Tag: serial fiction

Fiction Friday: The Farmer’s Daughter Chapter 21

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn fiction, Fiction Friday14 Comments

I started to post Chapter 21 last night to schedule for this morning and then realized I hadn’t actually finished Chapter 21. Oops. So I finished it this morning. I’d written most of it in my head already anyhow, which is probably why I thought I had finished it.

Anyhow, as regular readers know, my fiction Thursday and Fridays are usually novellas or novels in progress, which means there will be changes before I publish it in the future as an ebook or paperback. One change I have a feeling is going to come when I rework The Farmer’s Daughter is moving Jason and Ellie’s story into a separate novella in between The Farmer’s Daughter, book one of the Spencer Chronicles, and The Librarian, book two of the Spence Chronicles. That novella will most likely be called . . . The Farmer’s Son because I am oh so original. *wink*

With that being said, I don’t want to leave my blog readers hanging so I’ll still try to keep Jason and Ellie’s story in the chapters I share here. My thought is that if I break this off into a novella in the future, I can flush out Jason and Ellie’s characters more without bogging down Alex and Molly and Franny’s story in this book.

Sometimes I think it’s silly I share these books as I write them, but then I think “well, life is short. Just have fun with it.” Plus I like the feedback from my few readers because it helps me decide and craft the remainder of the story (and sometimes it helps me decide to chop off chapters all together).

Thanks for sticking around this long (if you did). I’ll be quiet now and get on with the story.

Chapter 21

“How much trouble is the farm in, Robert?”

Franny’s question sent Robert’s eyes up to the ceiling in frustration. He was grateful his back was to his mother the same way it had been when his sister had cornered him a few weeks ago. How did the Tanner women have such a sixth sense about the bad news of life? He poured himself a cup of coffee and carried it with his mother’s tea to her kitchen table.

“Hannah been talking to you?”

Franny sipped the tea, reached across the table and spooned a heaping spoonful into her cup. “She’s been hinting, but not exactly talking. You know how she is.”

Robert definitely knew how she was. He sat on the chair across from his mother and sipped his coffee once, twice, three times before he spoke. He sat the cup down, cupping his hands around it, looking at it instead of his mother.

“We’re in a tough spot, Mom.”

“We’ve been in tough spots before.”

“This may be the toughest. I don’t know how much longer we can hang on, to be honest.”

Franny stirred a spoonful of honey into her tea and sipped it, waiting for her son to continue. She knew he would. He always did. Like Ned, he was thoughtful, contemplating the words before he said them.

“What I don’t get is why I can’t keep this farm running the same way Dad did.” Robert looked up at his Mom. “I took out a loan. Dad would never have done that. He only spent what he had or what he saved up for.”

When Robert fell into silence again, looking out the kitchen window into the field across the road, the same field his father had farmed for years and his father before him, Franny decided she needed to offer her son the encouragement she’d been unable to offer since she’d lost Ned. She had been a wife, yes, but she was still a mother and she needed to start acting like one, even if her children were fully grown.

“This isn’t the same farm your dad had, Robert. You’ve added more property, other farmers and farmland. You and your dad and brother did the right thing trying to diversify the business. How were you to know that milk prices would fall even further than they did in 1985? None of this is your fault. It’s circumstances out of your control.”


“No, your dad never took loans out. But milk prices were better back then. Other expenses were lower. He could manage to save up. You don’t have that luxury anymore.” Franny leaned over and laid her hand on Robert’s. “You’re doing the best you can, son. I know that. Farming runs in your blood. You’ll figure this out.”

Robert’s eyes stung with tears and he looked away quickly.

His voice broke when he spoke. “Thank you, Mom.”

“Don’t be afraid to cry, Robert. There’s nothing wrong with crying.”

Robert nodded but he still couldn’t look at her. If he saw her eyes, the compassionate eyes of the woman who raised him and his sister and  brother, who held the family and the farm together for his while life and who had suffered so much over the last few years, he might completely break down and he wasn’t about to do that. Instead he laid his hand over hers, swallowed hard, focused his attention on the field and nodded again.

“You’re a good boy, Robert.”

“Thank you, Mama,” he managed finally through the tears.

***

Alex’s head was pounding. His mouth was dry. He felt like his eyes had been glued shut.

Squinting against the sunlight pouring in from his bedroom window he recognized the feeling, which he hadn’t had in years.

He definitely had a hangover.

“Alex! You ever getting up?”

Jason’s voice outside his bedroom door was loud.

Too loud.

“I’ve already been to the barn and back.”

“Yeah. Comin’. Just . . .” Alex rubbed his hands across his face and forced himself to sit up. The pain in his head throbbed now, a steady pulse of pain that felt as if his brain would push out through his forehead. “Yeah. Be right down.”

Jason banged cupboard doors and loudly clanked spoons into bowls when he reached the kitchen. Alex winced against the noise, each clank another pain shooting through his head.

“Cereal?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

Jason leaned back against the counter and watched his friend sleepily pour cereal from the box to the bowl. Alex’s hair was pushed up in several different directions, dark circles creased the skin under his eyes, and he was moving slower than a zombie in a cheap b-movie.

“You go out last night?”

Alex poured milk on  his cereal without looking up. “Yeah.”

“Daniel Stanton said you left the bar last night with Jessie Landry hanging all over you.”

“If Daniel Stanton already told you I was at the bar, then why did you ask if I went out?”

Jason shrugged, folding his massive arms across his massive chest. Alex wasn’t always pleased at how massive his friend was, especially when he wasn’t sure where a conversation was going and how his massive friend might choose to end it.

“So, you ended up back up here?”

Alex kept his eyes on the cereal. “Yeah.”

“I didn’t see her this morning when I got up.”

“Yeah. I mean, no. I – sent her home. Or rather, she left. In a bit of a huff really.”

“So, you didn’t sleep with her?”

Alex shook his head, shoving a spoonful of cereal into his mouth.

Jason leaned back, reaching for his coffee cup on the counter and sipping from it. “Really? Well, that’s new. What happened?”

Alex glared, milk dripping down his chin.

“What does that mean, Jase? You act like I’m some man-whore or something. It’s not like I’m bedding girls every night.”

Jason laughed and shook his head. “Not every night, no.”

“Actually, if you’ll remember, I haven’t brought a girl back here in almost two years. Maybe even longer.”

“So, you’re not taking them back to our place, maybe you’re —”

“I’m not,” Alex snapped, shoving the last of the cereal into his mouth and gulping the remaining milk down.

“Okay. Okay.” Jason looked quizzically at Alex, folding his arms across his chest again. One leg was casually crossed of the other one. “What’s up with you anyhow? You’re touchy this morning.”

Alex wiped the milk off his chin with the back of his hand.

“I’m just not the jerk you act like I am,” he grumbled, walking toward the backstairs that led to the upstairs bathroom. “I’m going to get a shower and head up to the farm to help your dad.”

Standing in the shower, the hot water kicking up steam around him and pouring over his bare skin, Alex cursed under his breath, knowing his best friend knew better than anyone what a pig he’d been much of his life; how he’d distracted himself from the hard moments in his life with the company of a cold beer or a warm, sexually aroused woman more times than he cared to admit.

He leaned his hands against the wall of the shower and let the water pour over his head and back, wishing the hot streams making paths across his body could wash away the shame the same way it was washing away the sweat from the night before.

After drying off and pulling on his usual faded blue jeans and a t-shirt he felt more alert and moved quickly downstairs, guzzling a glass of orange juice before reaching for his keys.

Jason was still in the driveway when he walked outside, checking under the hood of his truck.

Alex stood by the truck, sliding his hands in the front pockets of his jeans. He cleared his throat. “Hey, sorry I was so sharp earlier.”

Jason looked up from where he had leaned over the truck with a wrench and shook his head slightly. “Actually, I’m sorry I harassed you about your night out. It’s none of my business.”

The sun was brighter than Alex had realized when he first stepped outside. He winched and reached in his front shirt pocket for his sunglasses, sliding them on. “Everything go okay with Ellie last night?”

Jason sighed, which was a weird sound coming from such a masculine figure. “Yeah. Sort of.” He glanced at Alex while he loosened a bolt on the engine. “She thinks I proposed.”

Alex lifted an eyebrow. “Thinks you proposed? Um, I might need a little more of an explanation on this one. Usually a guy proposes or he doens’t.”

 “Well, I was going to propose but I needed to talk to her about something first and then she brought it up and then she just thought . . . you know what? It’s too confusing to explain.”

“So, you’re engaged. That’s great. Why don’t you look happier? Don’t men usually look happier when they get engaged?”

