The Farmer's Wife Page 2

  Her favorite memories were of summer evenings, waiting on the porch for the first sight of him returning from the barn or the fields. She’d race inside, grab the beer she’d put into the freezer a few moments earlier and meet her father coming up the stairs.

  The weariness would fade from his face as he pressed the icy aluminum to the back of his neck. Then he would crack open the can, and together they would watch the sun go down. Before they went inside to join everyone for supper, he would make her laugh with foolish, corny knock-knock jokes that he’d made up while riding his tractor or operating one of his other huge, expensive pieces of farm machinery.

  “Who’s going to tell him?” she asked.

  “I vote for you.”

  “Me?” Kim squeaked. “Why me?”

  “The rest of us have been here. You haven’t. It’s your turn to do something.”

  “Bobby and Colin haven’t been around, or Evan half the time either.”

  “They visit. They spend vacations with us. We haven’t seen your face in eight years.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “I’m here now.”

  “Big fricking deal, Princess.”

  Kim’s hands curled into fists. How long had she been here? Fifteen minutes, and she was contemplating murder. Not bad. Her brothers could usually send her from zero to pissed off in two point five seconds. Funny, but in her other life as a paralegal she was well-known for never losing her temper. If her colleagues could only see her now.

  Kim crossed the short distance between her and Dean until they stood toe to toe. Then she tilted back her head, and she tilted it some more. No wonder she never came home. She’d forgotten that living with the Luchetti brothers gave her a constant crick in the neck.

  “You don’t know anything about me.”

  He leaned down, putting his face nearer to hers. “And whose fault is that?”

  She could smell the farm on him—cows, grass, hard-earned sweat, the autumn wind in his short, dark hair—and while the scent should be unpleasant, instead it reminded her of—

  “I call every week,” she blurted. “Daddy understands.”

  “I don’t think anyone understands, Kim, least of all—”

  She slugged him. She didn’t mean to. It just happened. But she’d made him stop. He hadn’t said that name.

  “Kimberly Marie Luchetti! How many times have I told you not to hit your brothers?

  Dean straightened. His smirk shouted “Gotcha!” without him having to say a word.

  Kim stuck out her tongue at him Eight years gone and nothing had changed. Her brothers were still the bane of her existence and her mother . . .

  She turned, blinked, stared. Her mother had changed.

  Oh, she was the same tall, sturdy, stoic farmwife. Her face tanned, the same life lines creased the corners of her blue eyes, though a few new worry lines bracketed her mouth. But her hair . . .

  Her long, ebony hair had turned snow-white.

  “Wh-what happened to your hair?

  Dean made an impatient sound. “Goddammit, Kim. Is that all you can say?”

  “Watch your mouth, young man!” Eleanor snapped, though she continued to stare at Kim. “You will not take the Lord’s name in vain in this house.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Dean slammed out of the house without a backward glance. Through the open living room window Kim heard him cursing all the way to the barn.

  She caught a glimpse of Aaron in the hallway before he, too, escaped. For big manly men, her brothers were amazingly chickenhearted. What did they think was going to happen? An immediate resumption of the same old conflicts between mother and daughter? Kim certainly hoped not.

  “I’m sorry, Mom. I didn’t mean to be rude.”

  Her mother’s smile was serene, though Kim could see tension in the way she wrung her hands. “I’m sure my hair was a shock. But then, if you’d been home recently it wouldn’t be.”

  Kim sighed. She’d known when she got on the plane that this visit would not be easy for too many reasons to count. She just hadn’t figured her first half hour would be chock-full of contention.

  She didn’t acknowledge her mother’s comment. What defense did she have against the truth? “Can we go and see Daddy now?”

  “Can I have a hug first?”

  Kim resisted the urge to shake her head, jiggle her ear. She couldn’t recall the last time Eleanor had requested a hug. “Uh, sure.”

  For a moment, her mother seemed to cling. But Kim must have been mistaken, or merely hopeful, because in the next instant she was alone again.

