might have gone to the pharmacy.”

  “Thanks,” John said, then he ran.

  Moments later he entered the grocery store and made a beeline for the pharmacy in the back.

  “You just missed Eleanor,” Ron Goldsmith, pharmacist, informed him.

  “You filled a prescription for her?”

  “Sure.”

  “What was it?”

  Goldsmith’s welcoming smile became a frown. “Now, you know I can’t tell you that, John.”

  “She’s my wife!”

  The volume of his voice caused several customers to pause in their examination of adult diapers, laxatives and condoms. From all indications, John could have done with a higher working knowledge of the latter.

  “That doesn’t matter,” Ron whispered. “Her medications are as private as her medical records. I can’t tell you a thing.”

  “You’re about the only one in town who can’t.” John muttered and stomped away.

  “Hey, John!” Annabelle Hauser, head cashier at the Gainsville Drug and Sundry for the past hundred years, hailed him. “You just missed Kim and your wife.”

  “That seems to be the story of my life today.”

  Annabelle tilted her head and her huge, bleach-blond-beehive tilted, too. John watched the mass warily, wondering if it all tumbled down, would it tumble off, as well? Gossip hinted that Annabelle was as bald as a cue ball beneath that beehive. Her lack of eyebrows, unless you counted the ones she’d drawn on that morning, lent truth to the fiction.

  “Is Eleanor all right, John?”

  With no small amount of effort, he turned his gaze from Annabelle’s beehive to her face. “Why?”

  “She’s acting . . . different.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, she and Kim were . . .”

  Excess powder and rouge sifted off Annabelle’s face like flour from a sieve as she frowned in concentration.

  “Arguing?” John supplied. “Fighting? Choking each other in the canned-goods section?”

  “No. They were holding hands.”

  “Y
ou’re sure they weren’t arm wrestling?”

  More powder fell as Annabelle scowled. “I may be old, but I’m not blind. They were holding hands, laughing and shopping together. It was downright spooky, considering those two. Made me wonder.”

  “What?”

  “Which one of ‘em is dying.”

  John’s chest hurt again. He thought he was having another heart attack, until he realized he was holding his breath. He let it out in a rush and leaned on the nearest wall until his head stopped pounding in time with his pulse.

  “Do you know where they went?” he managed.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Annabelle! Where?”

  “All right, all right. You don’t have to shout. They went to the Edge of Town.”

  “The tavern?”

  “Last I heard.”

  “Why?”

  “Something about toasting—” she circled her hands in an uncertain gesture “—something.”

  “With ears like yours, that’s all you got?”

  She stuck her nose in the air. “More than you knew when you came in here.”

  “Not by much,” he grumbled.

  She shrugged. “No new knock-knocks today?”

  “I’m not in the mood.”

  “Impossible. You’ve told me a joke every time you’ve walked in here for the past ten years.”

  “And you’ve never laughed once.”

  One penciled eyebrow lifted, “I was supposed to laugh?”

  “Har-har.” He patted his shirt pocket. Empty. “Give me a pack of the usual before I go, Annabelle.”

  She gave him a funny look, but she did as he asked without question. If she wasn’t old enough to be his mother, and possibly bald, she could be the perfect woman. If John wasn’t crazy in love with his wife.

  Outside he managed to light up, even with his hands shaking so badly he almost lit his thumb on fire. Then he drove across town with the window of Dean’s truck wide open, chill wind in his hair, across his face, because he couldn’t afford to return the truck smelling of smoke.

  He felt like a teenager again—tooling around, hiding his smokes, woman trouble on the mind. It wasn’t half as fun as he remembered.

  John flicked his ashes out the window. What in hell was going on with Ellie? Was the news bad or was it good? Was it both or somewhere in between?

  Whatever had happened, or was yet to happen, John resolved to be the husband Ellie needed no matter what.

  Far beyond the edge of town, the tavern appeared. The place should be named the Edge of the Interstate, instead, but that title just didn’t have the same down-home flavor.

  The bar had once been a stone farmhouse in the middle of one of the largest single family farms in the area. Then the federal government, in all its wisdom, had built an interstate smack-dab through the barn. What was left of the family had taken the money and run to Phoenix—where all old farmers seemed to go.

  In Phoenix there were no worries about rain, snow or tornadoes—just the heat—and if you didn’t have to fret over your animals or your crops, heat was a fine, fine thing. After you spent fifty years at a livelihood dependent on the weather, Phoenix was a paradise to aspire to amid the uncertainties of Midwestern farm life. For some guys, but not for him. John preferred the elements, the seasons, the adventure of the unknown. He always had.

  He ground his cigarette into the dirt next to a thousand others and glanced around the parking lot. No sign of Kim’s car here, either. They were gone. He’d just step inside and see what he could find out—if anything.

  A warm, scented wave of smoke hit him in the face. He wouldn’t have to worry about explaining away why his shirt smelled like cigarettes. After five minutes in here, everyone did.

  “Hey, John!” hailed the owner and bartender, Ezra Duncan. “Long time no.”

  John scooted his behind onto a bar stool at the same time Ezra shot a beer down the counter. John caught it and lifted the mug to his lips. He swallowed and discovered that a dry mouth, muddled mind and messed-up life could make beer taste like . . .

  He didn’t want to analyze what it tasted like. Grimacing, John put the glass down without taking another sip.