Jason used a rag to wipe grease off his hands as talked. “It is. I guess. It’s just . . .”

“You’re nervous about getting married?”

“A little but it’s not that. It’s just, I’ve never told Ellie about what happened in college.”

Alex spoke through a yawn, his expression clueless. “What happened in college?”

Jason starred at him for a few moments with first furrowed eyebrows then raised ones. Alex continued to look blank for a full minute then his eyes widened in realization. “Wait. You mean what happened with Emily Barker? You never told Ellie about that?”

Jason shook his head and tossed the dirty rag into the front seat of his truck. “I was really embarrassed, man. That experience was a low point for me and it wasn’t even —ugh, just never mind. The point is that I never told Ellie because I was embarrassed and because I didn’t know how she would feel about it.”

“But you guys weren’t even dating then.”

“I know but it still was wrong, Alex. That’s not how I wanted my first time to be. I wanted it to be with someone I loved. Someone I planned to spend my whole life with. And yeah, I know it sounds lame, but I wanted it to be with someone I was married to.”

Alex shrugged one shoulder and smiled. “Yeah, it sounds a little lame, but it also sounds really sweet and romantic.” He made a face and shuddered. “Yuck. Dude, I think you’re rubbing off on me with all your sentimental crud. Next Thing I know we’ll be watching chick flicks together.”

“Sleepless in Seattle isn’t bad.”

Alex held up his hands. “Jase, I am not watching chick flicks with you. Calm down.”

He grinned and then realized even grinning made his head hurt. He let the grin fade, partially because of the headache and partially because Jason was leaning back against the front of the truck now, one arm propped up on the metal frame, looking at the ground, thinking.

“Jason, you know Ellie loves you. She’s going to understand, okay? Just talk to her.”

Jason nodded, but didn’t look up from the dirt. “Yeah, I hope she does.” He lifted his gaze to look at Alex, his eyes glistening. “Because if she doesn’t . . .” He shook his head, swallowed hard and looked out at the fields across from the house. “I don’t know if I’m going to make it without her.”

Fiction Thursday: Fully Alive Chapter 7 part 2

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn Fiction Thursday4 Comments

Find more of this novella in progress HERE. This chapter really isn’t complete but I hope to complete it in the next week or so — if my brain would ever slow down.



Atticus tightened the leather of his sandal, wincing as it laced into the blister on his ankle, bursting it open and sending blood trickling. He knew he should stop and rest, but he still had a day’s travel before he reached Capernaum and the commune he’d been directed to work with by the Apostle.

He sat back against the rock and slid the sandal off, ripping a piece of cloth off his robe and wrapping it tight around the blister. He was used to blisters and pain. He was used to caring for them by himself. He may no longer be a Roman soldier but he had carried what he learned from those days with him into this new chapter of his life, a chapter with even more uncertainty than his days as a soldier had been.

With the ankle bandaged he leaned back and reached for his wineskin, drinking cool water from it, water he had filled it with from a stream a few miles back. He thought as he drank, remembering what had brought him here at this point in his life, to a place he’d never expected to be.

The day the sky had gone dark in Jerusalem it hadn’t only been the foundation of the earth that had been shaken, but his personal foundation. Everything he had thought was real, was true, was important in life was shaken out and shown to be lacking.

***

“Atticus, you’re on crucifixion duty today.”

Marcus didn’t even look up from his scrolls as he spoke.

“Have I vexed you somehow, Centurion?”

Marcus scratched the tip of the feather across the a scroll, shaking his head, still not looking up. “No. We are short on men. They’re handling an issue in the red quarter and Pilate has ordered some Jewish teacher who thinks he is the son of God and two robbers crucified today. We need a replacement and you are who I’ve chosen.” He looked up at Atticus, jaw tight. “Don’t go soft on me, Atticus. All we need is crowd control. I won’t make you take the bodies off the crosses. This time anyhow. Go and report to Albus immediately.”

Atticus bowed his head in a curt nod, turned and walked from the garrison’s office, into blinding sunlight. He squinted, noticing the streets were more crowded than normal. He’d almost forgotten it was Passover. Jews were in Jerusalem full force, preparing to celebrate the day their ancient leader Moses had led them out of Egypt. Men, women, and children crowded the streets, pulling donkeys carrying food and supplies or simply walking and carrying their supplies with them on their backs.

Atticus wiped the back of his hand across his forehead, smearing sweat and dirt as he paused to watch the people walking. He pondered the devotion they possessed for this one God they followed, this Yahweh. He’d never understood it. He was raised to believe there were many gods and it took offering them sacrifices and performing well in life to appease them.

Perform well, live well. Make a mistake and suffer for it. It was all he’d ever known. But these Jews — they had been defeated time and time again, taken over by Rome, killed by the thousands, their bodies rotting in the desert, yet they still held on to the belief they were this god’s chosen people.

A few of the Jews were wealthy, yes. The priests, their religious leaders, and tax collectors or anyone who tied their allegiance to Rome. But for the most part most Jews were poor, living in squalor, many begging for food. Year after year, though, they journeyed here, feasting, gathering, worshipping their “one true God.”

Atticus scoffed as a beggar held up his hand, asking for money.

Ah, yes, of course, the one “true God” cared so much for them he but couldn’t even pull them from the depths of depravity and starvation. Atticus walked past the man, barely looking at him, sick of the beggars and the crowds and the long days and even longer nights. Dreams, nightmares really, had been waking him from sleep for weeks. Visions of his time in battle, of the men he had killed filled his mind nightly and he woken more than once in a cold sweat. Long soaks in the baths hadn’t helped. Prayers to Mars, the god of war, hadn’t helped. His past mocked him and it made him angry, sickness gnawing at his gut every day.

Now this. A change in his duties at the last minute. What mistake had he made to make the gods so angry at him? He knew it wasn’t having lain with too many women. It had been too long for that. So long he’d almost forgotten what the soft flesh of a woman felt like beneath his body. Walking through the crowd his eyes fell on a young Jewish woman, her body covered fully by her robes, as was their custom. She looked up at him, eyes bright and deep brown, like pools of a deep well. He walked slowly by her, his gaze roaming from her face down her throat, imagining his mouth there, kissing a trail as his hands explored where no man had probably ever explored before.

She dropped her gaze quickly, clutching her robe to her and he laughed scornfully at her innocence, at the innocence Jewish women held so closely to them, like a child clutching to a toy they thought would protect them. Innocence would not protect her. In the same way her god would not protect her. In the same way her god had not protected his so-called chosen people.

Voices grew louder as Atticus moved toward the edge of the city, toward where the crucifixions took place outside the city walls. A crowd had gathered along the streets, people pushing against each other, soldiers holding back the crowds.

“What’s all this?” Atticus asked Lucius, one of Albus’ men.

“Pilate ordered the death of a man some Jews are calling The Messiah and apparently everyone is here to watch him die,” Lucius answered, dragging a dirt covered hand across his face. “Our job is to keep the roadway cleared. The tribune in charged ordered this teacher, this so called King of the Jews, to carry his cross to Golgotha.

“Atticus!” Albus’ voice was sharp and booming as he pushed through the crowd. “You’re late. I want you along the street further up where it narrows. Keep it open. Take these men with you. Lucius included. They’re in your command.”

Albus was shorter and rounder than most Roman centurions but what he lacked in physical prowess he more than made up for in mental clarity and brutal rule. “Take whatever action you feel you must to keep the crowds back, short of killing. We have enough issues here without causing more of an uprising.”

Albus suggesting he not kill someone was new. Normally inflicting pain or death was Albus’ first suggestion to qwell a possible uprising.

“What is the name of this man being crucified?” he asked Lucius as they walked, the other men behind them.

“I know very little other than they call him their king,” Lucius told him. “Not all of the Jews, though. The priests are the one who called for his death. They said he was causing disruptions among their people.”

Atticus scowled as he walked, people pushing against him, some crying, some yelling, some looking confused and lost. He pushed to the front of the crowd, looked down the path and saw a man barely walking under the weight of a cross gouging a path in the dirt as he shuffled forward. Blood dripped from gouges on his back almost as deep as the one in the dirt made by the end of the cross.

 Atticus grimaced, throwing his arms out to the side to hold back the crowd. He couldn’t remember ever seeing such deep wounds from the flagellum. What had this man done to deserve such a beating? A crown made of thorns was pressed onto his head, sending droplets of blood into his face, smearing down it and dripping into the dirt.  

“Yeshua! Yeshua!” Atticus turned at the sound of a voice filled with despair to the right of him.

A young girl broke from the crowd, staggered forward and fell in the dirt near the man under the cross. Her fingers grazed the edge of the man’s bloody garment as she cried. The flash of sunlight off metal caught Atticus’ eye and he watched a soldier unsheathe his sword and step toward the girl.