  That had always been the way. Eleanor Luchetti had too much to do in any given day to waste time cuddling. Kim had satisfied her need to be held elsewhere. And therein lay the root of a whole lot of problems.

  A horn sounded from the yard. “Aaron’s ready to go,” her mother said, then eyed Kim up and down. “You want to change first?

  Though she was no doubt referring to the dust and the manure on Kim’s clothes, still Kim felt judged and found lacking. True, her short skirt and high heels were completely inappropriate for the farm, but she owned very few clothes that weren’t.

  Kim grabbed her suitcase. “I’ll be quick.”

  In the downstairs bathroom she dusted off the skirt, swept a damp washcloth down her stockings and donned a fresh blouse. Minutes later she stepped onto the porch, where her mom stared at the Miata.

  “Nice car,” she murmured.

  Kim frowned, uncertain if she was being facetious or complimentary. “I, uh, have one like it at home. Figured it would be easier to drive the same kind while I’m here.”

  “Home?” Eleanor descended the steps, snarled at the Dalmatians when they danced too close and headed for the American model SUV idling nearby. “I thought this was home.”

  Kim glanced at the cows behind the barn, the pigs in the pen and the dogs that now cowered behind a bush, hiding from her mother.

  Home? Ugh. Never.

  But she knew better than to say so.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The hospital in Gainsville was new—or at least new to Kim. When she’d left, the closest medical facility had been in Bloomington, an hour’s drive away.

  Heck, when she’d left, Gainsville had consisted of two bars, a post office and a feed store. As Aaron drove through town, she saw that more had been added than just a hospital. Fast food restaurants, dentists’ offices, a strip mall and two gas stations vied for space. The bars had multiplied, the feed store expanded, but the post office was still the same. One could always trust the federal government to be slower to change than even a midwestern farm community.

  Gainsville Memorial rose like a great, gray Mecca out of a displaced farmer’s field at the south end of town. “Does the community really need a hospital this big?” she wondered aloud.

  “It’s hopping all the time.” Aaron made two passes through the visitors’ lot before he found a parking place. “Lucky for Dad it was here.”

  “I wish it had been here years ago,” her mother murmured.

  Kim stepped out of the car, then followed the others into the overly bright lights of the foyer. Her mother’s wry comment made her recall a few mad rides to the hospital. Aaron’s cracked collarbone when he fell—or got shoved, the truth of that had never been determined—from the haymow. Bobby’s broken foot—cow stompage. Colin’s sprained knee—Fourth of July greased-pig contest. Dean had lost a thumbnail in the corn picker. Evan sported a nasty scar on his back from a nighttime-encounter with barbed wire. Which was what he got for sneaking across the fields to meet a girl—or ten.

  Through every medical emergency, Eleanor Luchetti had always remained calm. Familiarity no doubt did breed contempt, or at least the ability not to run screaming into the night at the sight of blood.

  They stopped in front of a hospital room with the nameplate Luchetti, J. As Kim had learned on the drive over, her father had been removed from ICU the day before, when his condition was upgraded to fair.

  Expecting t
o walk right in, Kim was surprised when the others hovered outside the closed door. She glanced at her mother.

  “You go on, Kim. He’s been waiting for you. I-I’m going to talk to his doctor, see when we can take him home.” Without another word, she headed for the nurses’ station.

  “What’s with her?” Kim asked.

  “She’s having a hard time with this.”

  “Hospitals never bothered her before. Nothing bothers her. Except me.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  Kim raised her gaze to her brother’s. “I don’t bother her?”

  Aaron’s steady, calm, blue eyes were very much like his mother’s—both in shade and expression. “You drive her insane, Kimmy. Just like she drives you.” He softened his comment with a gentle smile. “What I meant was, things do bother her. She’s just learned not to show it.”

  For the first time Kim considered that her mother’s calm exterior might merely mask a churning, roiling, hidden heap of chaos. Perhaps buried fear not only produced ulcers but turned the hair white.

  “What good would showing it do? Aaron continued. “Would that change anything?”