  “You just missed your wife and daughter.”

  John rubbed his eyes. The smoke was burning them. That had never happened to him before.

  “I’ve been missing them all over town,” he said. “Any idea where they went after here?”

  “Home is my guess.”

  “You didn’t hear?”

  “Not me.”

  He probably had, but Ezra was as closemouthed as a priest when it came to confessions at the bar. Probably because he’d been a priest once, which made his present occupation downright curious.

  That he and Aaron were pals was understandable, given Aaron’s experimentation with God and their common bent for saying very little, remaining very calm and helping anyone who would let them. But other than that, there was not much to compare between John’s slim, albeit wiry, son and this six-feet-five-inch, 280-pound black man.

  “What were they doing in here?” John asked.

  “The usual.”

  “Drinking?”

  “Soft drinks.” Ezra picked up a towel and began to polish the glassware.

  “They came in here for pop?”

  “And a game of darts.”

  “Ellie?”

  “She tried, but she hit Ruddy.” Ezra pointed at the bull moose that hung on the wall above the dartboard. A dart stuck out of his nose. “They had a pretty good laugh over that.”

  “Uh, sorry,” John said.

  The moose was a souvenir of Ezra’s first trip into the world after he’d left the priesthood. He loved that dead head and decorated it for every holiday. Right now orange pumpkin lights were strung between the impressive antlers.

  “You can understand why I took the darts away after that.”

  “But they weren’t drinking?”

  “Kim said she was driving. Your wife ordered Beam and Seven, then changed her mind and ordered just Seven.”

  John didn’t like the sound of that. But then, he’d liked the sound of precious little all day.

  “I didn’t think they got along,” Ezra murmured.

  “They don’t. Or they didn’t.” John threw up his hands. “I don’t know.”

  “Maybe God smiled.” After taking in John’s blank look, he continued. “God smiled and wiped the tears from their eyes. Or maybe the anger from their hearts.”

  “I find that hard to believe.

  “Stranger things have happened.”

  “You sure?”

  Ezra grinned. “Walking on water, parting the sea, wine from water. Should I keep goin’?”

  “No, thanks.”

  John tapped his fingers on the side of his glass but left the beer right where it was. Now that he thought about it, his son never brought up God anymore. Not the way Ezra did, and John had to wonder why.

  He didn’t understand his quiet, sober, gentle son. Aaron had never given him or Ellie a lick of trouble, and while he should have been grateful, John had started to worry about Aaron. Especially when the boy went all the way through high school without ever bringing home a girl.

  In the end, having his son turn to God had been something of a relief. Not that John would ever stop loving him, but certain things were difficult to explain to a Midwestern fanning community.

  However, Aaron had not become a priest and he’d never explained why. John wondered. Ellie worried. Dean mumbled and Evan cajoled. But none of them had ever asked the inevitable question.

  Why not?

  John ran his thumb down the condensation on the side of his glass and peered at Ezra. “Can I ask you something?”

  “You can ask. Doesn’t mean I’ll answer.”

  John thought for a moment on how best to phrase his question, then gave up and blurted it out. “How come you stopped being a priest?”

  One of Ezra’s heavy, muscular shou
lders lifted, then lowered. “Thought I could help a lot more people right here.”

  John glanced around the room. Besides him, there were two other customers. Considering it was a Thursday afternoon in October, the place was hopping.

  “Here?”

  “Souls come in lost. And here I am. When I was a priest, I was preachin’ to the choir.” He winked. “So to speak.”

  “Do you think that’s why Aaron came home?”

  Ezra’s open, smiling face closed. “You know I’m not going to tell you anything that Aaron’s shared with me, John. That wouldn’t be right.”

  “I know.” John stared into his beer.

  “Have you ever asked him yourself?”

  “I figured if he wanted me to know, he’d tell me.”

  “What if he’s thinking, ‘If my dad cared he’d ask?’”

  John scowled. “Did he say that?”

  Ezra shook his head. “You’re old school. I understand that. Men don’t cry. Men don’t hug. Men don’t ask or tell. My daddy was just like you. And you know what he said to me on his deathbed?”

  John winced. Since his heart had sent him to his knees and then to the hospital, any talk of deathbeds was talk he didn’t want to hear.

  But Ezra wasn’t the kind of man to be stopped midstory, even if no one had asked to hear the rest. “He said, ‘I wish that I’d been different, but I didn’t know how.’ Not everyone gets a second chance. Why don’t you mend some fences while you still can?”

  “I’ve been mendin’ fences all my life. I’m lousy with a hammer.”

  Ezra shook his head. “Go home. You must be chasing your wife all over town for a reason. I can only hope it’s to make her eyes less sad.”

  The cold sweat reappeared on John’s spine. “You said she was laughing.”

  “On the outside. I’ve had enough experience to know what crying on the inside looks like.”

  John cursed, threw some money on the bar and took Ezra’s advice.

  Eleanor was getting worried. The cows had gathered at the barn door and no one was there to let them in for the evening milking.

  No sign of Aaron or Evan. Dean’s truck, Dean and John were missing, too. She’d called Brian’s, but there was no answer. In five minutes she was going to have to start the milking herself. Not that she didn’t know how, but honestly, there were four men living on this property. Where was it written that she had to milk the cows?