Atticus stepped forward quickly and encircled the girl’s waist with one arm, pulling her back through the crowd, away from the punishment I’d the sword, sitting her on the ground hard.

“You can’t be here,” he growled. “It isn’t safe for a young girl.”

She looked up, dark brown eyes, similar to the eyes of the girl he’d seen before but younger, softer, brimming with tears. She gasped in a sob as he let her go, his rough hands slipping across her soft skin.

“Josefa!”

And older man rushed forward, pulled the girl to her feet, his eyes focused on Atticus as he backed away, taking the girl with them.

Atticus saw anger in the man’s eyes. Hatred even. Hatred of Rome, but also of him.

He watched the man pull the young girl back toward a woman and child near an olive tree. The family cowered together, watching him and the crowd with fear in their eyes.

There was a time when he enjoyed the fear in eyes looking back at him but for some reason it didn’t please him to see the fear in their eyes, especially the young girl’s.

Fiction Friday: The Farmer’s Daughter Chapter 15

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn fiction, Fiction Friday4 Comments

After taking a break last week I’m back this week with Chapter 15. Things might start to pick up this week with Alex and Molly, but you will have to see.

You can find the link to the rest of the story so far HERE, or at the top of the page.

Molly looked at the scale and growled. She’d lost five pounds. Five lousy pounds in three weeks. After eating tasteless food, drinking so much water with lemon she was floating away, and working out until her brain had practically melted, she’d only lost five pounds.

She sat on her bed then flopped back on it hard, laying on her back and staring at the ceiling. Why had she suddenly become so obsessed with weight loss anyhow? Was it her increasing attraction to Alex? The weird way he was now acting toward her? The sudden reappearance of Ben? Her strong urge to leave the farm and find out if there was something out there for her?

She knew deep down that it was all of those things.

Everything in her life during this season was making her want to lose weight and fast. She was tired of being boring, fat Molly. She was tired of looking in the mirror and crying. She was tired of being winded when she finished working in the barn. Then again, she’d always been winded after working in the barn, even before she’d gained the weight, so maybe losing weight wouldn’t solve that problem.

She rolled on her side and looked out her window. She needed to get back to the barn and clean out the stalls before the cows came in from the field for milking. She needed to get back to the routine and mundane.

Again.

Same old, same old.

Just like at the farm store.

Except it wasn’t really the same old, same old at the barn recently. Her relationship with Alex was changing, though she couldn’t exactly say how, and that had changed the dynamic in the barn, not in a bad way exactly; just different. She didn’t know what she thought about that change. She didn’t have time to think about it now, though. There was work to do. She’d have to think about Alex later.

Inside the barn Alex was shoveling old hay out of the hayloft to make room for fresh hay. Wearing a white, sleeveless shirt and stained blue jeans he paused in between throws to wipe sweat off his forehead and wave at Molly as she walked in. Molly waved at him without much enthusiasm, even as she admired how good his shirt looked on him.

Jason was holding a plate of cookies, choosing one off the top and passing the plate toward Molly.

“Hey, Aunt Hannah dropped off some cookies. Grandma’s recipe. Have one.”

“No, thank you.”

Molly kept walking, reaching for the shovel.

“What’s with you lately anyhow?” Jason asked, following her and pushing the plate toward her. “Eat a cookie, Molly. You’re always eating that salad crap. You’re becoming like Liz.”

Molly glared over her shoulder at her brother and pushed the shovel into the pile of manure.

“It wouldn’t be so bad to be like Liz,” she mumbled. “Pretty and cute and skinny.”

“Whatever,” Jason said, rolling his eyes. “Just eat a cookie already.”

Anger seethed through Molly. Why was her brother so clueless? “I don’t want a cookie, Jason. Fat girl doesn’t want a cookie. Okay? Why don’t you just shut up already?”

Jason swallowed the bite of cookie, watching his sister with wide eyes. “I didn’t call you fat. What’s your problem? I wasn’t serious, I was just —”

“Just stating the obvious, I know. The obvious that your sister is always going to be fat and therefore she shouldn’t even try to lose the weight, right? I get it. I’m fat and I’ll always be fat.”

Jason swallowed hard and looked up at Alex for help. Alex’s surprised expression and somewhat blank stare wasn’t any help at all.

Tears hovered on the edge of Molly’s eyes when she tossed the shovel into the manure pile and stomped by Jason, brushing her hand across her face quickly.

“I’m going for a drive,” she snapped walking toward the open barn door.

“Molly, I didn’t mean anything,” Jason called after her. “I’m sorry. You’re not fat, okay?”

Alex climbed down from the hayloft and patted his friend’s shoulder. “I’ll  go check on her. She’ll be okay.”

Jason sat on a haybale and tossed the remainder of the cookie into a pile of hay, leaning his arms on his knees. “Yeah. Okay.”

Alex left him with his chin in his hand, looking at the floor with furrowed eyebrows and a creased forehead, an expression mixed with concern and confusion on his face.

Alex caught up to Molly as she flung the door to her truck open. He reached out quickly and wrapped his hand around hers, snatching the keys from her hand.

“Hey, lady, you look a little too stressed to be driving. Let me, okay?”

Molly brushed her hand across her face again. She didn’t not need Alex to drive her anywhere. Especially when she was feeling fat, ugly, out of shape and her face was splotchy from crying.

“I’m fine,” she snapped. “Give me my keys.”

Alex held the keys out away from her as she reached for them. “Now, now. Calm down. I want to take you somewhere.”

He stepped back and opened the driver’s side door. “Let me drive.”

Molly stood outside the truck with her arms tightly folded across her chest.  “Get in,” Alex said, jerking his head toward the passenger side and turning the key in the ignition. “Let’s see what this piece of junk can do.”

Molly folded her arms across her chest, stomped to the passenger side and slid in, furious, sad, and annoyed all at the same time. Alex revved the engine, grinning. “Let’s hope the engine doesn’t fall out before we get out of the drive.”

Molly scowled at him. “Don’t make fun of this truck,” she snapped. “It was my grandpa’s truck and it’s all I have left of him.”

Alex’s grin faded and he nodded. “I know. I’m sorry. I’ll take good care of it.”

The farm faded out of view, replaced by open fields, then wooded areas, groves of trees and open spaces, places where deer wandered into on cool summer mornings and where her grandfather used to set up a deer stand when he was able to hunt.

When Alex pulled into a space between a grove of maple trees she knew exactly where she was. The farthest end of her family’s property, where, when you got out of your car and walked toward rolling hills at eye level, you could overlook the entire farm and some of the additional land the Tanner’s had purchased over the years.

She hadn’t been here since her grandfather had died. It had always been too painful.

Alex shut the truck engine off and opened the door. “Come on. Follow me.”

Molly slumped down in the seat for a moment, fighting back emotions. She didn’t want to follow him and be reminded of all she’d lost when she lost her grandfather. She finally pushed open the door, listening to the familiar squeak, knowing she should oil it but finding it comforting somehow since it’d always made that noise when she wrote in it with her grandfather.

Alex sat on a tree that had fallen over since Molly had been there last. He patted the tree next to her and she sat next to him, feeling anxious, awkward, and like she’d rather crawl inside a hole than be here with him so close to her and her feeling so disgusted with her physical appearance.

Alex took a deep breath and let it out again. He hadn’t felt nervous until now, sitting alone with Molly practically in the middle of nowhere. He’d driven her here so he could tell her she wasn’t fat, she was beautiful and smart and worth so much more than what she thought she was. But now, he found himself struggling to share with Molly his true feelings, not the joking, teasing feelings they usually shared with each other.

He let out a slow breath. “Your grandpa took me up here once right before sunset a year or so after I started working here,” he started. “He told me the history of this farm, about his struggles, about his dream of passing it down to his children and grandchildren. He gave me a little history of his family, his children, his grandchildren, even you and Jason. He was proud of all of you, Molly. Very proud.”

“Talking to him gave me a whole new perspective about working here. It made me see it as more than a job, but as a way of living – taking care of the land, taking care of the livestock and taking care of family. You know I didn’t have a great family life growing up. It was everyone for themselves. We weren’t really a team like your family is. I think that’s why I’ve fallen in love with his place.”

 And with you, he wanted to add, but didn’t.

“Because your family has accepted me as part of the team. Your family loves you as you are, Molly. They wouldn’t love you anymore if you lost all that weight you think you need to lose to be good enough.”

Tell her you love her the way she is too, Alex. Dang it already. Just tell her.