  A sudden memory of a dark night full of tears, dead dreams, hidden hopes, unanswered prayers flashed across Kim’s mind. No, showing your pain certainly didn’t change anything. She agreed with her mom there, which was new.

  “Kim?” Aaron put his big, rough, heavy hand on her shoulder. “Why did you leave? Why didn’t you come back?”

  Aaron had always had an uncanny ability to cut to the heart of the matter. He’d known when Kim was upset: he’d often tried to shield her from the others. But even though he was the oldest, and for a long time the biggest, four against one usually meant that he lost.

  “I am back,” she whispered.

  “But you aren’t going to stay.”

  Kim took a deep breath and she thought of the past, of her family, the farm, her life—what it had been and why it had become what it was. She thought of all the men she’d known, the men she’d been with trying to forget the only one who mattered, and she knew nothing had changed, even though at times she tried to convince herself that everything had.

  “No, I’m not going to stay.” She released a long, resigned sigh. “I can’t.”

  The door to John Luchetti’s hospital room closed with a sharp click. He didn’t need to open his eyes to know who had come. Each of his sons had his own way of walking. Aaron’s tread was heavy, burdened; Bobby’s, light but confident. Colin shuffled, lost in his own world; while Dean’s clomp reflected his annoyance with . . . Well, pretty much everything and everyone. Then there was Evan, who never moved faster than slow motion in reverse.

  Over thirty years of shared joy and hardship had made John able to sense the calm, sure presence of his wife. She could practically read his mind, and he liked to think that he could read hers. Words were rarely necessary between them. Together they could just be. Ellie was John’s rock, and she always had been.

  The snick of the door was followed by a step so full of energy, life pulsed in the air to the beat of high heels against a tiled floor. His lips curved. No woman in Gainsville wore clickety-click high heels.

  “’Bout time,” he murmured, and opened his eyes.

  She stopped a few feet from the bed and bit her lip, concern washing over her face. His baby had grown up—gone from pretty to stunning in the space of eight years. He shouldn’t be surprised, but he was.

  In John’s mind, Kim was forever eighteen, hopeful and happy, with a roundness to her cheeks and chin and laughter in her eyes. The woman who stared at him now was twenty-six, her chin pointed, her cheeks defined and her eyes. . . Her eyes still laughed, but not in quite the same way.

  John sat up and held out his hand. “If I’d have known all it would take was a trip to the hospital to get you home, I’d have had an attack years ago.”

  “Not funny, Daddy,” she said, but she came closer and linked her fingers with his.

  “You want funny? Knock-knock.”

  She groaned. “I just got here.”

  John raised his eyebrows and waited. They had always shared a goofy sense of humor that no one else in their family could bear. Ellie was his rock, but Kim had always been the light and the laughter in his life. When she’d left he’d tried to share his jokes with Ellie or the boys. They would listen with varying degrees of impatience, then coddle him with a lame, stilted chuckle. It wasn’t the same. There was no one on earth who laughed quite like Kim.

  “Oh, all right.” She winked. “Who’s there?”

  “Aardvark.”

  “Aardvark who?”

  “Aardvark a million miles for one of your smiles.”

  She stared at him. For a minute he didn’t think she was going to laugh. Then she snorted, coughed and . . . He held his breath.

  A giggle erupted, followed by a great big belly laugh. From the time she was a baby, folks had smiled at the mere sound of Kim’s laughter.

  But when she continued to snicker until tears ran down her cheeks, he frowned. “It wasn’t that great.”

  “You—you—” She held up her hand, took a deep, shaky breath, then choked and started all over again.

  Concerned, John tried to sit up straighter. She waved him back and moments later managed to get herself under control.

  “You don’t understand, Daddy. No one tells knock- knock jokes where I come from. I didn’t realize how much I missed them.”

  “You come from here, and I tell them all the time.” Or at least he used to, but she didn’t need to know that.

  “I come from Savannah now. I spend my days with lawyers, judges and criminals. They aren’t very funny.”