Alex clearly saw light pink spread along Molly’s cheeks as she looked down at the ground and kicked at the dirt with her mud-covered boot. God, how he wanted to kiss that cheek, kiss that pink away, and tell her she didn’t need to be embarrassed, tell her she was beautiful just the way she was.

“Thank you, Alex. That means a lot. It really does.”

He heard the emotion in her voice, catching in her throat.

He needed to kiss her. Right now. The sun was setting, casting a pink and purple hue across them. There was a light breeze, the smell of summer heavy in the air. It was the perfect moment. He watched her looking at the ground, sitting on the tree, a tear slipping down her cheek and he wanted to kiss that tear away then kiss her mouth and make her forget about everything that was making her cry.

He reached out and gently laid his hand over hers. “Molly . . .”

The buzz of his cellphone startled him, and he dug quickly in his pocket to silence it, but it was too late. It had already ruined the moment.

“That’s probably, Jason,” Molly said, standing and stepping toward the truck. “He’ll need help getting the cows back in. We’d better head down. I’ve still got to shovel the stalls out.”

“Yeah.” He looked at the phone. “It is him.”

Dang it all to hell, Jason, he grumbled to himself. You’ve got the worse timing.

Following her to the truck his heart pounding with a mix of adrenaline from almost kissing her and disappointment that he hadn’t actually done it, he wondered how she would have reacted if he had taken her face in his hands like he wanted to and kissed her softly, finally tasting the sweet red lips he stared at so often.

“Where are you?” Jason asked when he returned the call while they drove down the dirt road.

“Just up on the hill looking at the farm. We’re on our way back.”

He wondered what Jason would say if he knew he’d almost kissed his sister on top of that hill. Maybe he wouldn’t say anything. Maybe he’d simply grab Alex around the throat and throttle him until he lost air. He wasn’t sure, but he was glad he didn’t have to find out. Not yet anyhow.

“I miss Ned, you know,” he said as they drove. “He was a good guy. Reminded me of my own grandfather.”

“Is your grandfather still alive?”

“No. Both of mine are gone actually. One to lung cancer right after I graduated college. The other committed suicide before I was born.

Molly winced. “Ow. That must have been awful for – your mom or your dad?”

“My dad. Sometimes I wonder if that’s why he was such an awful dad, you know? He really didn’t have his dad long enough to teach him how to be one.”

“I can see how that would happen. What about your other grandfather? Did you know him well?”

“Very. He’s the grandfather who literally dragged me out of a jail cell by my ear when I was 18 and told me I wasn’t going to ruin my life. He made me work at  his garage that whole summer and the next year and then insisted I go to college. If it wasn’t for him, I’d probably still be in a jail cell somewhere.”

He pulled his shirt collar down with one hand, revealing the tattoo. “I got this in his memory, so I’d never forget what he did for me, how much he wanted me to succeed.”

I wish I could look at with pride, knowing I’ve lived up to what he wanted for me, instead of in shame, he thought as he let go of the collar.

Molly smiled, watching him, grateful he was showing her a tender side she’d hadn’t seen very often before, a side usually covered up with jokes and laughter and gentle teasing.

“How did you end up in jail anyhow?” she asked.

Alex laughed and shook his head as he shifted gears. The truck groaned a protest. “Punched a guy at a football game because he tried to get with a girl I liked. I was such a loser back then.”

He decided to leave off that he’d also been drunk at the time and the stunt had landed him in jail because it was his second offense, his second time getting in a drunken fight in less than six months. His third offense had been breaking and entering at his dad’s business, stealing a car and taking it for a joy ride. His grandfather had bailed him out each time, the last time with a strict warning that it was the last time he’d help him. The next time he’d leave him in the jail cell and to face the consequences.

“We all do stupid things when we’re young,” Molly said.

Alex scoffed. “I bet you’ve never done anything stupid.”

Molly looked out the windshield at the farm now coming into view. She thought about telling Alex about how she was being stupid now, falling for him when he was completely out of her league. She could tell him how she was stupidly wishing he’d pull this truck over and kiss her until she didn’t have to think about the farm anymore, or her weight, or wonder how he really felt about her.

“Dating Ben was stupid,” she said finally. “Making out with a guy I met at community college behind the bleachers was pretty stupid too.”

Alex’s eyebrows raised. “I’m sorry? What?! Are you serious?”

Molly laughed and dropped her face into her hands. “Yes. Ugh. It was such a weak moment. I was lonely and Ben had dropped me a year before and the guy was interested in me and guys aren’t usually interested in me so . . .”

I’m interested in you. Very.

Alex shrugged and cleared his throat. “Well, that is a bit of interesting information I didn’t know before. The making out session aside, you were very young and from what it sounds like to me, Ben was very stupid when he walked away from you.”

Molly tipped her head to the side and raised an eyebrow. “How did you know Ben walked away?”

Alex cleared his throat, pulling into the driveway for the farm. “It’s just . . . uh . . . the impression I got one day when I  . . uh. . .” he laughed softly. “Well, I overheard your parents one day in the barn. I wasn’t eavesdropping. Exactly anyhow. I was just getting feed and they were talking and —”

Molly wasn’t sure how she felt about her parents talking about her relationship with Ben, in private, let alone where other people might overhear them. “What were they saying?”

“Just that  — Listen, it wasn’t anything bad. They just . . .” he glanced at her, trying to gauge her annoyance level on a scale of one to ten. She looked to be about a four, so he plowed ahead. “They were just worried about you because they felt Ben hurt you more back then than you let on. I stepped away when I heard what they were talking about. It wasn’t right for me to be listening in.”

Molly chewed on her bottom lip. “Oh. Well, that was sweet of them really.” She shrugged. “But I’m okay. That was so long ago.”

She was not okay, but she was not about to tell Alex she was not okay.

 She felt a sudden urge to jump out of the truck and run. She didn’t want to talk about Ben at all, let alone with Alex. And did she really just tell him about the guy she kissed from community college? The only other person who knew about that was Liz.

Alex’s hand around her wrist was firm, yet gentle. “Hey.”

She turned to look at him, the door to the passenger side open and her ready to climb out and head to the barn to finish her work.

His blue eyes were brighter than she’d ever remembered them being, or maybe she simply hadn’t looked at them as closely as she was now. Were those flecks of green always there?

“I know you said the truck is all you have left of your grandpa,” he said. “But it isn’t true. Your grandpa taught you a lot so what’s left of him is still inside you. Just like what my grandpa taught me is still inside me.”

 He laughed and shook his head. “Of course, I haven’t always listened to it, but it’s there.”

A smile tugged at Molly’s mouth. She moved her other hand to cover Alex’s, feeling a rush of energy when her skin touched his.

“Thank you, Alex,” she whispered, her hand lingering on his..\ “That really means a lot.”

Kiss her, Alex. For God sake, just kiss her already

Her eyes focused on his for a few seconds longer and then her hand slipped from his, her skin soft against his rough palm.

“You’re welcome,” he whispered.

Molly closed the door to the truck and walked back to the barn, Alex watching her until she disappeared inside. He leaned back and chewed at the nail on his thumb, a habit he’d recently picked up, thinking, silently cursing himself for chickening out, for keeping silent when he should have told Molly how he really felt about her. He climbed out of the truck, heading back to the barn, knowing that conversation would now have to wait for another day.

Fiction Thursday: Rekindle Part 5

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn fiction, Fiction Thursday1 Comment

You can catch up with the previous parts of this short story HERE.


The election had been brutal. There was no denying it. Worse than the campaigning, the traveling, the long days, had been the media coverage; non-stop negative stories aimed at destroying Matthew Grant before he could even open his mouth. The media machine was out of control. There was no denying it, especially after that first month of campaigning when one of the state’s biggest newspapers had questioned his staff’s lack of diversity.

From there it had been combing through Matt and Liam’s social media accounts, searching for anything that would sink them in the political arena. One rogue satirical Tweet from his college days, labeled as sexist by feminists, dominated headlines for a few days, but as it always was with the current 24-hour/7-day a week news cycle, the press had turned it’s hungry eyes to another candidate, another subject the following week.

The polls showed Matt losing and big, right up until election day, but the night of the election the numbers had come in fast and furious late in the evening. Matt had won by a landslide. Apparently the silent voters, the one who didn’t want to be yelled at or condemned for their opinions, had come out in droves and sent a hard message home to the incumbent and his political party: “We’ve had enough of the status quo and of corrupt politicians with empty promises and even emptier apologies.”

Matt knew, though, that in six months he could be in the same boat and it could be his rear end with the boot of the voter against it as they shoved him out the door. Voters, like public opinion, were fickle and ever changing and some days nothing a congressman did could make anyone happy. Matt had only been a congressman for two years but he felt like it had been ten. Now he had a small idea why so many presidents went gray while in office, though thankfully he didn’t have the same pressure as a president.

He yawned, stretching his arms out as if he intended to stand up and head up to bed, but he didn’t. Instead he fell back on the couch again, remote in hand. He surfed streaming services, suggested shows and movies scrolling by his eyes, but he wasn’t really seeing any of it. His mind had slipped back to two and a half years ago, to near the end of the election when the news stories were at their worst. He was being called a racist, anti-woman, anti-this, anti-that. He had lost count of all the names they had called him during that time.

“Is this even worth it?” he asked Cassie one night in bed, snuggled close against her.

“If you can get in there and really help facilitate some change, then, yes, it’s worth it,” she assured him.

But then the win came and with it came more news stories, personal attacks against him and his family. The worst came when one of his staff members brought him an article about Cassie, accusing her of being fired from her previous job.

He was furious. “Where did they even get that story? Cassie was never fired from her job. She left to support me and be with the children.”

Scanning the story he saw a former co-worker of Cassie’s was quoted and offered only summations, not facts. Still, the headline suggested the accusations were true. It wouldn’t have upset Matt as much if it had been about him instead of Cassie. He’d grown accustomed to being accused of inappropriate acts or offensive words, or anything else the press could come up with, but Cassie?

Cassie was off limits.

Only she wasn’t off limits.

She wasn’t off limits because he had made her fair game when he’d decided to accept the party’s urging to run. He’d dragged her out into the open and essentially thrown her to the wolves. The story had been pushed to the side quickly in a few days with another news story, about another congressman, overshadowing it. The fast pace of the 24/7 news cycle was one of the only good aspects of it. It meant a story that was in the forefront one day, was gone by the next day and even though the story on Cassie had faded fast, he still felt incredible guilt about how much he’d exposed his family during this process.

He’d always wanted to protect Cassie now he didn’t know how to. The negativity was coming at him from every side in a hyper-political atmosphere that was beginning to suffocate him.

His phone rang and he glanced at the ID before answering it.

“Hey, bro,” he said to Liam. “You hanging in there?”

“Yeah. Locked myself in my office. You?”

“Yeah. Feels weird just to be sitting at home.”

“A good weird or a bad weird?”

“Both.”

“Things okay with Cassie? The kids?”

“Kids are doing great. They don’t know much about what’s going on. Cassie’s . . . okay, I guess. She seems tired.”

“Is she mad at you for all this?”

Matt laughed. “She doesn’t seem mad, really. She just seems like Cassie. She’s cooking for the kids and me, cleaning, checking on her parents.”

“Did you ask her if she was okay?” Liam asked.

“Yeah, she said she’s fine.”

Matt heard a small laugh on the other end of the phone.

“What?” he asked. “No, don’t even say it. You think ‘I’m fine’ is code for something else.”

“You know I’m not expert on women,” Liam started.

“Uh, obviously,” Matt snorted.

“But, I am learning during this that apparently when a woman says she’s okay, she’s really not,” Liam continued. “I didn’t know that Maddie was struggling, Matt. I just thought she hated me, that I was doing everything wrong, but I think she feels — I don’t know. Abandoned. She pretty much told me she feels like I abandoned her.”

Matt sighed, laying on his back, staring at the ceiling. He slid his arm behind his head. “In what way did you abandon her?”

“Staying at work too much, for one,” Liam answered. “She says I worked more so I didn’t have to face us losing the babies.”

“Did you?”

“No, I . . .”

Liam’s voice trailed off and then there was a brief silence. “Yeah,” he said finally. “Yeah, I did. When you asked me to be your press secretary I jumped at it because I knew I would be so busy I wouldn’t have to think about losing the babies, about that empty hole in the center of my chest.”

Matt sat up, propping his elbow against his knee. “Liam, I’m sorry I was so focused on the election, on me, that I didn’t notice all you were going through.”

“Dude, I’m not trying to make you feel guilty. I didn’t even admit to myself how much it was bothering me.”

“I know, it’s just — I’m really realizing how out of touch I’ve been with what really matters; you and Maddie, the kids. Cassie. When I decided to run I pulled all of you —”

“Matt,” Liam said. “No. You were doing what you felt was right. And it wasn’t just you who decided to run. We all decided. As a family. We knew this could be rough. Yeah, it’s a little worse than we expected with all the extra political drama going on these days, but we are still in this together. It’s okay. We’re all okay. Well, we will be okay, one way or another anyhow. None of this is your fault.”

Matt flopped back on the couch again. “I know it isn’t. But I still feel . . . guilty. I don’t know. What I do know is that all of this, this forced slow down, has opened my eyes up to what I’ve been missing lately. I don’t like that our family, or our country, is going through this, but it’s putting some things in perspective for me.”

Matt heard his brother sigh on the other end of the phone.

“Yeah,” Liam whispered. “It’s doing the same for me.”

Serial Fiction: Rekindle Parts 3 & 4

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn fiction, Fiction Thursday1 Comment

I’m sharing parts three and four of Rekindle today. To read the first two parts, click HERE.


With the children in bed, it was just Matt and Cassie alone in the living room. Alone. Together. With a canyon of silence between them.

Matt slumped further down on the couch, drumming his fingers on the cushion. He had no idea what to do with himself without hearings to plan for, committee meetings to gather research for or statements to draft for the press with his brother. He should probably be on the phone with John and Liam, preparing their plan of action for when they got back into the office in the next week or so. He looked at his phone on the end of the couch but didn’t feel any motivation to reach for it.  In fact, he didn’t feel any motivation at all to deal with his job, especially the press.

He’d already drafted a statement with John. There really wasn’t anything else to say. For now anyhow. He was sure in the next day or so he’d be getting calls from other congressmen and congresswomen looking to set up virtual meetings to draft various bills or establish plans of action for the current situation, but for now his phone had gone silent and he should enjoy the silence while he could. He would have enjoyed it, if it just wasn’t so weird.

He felt his forehead. Maybe he was coming down with that virus after all. He’d been going full bore at his job for two years straight now, but today he’d finally hit some kind of wall. He wasn’t even motivated to reach for the remote and watch television.

He looked over at Cassie sitting sideways on a chair, her legs hanging over the arm of it, her head bent over a book. She was wearing a pair of hot pink short-shorts, a loose fitting white t-shirt and her hair was falling out of a messy bun she’d piled on top of her head. Her long legs were as shapely and attractive as the first day he’d met her. His eyes followed the length of them from her bare toes to the edge of her shorts and remembered the many times his hand had traveled that path over the years.

Desire swelled in his chest as he thought about the night they’d celebrated his congressional win. She’d worn that black skirt with the slit in the side, the slit that went from her knee to the middle of her thigh. Only she hadn’t even known the skirt had that slit until she was at his victory speech and he’d laughed later in the back of Liam’s car when he had watched her try to hold the pieces together, her cheeks flushed pink. Cassie always was fairly modest in how she dressed and he knew she never would have worn the dress if she hadn’t been rushed. The election results came in earlier than expected and she’d snatched the skirt out of her closet, the skirt she’d purchased a few days before but hadn’t had a chance to try on. She knew Matt’s acceptance speech was going to be closely watched by many since he had run against a long-time congressman who had been thrown in the middle of a scandal the year before.

“I can’t believe I wore this skirt to your acceptance speech,” she hissed. “I can imagine what the press will be saying tomorrow.”

“That your gorgeous?”

“Or that I’m a floozy.”

Matt tipped his head all the way back and laughed. “A floozy? What happened right there? Did we just teleport back to the 40s?”

Cassie punched Matt in the upper arm, giggling. “Shut up.”

Back at the house, the children staying with Cassie’s parents, Matt had stood behind Cassie as she unhooked her necklace and took her earrings out.

“For what it’s worth,” he said, stepping closer, reaching out to touch the edge of the skirt. “I really like this skirt.”

“Oh, you do, do you?”

His finger found the slit and slipped inside, touching the skin there, on her upper thigh.

His mouth touched her bare neck, his voice husky as he spoke. “All I wanted to do was get back here with you. No kids. All alone. Finally.”

She turned, smiling, pushing her hands into his hair. “And what can we do here, all alone?”

He didn’t need words to answer her question. His mouth found hers while he gently pushed her back toward the bed, lowering her to it.

“You okay over there?”

 Cassie’s voice interrupted the memory of his hand traveling under that skirt, up that leg, that night.

“Huh? Oh yeah. Good. I’m good.”

“You miss work, don’t you?”

“Um. No. Actually. I don’t. And that weirds me out a little.”