  “No? What do you call a hundred lawyers at the bottom of the ocean?”

  She rolled her eyes. “A good start. Come on, Daddy, that’s an oldie.”

  “But a goodie.”

  She smiled and wiped her cheeks.

  “You come alone?” he asked.

  “No. Mom went to talk to the doctor.” She frowned. “And speaking of Mom—”

  “You two didn’t start already, did you?” He gave her a long, knowing look.

  “Not really,” she amended. “But what happened to Mom’s hair?”

  For a minute he wasn’t sure what she meant, thinking maybe Ellie had cut off her glorious hair. Then he remembered. “Oh, the white. That came on sort of gradual-like.”

  “Gradual? She had hair as dark as mine.”

  “You’ve been gone awhile, baby girl. You wouldn’t remember, but your grandma’s hair was white long before she was fifty. Seems to be a family trait.”

  “Swell,” Kim muttered.

  “Did you and your mom drive in alone?”

  “No. Aaron drove, but he discovered a sudden and undeniable need for coffee. I think he wanted us to have some time alone.”

  John grunted. She was no doubt right. Aaron was always trying to make things easier for people. Trying to understand their feelings. Make everything all right. His eldest son was as much a mystery to John as the rest of them. He couldn’t fathom how he felt at odds with five sons, yet in harmony with a single daughter. But then, Ellie and her boys were one big happy family. Ellie and Kim . . .

  Oy, vey, as his good friend Mose Feldman liked to say.

  “So, besides the lack of knock-knock gems, how’s Savannah, the business, your friends? Tell me everything”

  “Savannah’s still there, probably always will be. Business is booming, and my one and only friend—” Kim broke off with a scowl. “Never mind that. How are you? That’s why I’m here.”

  “I’m fine,” he snapped. “Don’t I look fine?”

  He was heartily sick of being babied. For a man used to running a major dairy operation, sitting in a hospital bed chafed like a cheap pair of boxers.

  What was this about her one and only friend? That didn’t sound like Kim. At Gainsville High she’d been the center of the social whirl, forever busy, always laughing and happy. Sure her
excessive exuberance frequently got her into trouble, but that was just because there was no one as full of fire and life as Kim.

  “You look great, Daddy. Why, I’ll be able to get back to Georgia in no time at all.”

  She’d just arrived, yet couldn’t wait to leave. John had a pretty good idea why.

  “Can’t you stay a few weeks? I’m sure there are a lot of people who’d like to see you after all these years.”

  She tensed, then glanced away. “And I’m sure everyone has forgotten all about me.”

  “You think Becky Jo’s forgotten you?” He paused, considered, then dropped the bait. “What about Brian Riley?”

  She flinched and her face paled.

  John sighed. Riley. Well, he couldn’t say he hadn’t known.

  Kim stood, turned and became overly interested in the get-well cards taped to his wall, which gave John a few moments to think.

  Brian and Kim had been the golden couple of Gainsville High. Then a week after graduation they had eloped. In a community the size of Gainsville, the scandal had been enormous. The only reason to run off and get married was a reason for which John had planned to kick Brian Riley’s ass.

  He had raved; he had rambled, but as Ellie pointed out, there was nothing to be done. They were of age, and most likely already married.

  Then the two of them had returned to town a few days after they’d left, not only unmarried but barely speaking. Kim had denied she was pregnant, and that appeared to be the case.

  Relieved that she’d come back safe and sound, and thrilled to learn she hadn’t ruined her life, John left further questions for later. Kim hadn’t been herself—quiet and reserved—and he’d figured she and Brian had fought, then broken up. She needed time to get over her first love.

  Though John and Kim were close, he just wasn’t the kind of guy who liked to talk about feelings. He especially didn’t want to talk to his baby girl about her relationship with a boy. John shuddered. Particularly not a boy she’d run off with.

  Call him a coward; that was what he was. He’d been too uncomfortable to ask her the questions that needed to be asked, and thus had never been able to ask her anything about that time at all. Because a week after she returned, Kim was gone.