“Oh.”

She shrugged and turned back to her book. “This break is probably just showing you how burned out you are.”

“I’m not burned out. Am I?”

Cassie was back into her book. “Mmm. If you say so.”

Matt sat up straighter and leaned forward on his knees toward Cassie.

“We haven’t spent a lot of time together lately, have we?

She glanced up from the book, one eyebrow cocked.

“No. Not really, but you’ve been busy. I understand.”

“Do you want to spend more time together? I mean, maybe you’re bored with me? Our life here together?”

Cassie laughed. “Matt, where is this all coming from?” she closed the book. “Is this because of Liam and Maddie?

Matthew shrugged. “Yeah. Maybe. It’s got me thinking a lot, I guess.”

“So? What’s the verdict? Are Liam and Maddie getting a divorce?”

Matt sighed. “I don’t know. I mean, they’ve been meeting with a divorce attorney. The only reason they missed the last meeting was because of this whole debacle.”

He looked at Cassie, watched her watching him and wondered again if Cassie would ever want to divorce him. If she did, he wouldn’t blame her. He’d dragged her into this crazy political world, under a never-satisfied microscope of public scrutiny. The same with the kids. What had he been thinking? Of his constituents? The future of the country? Or had it really just been of himself and his own desire to reach a certain level of success?

“And now they are stuck together in that house,” Maddie said with a shake of her head. “Wow. That has to be super awkward.”

“Yeah. It is. Liam said Maddie accused him of cheating on her.”

Cassie’s eyes widened. “No way.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, did he?”

“Cassie! You know Liam wouldn’t do something like that.”

“I don’t think he would, no, but . . .”

“But what? Men do those things because we’re all jerks, is that what you mean?”

“I’m not saying that but long hours, all those pretty women around, he and Maddie so distant after the miscarriages, especially after the last one.”

Matt was feeling uncomfortable with his wife’s line of thinking. He stood and walked toward the kitchen for a glass of juice. His wife really thought his little brother could cheat on his wife? If she thought that then what did she think of him? He’d been working long hours too. Around a lot of pretty women, many of them more than willing to sleep with a congressman to work their way up the ladder in their careers. Was Cassie drawing a line between the possibility that Liam had cheated to the possibility he had too?

He poured the juice and heard her footsteps behind him. “I’m sorry, Matt. I really can’t see Liam doing that, no. Your brother has just been under a lot of pressure and —”

“Being under pressure doesn’t lean to affairs every time, okay?”

Cassie raised her eyes brows and held up her hands. “Okay. I wasn’t trying to pick a fight. I was just trying to enjoy a quiet night for once with a book. I’ll leave you alone.”

Matt turned toward her. “Cassie, I didn’t mean to start a fight either. I just —”

“It’s fine.” Cassie walked to him and kissed his cheek. She stepped back and looked him in the eyes. “You just need to unwind. You’ve been put through the ringer by the media, other members of congress, and now Liam’s drama. I don’t blame you for being tense. Why don’t you go watch one of your favorite shows. I’m going to turn in early.”

“You don’t need to turn in early.”

Her mind had been made up though. She was weary of discussing Liam and politics and viruses and . . . life, quite frankly.

“I really do need to,” she said softly, already at the doorway between the kitchen and the living room. “See you in the morning, Matt.”

Matt finished his juice and shuffled back to the living room. Watch one of his favorite shows? He didn’t even have any favorite shows. Not current ones anyhow. He never had time to watch television anymore. He sat on the couch and slumped in the corner of it again, even further down this time than before.

He didn’t have time for anything anymore other than political fights and trying to put out fires. He pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes. Dang it. What had he been thinking dragging his family through all of this? Just, seriously, what had he been thinking?

***

Cassie climbed under the covers and flopped on her back to stare at the ceiling, barely lit by the moonlight outside.

What was with all of Matt’s weird questions tonight? The situation with Liam and Maddie must be rattling him even more than she realized. She fluffed up her pillow, hugged it and tried to get more comfortable. It wasn’t working, though. Her mind was racing too much.

She was thinking about viruses and if her family was safe and Liam and Maddie and how to get groceries if they had to shelter in place and the media and what they’d be saying for the rest of the week with Matt and his staff having still worked for a week after they knew they’d been exposed to a contagious virus. She squeezed her eyes shut, took in a deep breath and held it for several seconds before letting it out again. She had to calm down.

She couldn’t deny that there were days she regretted agreeing with Matt that he should run for Congress. They both had such high hopes three years ago; hopes that they could make changes for the voters who had put their faith in Matt, while not being changed. But it was impossible not to be changed by the influences of Washington, D.C. Nothing in this city was like the small upstate New York town Cassie had grown up in and it was also nothing like where she and Matt had lived before he had been elected.

Stevensville, Ohio was small. Very small. It was also still her and Matt’s home in the summers when they left Washington D.C. behind for much needed breaks. Only that break wouldn’t be coming this year. Not with all the craziness about viruses and quarantines and freezes on travel. Cassie wanted to cry but she was afraid to because once she started, she might not stop. She was homesick for Ohio, for her own family, for Matt’s family, for the familiar she’d left behind when Matt was elected two years ago.

She sighed and opened her eyes, looking at the other side of the bed where Matt slept most nights of the week, unless he was working late and then he stayed at John’s apartment, closer to his office. She touched the side of the bed, feeling the cool sheets, thinking of how many nights they’d laid here next to each other, back to back, rarely speaking because she knew he needed his sleep, because she knew he needed to get up early in the morning, because she didn’t want to burden him anymore than he was already burdened.

But she missed him. She missed him holding her and them talking about their future, instead of him telling her about the stress he’d been under that day and then falling into a fitful sleep. She missed his hand on her cheek as he moved closer late at night, a small, mischievous smile that signaled he wasn’t ready for sleep yet.

She missed long, slow kisses, roaming hands, but as much as the physical, she missed the emotional connection they’d once had. The connection when Matt wanted to talk with her before anyone else, when he didn’t want to make a decision unless he’d asked her, and when she’d known so much about his day, his job and his life that it was as if they were thinking like one person.

“Cassie, are you sure you’re okay with this?” he’d asked three and a half years ago when he’d considered running for congress.

“Yeah. I am.”

That’s what she’d said, but she really wasn’t sure she was okay with it. She was okay with Matt wanting to help the people of his small hometown and the surrounding counties by becoming a congressman from Ohio, but she wasn’t really sure she was okay with the lives of their entire family being upended. She’d given up her social worker career five years before, deciding to spend more time at home with the children. Matt’s career as a lawyer had exploded and from there he’d become involved in county politics and then state politics. When the state’s Republican party came to him and asked him to run for Congress, he’d turned them down at first. But after several meetings, a few months of consideration, and talking to Cassie, his parents, his sister and brother, he’d decided to step into an already contentious race for the seat.

From the moment he’d announced to the day he won the seat, the lives of the Grant family had been a whirlwind. After the election, the moving began, the children were enrolled in new schools; every effort was made to ensure that the children and Cassie would see Matt as much as possible, despite his job.

The idea had been a good one, but the execution of it had started to fail within six months. Meetings, conferences, sessions that ran late into the night, and media-made emergencies were constant, taking over every aspect of Matt and Cassie’s life. Matt still made every effort to attend baseball games, dance recitals, and Saturday mornings at the park, in addition to balancing his responsibilities as a congressman, but that left little to almost no time for him and Cassie.

For the most part, Cassie was okay with being the last in line for his attention. She preferred he spend as much time as he could with the children during their formative years. This was a season of life, not a new normal. Time for them, as a couple, would come later, when things slowed down.

If things slow down, Cassie thought, panic suddenly gripping her, like a heavy weight in the center of  her chest. If Matt gets reelected we could have another two years of this and maybe even another two after that. . .

She shuddered, pulling the covers up around her, even though it wasn’t that cold in their bedroom. She tried to imagine two more years, or even more, of accusations against her husband, and sometimes even her, in the press. She tried to imagine two more years of barely seeing her husband; of feeling like her husband’s nanny, even though she loved her children desperately; and of constituents confronting her husband when they were out in public, complaining about this or that change he’d promised he’d make if elected but still hadn’t been able to.

Cassie knew it wasn’t only the town she and Matt had lived in before moving here that she was homesick for, or the quiet life they’d led before he’d entered politics. She was homesick for time alone with Matt. She was tired of sharing him with his staff, his fellow congressmen, his constituents, and the press. She was tired of feeling like she was second in line for his attention, even though she knew he didn’t mean to make her feel that way.

Who knows, she thought, feeling sleep finally settling on her. Maybe this quarantine will be good for not only Liam and Maddie but for Matt and me. Maybe I’ll actually get him to myself for once.

Special Saturday Fiction: The Farmer’s Daughter Chapter 14 Part 2

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn fiction, Fiction Friday6 Comments

I added a little extra to the end of what I shared yesterday for today’s special Saturday fiction. If you want to see Part 1 of Chapter 14 you can see yesterday’s post. To catch up on the entire story you can click HERE.



Pulling up to the farm store, Molly sat outside in her truck, bleary-eyed and unmotivated. She’d barely been able to sleep last night, thinking about Alex and his . . . well, weirdness and about how much she did not want to come to the farm store this morning. She propped her forehead against the steering wheel and groaned. She was in no mood to be perky and she needed to be perky by the time the customers arrived. Some days she took on the motto “fake it until you make it.” Some days, face perkiness was the only way to make it through their day.

“Is this the only milk you have?” a woman had asked last week, looking at her over a pair of sunglasses, one eyebrow raised.

“Yes, ma’am. That’s the company the local farmer’s supply to.”

“Okay, because I’m a vegan and I need something that doesn’t come from a cow.”

“Oh. Well, then . . .”

Molly had had to pause because what she wanted to say was “If you’re vegan, why are you in a store that clearly sells cow milk?” but she glanced at the woman’s cart, full of vegetables and flowers, and decided to cut her some slack. At least she was supporting farmers in her own way.

“Then, I’m sorry,” Molly said. “We don’t carry non-diary options at this time. Maybe you can try the local Weis?”

“You know this little store needs to move with the times,” the woman said unloading the items from her cart to the counter. “Milk from mammals is a thing of the past. The only ones who should be drinking cows milk are baby cows.”

“Mmmm,” Molly responded adding up the items on the cash register. “That will be $75.50.”

If the woman hadn’t been spending so much Molly might would have told her to shove off, but the money was welcome and needed in a time when local farmers were struggling. The money from the Tanner’s store didn’t only benefit the Tanners. It also benefited several families who supplied inventory – from locally raised and butchered pork, beef, and chicken to eggs, homemade furniture and hand-sewn blankets and quilts. Losing customers could mean losing income for these families as well.

Thankfully the woman left without anymore comments, though a ‘thank you’ would have been nice.

Some days Molly wondered if this would be her entire life; sitting in her family’s story, being lectured by people who called themselves “woke” about what to eat and how to live. She wondered if she’d always be just the farmer’s daughter.

Walking into the store through the backdoor she heard her Aunt Hannah talking in the office.

“I am nervous about the meeting, yes. And I’m nervous because I don’t know how we are going to come up with the money to pay off this loan.”

Molly paused outside the closed door.

What loan?

“Let’s talk to Bill and see what can be worked out,” her Uncle Walt said softly.

“I would have talked to Bill a long time ago if I had known what was going on,” Hannah said curtly.

“Hannah, Robert told me he explained why —”

“I know,” Hannah interrupted, her voice less tense than before. “I’m sorry. I’m just anxious. I’ve been looking at the numbers this morning. They aren’t great. I’m worried we won’t be able to do this, Walt.”

Numbers? What numbers? Molly’s mind started racing. Was the farm in trouble? And if so, why hadn’t her parents told her?

Her hand hovered over the door handle and she thought about walking in and asking Hannah what was going on, but thought better of it. If her family wanted her to know what was going on, they’d tell her, and, to be honest, she felt too drained to add anymore to her mental que to think about.

She continued her path to the front counter where Ellie was already loading the cash register.

Ellie glanced up as she counted. “Fifty, seventy . . . Hey, Mol. You look wiped today. Eighty…rough morning in the barn?”

“No, just . . .tired.”

Molly didn’t feel like talking about all her worries with her brother’s attractive girlfriend, even though she’d known Ellie for years and they were only a couple of years apart in age and she considered Ellie a friend.

“Ninety. One hundred.”

Ellie shoved the final bill into the drawer and wrote down the amount on the sheet next to the register.

“Looks like a nice day ahead,” she said. “That will probably bring out the gardeners.”

Molly groaned. “Oh no. With gardeners come all the weird questions about which tomatoes I think are best and what kind of squash grows better in what month? You would think after all these years working here I would know.”

Ellie shrugged. “I don’t know either. I just refer them to your aunt.”

Molly’s aunt. That word sent her back to think about what her aunt had said, about the loan and numbers. She sipped the coffee she’d brought with her in a tumbler and sat on the stool behind the counter.

She wondered again why her parents hadn’t said anything to her about it all. Then she wondered if Jason even knew. Were they trying to shelter her? She didn’t need to be sheltered. She needed to be told the truth.

“So Jason is taking me out this weekend for our anniversary,” Ellie said, interrupting her thoughts.

“Oh yeah? Where to?”

“He won’t tell me.

Molly hated the look of excited anticipation in Ellie’s eyes. Every year on June 24th for the last four years Jason took her out for dinner to celebrate their night of their first date after he came back from college. And every year on June 25th, Ellie relayed how wonderful the night had been but in a tone tinged with disappointment. Molly still couldn’t understand what was taking Jason so long to propose to Ellie.

They were perfect for each other. Ellie and Jason were both farm kids, for lack of a better term, both Christians, both loved sappy romantic movies (though Jason refused to admit it), and both wanted to continue farming, either on a farm of their own or on the Tanner’s farm. Molly was tired of facing Ellie Fitzgerald’s forced smile overshadowed by sad eyes every June 25th. She needed to ask Jason what the deal was already. Why was he dragging his feet on proposing to the woman that Molly, and he, knew was the only woman for him?

***

Franny couldn’t get over the size of her grandson. He now towered over her when he’d once been small enough for her to sit on her knee and hear about his day. She guessed him to be over six foot now and maybe — she tipped her head and looked him up and down as he placed a box on her counter — maybe 210 pounds, with a good amount of that weight being muscle.

“So mom sent some of her famous chicken soup over,” Jason was saying, sitting a large sealed bowl on the table. “Biscuits and a side of carrots too.”

He might be big now and speak with a deep, mainly voice, but Jason was still Franny’s sweet boy and she was proud of him the same way she was of Molly.

“That’s very nice, hon’” she told Jason. “You tell Annie thank you for me. What happened? You get the short straw and had to take your cantankerous grandmother dinner?”

Jason laughed, bending down and kissing Franny’s cheek. “Now, grandma, you know I love coming to see you. Aunt Hannah has a PTA meeting tonight so mom offered to cook some dinner to you and I actually asked to bring it.”

Jason sat on the chair across from his grandmother and leaned back, stretching a long leg out in front of him. Franny braced herself. It looked like he was going to launch into a heart-to-heart and she wasn’t sure she was up to it this evening. He folded his hands across his stomach, and she was reminded again how much he looked like his father; her serious, thoughtful oldest son Robert.

And like Robert, Jason didn’t pull punches. “So, what’s going on with you, Grandma? You know you can tell me. I’ve noticed how down you’ve been and we’ve missed you in church.”

Franny avoided his eyes, stirring her spoon in the soup. “I’m fine, Jason.”

“You’re anything but fine. Out with it. Is it your eyes?”

Darn it, that Jason. He always was observant. To a fault in this case.

“How did you know about my eyes?”

“I’ve noticed you bumping into tables when I’ve been here, squinting through your glasses.”

She cleared her throat. “Well, yes, I am concerned about them.”

“Do you think it could be macular degeneration?”

“I don’t know. I’ve heard of that but I’m not really familiar with it.”

“Ellie’s grandma has it. Her eyesight is slowly detorating. But maybe yours isn’t that bad. We can go see Dr. Fisher and it could turn out you just need a prescription.”

“Ah, now. Speaking of Ellie —”

“Grandma, we’re talking about you right now.”

“We’ll get back to that. Let’s talk about Ellie and why you’re not proposing to her.”

“Grandma…”

“Jason, honey, she’s the girl for you. You believe that, right?

Jason laughed softly and cleared his throat. “Yes, Grandma. I really do.”

“Then what are you waiting for?”

Jason softly groaned and covered his face with his hands, leaning his head back. “Grandma. . .”

“Don’t let her get away from you, Jason. Do you hear me?”

Jason looked at his grandma, his face flushed but a smile tugging at his mouth. “Yes, ma’am. I do, but right now we are talking about your eyesight. I can drive you to Dr. Fisher. Let’s find out what’s going on. It may not be as bad as you think, okay?”

Franny sipped from her glass of water, a small smile flicking across her lips. “Okay. I’ll make you a deal, Jason Andrew Tanner. I’ll let you take me to Dr. Fisher if you agree to propose to that lovely Ellie.” She reached her hand out toward her grandson. “Deal?”

Jason tipped his head back and let out a deep laugh. He shook his head and chewed his lower lip for a moment, rubbing his chin as he looked at his grandmother’s hand. He couldn’t lie to himself; he was scared to propose to Ellie in some ways, but he knew his grandmother was right. Ellie was his best friend and the only woman he could imagine being married to.

“Yeah, okay, grandma.” He took her hand gently. “Deal.”

Fiction Friday : The Farmer’s Daughter Chapter 14 Part 1

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn Fiction Friday3 Comments

This story is starting to consume my brain, folks. I have so many ideas, so many stories I want to tell and I know I’m writing a series so I can tell them later but oh man — this is my first series so it’s hard to know when to introduce certain characters and how much of their stories to share because I plan to share more of their stories in the next couple of books.

I like when a story consumes my brain in some ways, especially with the craziness of the world these days. When a story pushes its way into my mind, there isn’t room for too much else and that’s a nice break for my brain (well, except late at night when I’m mulling over a plot point and a scene idea comes into my head at 1 a.m., when I need to be asleep. Then my brain doesn’t get a break at all.)

To catch up with the rest of the story find the link at the top of the page or click here.

Sit-ups. Alex was actually doing sit-ups in his room. What was he even thinking? The problem was he’d been thinking too much since earlier that afternoon.

About Molly. About Molly at the gym and her skin glowing and her top pulled tight against her and ­– he lifted his upper body again, bending his torso to touch his knees.

“Fifty-five,” he gasped, the counting pushing away the images rolling around in his mind of Molly.

He hated working out. He didn’t feel the need to workout, just like he had told Liz, because he worked out enough doing his work on the barn. But Jason had mentioned once that working out helped get out frustrations and Alex was definitely frustrated. He was frustrated at himself for not telling Molly how he felt and he was frustrated with the images that played over and over in his head of grabbing Molly in that gym, yanking her to him and kissing her hard, his hands in her hair, showing her how he really felt about her. He’d imagined doing it so many times it was almost real to him.

He laid back on the floor, breathing hard, hands behind his head and closed his eyes, willing the images to go away. Under normal circumstances he would have shared his thoughts of romantic angst with Jason, but this wasn’t normal circumstances. He couldn’t tell Jason he was struggling with an incredibly strong attraction to his younger sister. Not if he wanted to live for more than five minutes.

His phone beeped and he reached for it, grateful for something to distract him from thoughts of Molly.

Hey, big bro. Still working at that farm?

It was his brother, Tyler.

Alex: Hey, little bro. Yeah. Still working at that office?

Tyler: Yeah. For now. Dad is making it hard though.

Alex: A real jerk, huh?

Tyler: You know he is.

Alex: Why do you stay there? It’s not going to make him care about you, you know.

Tyler: You’re not my therapist, Alex. Chill. Anyhow, I like the work here. Been on any good dates lately?

Alex: No. You?

Tyler: A couple. Actually, one really nice one. She’s a lawyer.

Alex made a face.

Alex: “Lawyer? Run away, dude. They’re black widows.

Tyler: Lol. Not this one, she’s a good one.

Alex: OK. If you say so.

Tyler: When you coming down for a visit?

Alex chewed on his bottom lip, thinking how to answer, knowing “when hell freezes over” was too harsh and would make it sound like it was his brother he was trying to avoid instead of his dad.

Alex: Don’t know. Busy season for the farm. Planting, cutting down hay and bailing it. You should come down and help bail. Be a good learning experience for you to get your hands dirty.

Laugh emojis filled the screen.

Tyler: You were the one who always liked to get his hands dirty, remember? Not me. Have fun, bro. I’ll text you when dad finally fires me.

Alex laid back on the floor and laughed at his brother and the fact he was still chasing after their dad after all these years. It seemed like Tyler would never understand that their dad would never care about anything except his business and the money and maybe an occasional mistress or two. Tyler had told Alex a month ago that their dad was dating someone new again, a blond younger than both his sons. It didn’t surprise Alex. He’d been dating women younger than him even before he had divorced Tyler and Alex’s mom.

There were few things Alex could count on in life but one of them was that his dad would always be in a new relationship. The other was that his dad would never care what was going on in his life. He’d heard from his dad four times since he’d moved in with Jason five years ago. Twice to ask him if working on a farm was really what he wanted to do. The last conversation hadn’t gone well at all.

“You have a degree in computer programing, Alex,” his dad had said over the phone in his familiar depreciating tone. “We could use you here in the IT department. And from there, maybe we can move you up into —”

“Thanks, Dad. I’m good here.”

“Farming, Alex? Really? This isn’t what I had in mind for you when —”

“When you what? Abandoned Tyler and I all those years ago?”

“That’s not what happened, Alex. When you get older, you’ll understand that life isn’t always easy.”

“Yeah, hey, have to go dad. Mr. Tanner needs me to clean some cow poop out of the stalls and I’d rather do that then talk to you.”

Most of Alex’s conversations with his dad ended in similar ways and many times he didn’t bother to pick up the phone at all, on the rare occasion his dad did call. He’d guessed the calls came when his mom nagged his dad to call and act like “a real father.” It was a conversation he’d heard over and over throughout his life.

“Act like a real father for once, Michael,” his mother would say on the phone, when she dropped the boys off for weekends with their dad, or when Alex got in trouble in high school or college.

But Michael Stone had rarely acted like a father and Alex never expected him to. What he’d missed out on in Michael Stone as his father, he’d gained in Robert Tanner.

Robert had shown Alex how to be a husband, a father, and a provider in the five years he’d known him. His tenderness with Annie, his fatherly love for Molly and Jason, the way he treated his livestock and his staff with respect. It was hard for Alex not to compare Robert’s successes in fatherhood and adulthood to the failures of his father. What wasn’t hard was knowing that he wanted to model his life after Robert’s instead of Michael’s.

It had taken Alex a couple of years to realize he wanted to be more like Robert, though, and until then he’d drank too much, flirted with too many women, and lived a life far from Robert’s. There were days he felt like he’d never live up to Robert’s life, though, and days he wondered if he was being stupid thinking he could change, be better and be worthy of the Tanners, especially Molly.

Jason’s voice outside the door startled him from his thoughts. “Alex? You in there? Ellie brought over some supper. You want some?”

Alex wasn’t about to turn down one of Ellie’s meals.

“Hey,” he said, opening the door. “Let me get a shower and I’ll be right down.”

Five minutes later he was sitting at the table with wet hair but more than ready for Ellie’s food.

“Hey, Alex.”

As usual Ellie was smiling and chipper, her long black hair pulled back in a braid down her back. She rushed around the kitchen, setting plates full of food and three plates around the table.

Not only was Ellie perky, pretty, and friendly, but she was an amazing cook. Fried chicken, mashed potatoes, biscuits, peas, and even gravy filled the dishes in front of Alex and Jason. He thought about leaning across the table and asking Jason to remind him again why he hadn’t proposed to Ellie yet, but he thought better of it. He wouldn’t be able to eat with a broken jaw.

Once the food was on the table, Ellie sat down with them and smiled her captivating smile.

“So, how was everyone’s day?” she asked.

Alex shoved a piece of chicken in his mouth, not interested in answering. He knew the question was really meant for Jason anyhow. He was the third wheel.

“Busy,” Jason said. “Still a lot of work to do before we start the haying next week, we have another delivery of the vegetables we have been able to harvest for the farm store, and we’re hoping the rain finally lets up so the corn will grow some more.”

“It really has been a tough year, hasn’t it?” Ellie asked. She reached over and laid her hand on Jason’s, compassion in her eyes. Her small, slender fingers looked almost comical against Jason’s massive, roughed hand.

“It has, but we’ll figure it out somehow,” Jason said, smiling back at her, his fingers encircling her hand, swallowing it.

Looking between the two love birds, Alex felt slightly sick to his stomach but also a pang of jealousy at their obvious devotion to each other. He hoped to have a relationship like theirs someday. Jason and Ellie had dated on and off since high school but exclusively since Jason came back from college. Both of them had grown up on farms, their parents knew each other, and Alex always imagined they’d met at a square dance. Or maybe it was on corn picking day. Either way, they were one of the most perfect couple’s he’d ever seen, which again, made him both sick and jealous.

Unlike the girlfriends of his other friends Ellie didn’t care when Jason hung out with Matt and Alex and didn’t try to push her way into their guys’ nights. She didn’t make fart jokes or participate in burping contests like Molly, but she was still a farm girl, not afraid to get her hands dirty and put in the hard work.   

Alex grinned as he watched them the rest of the dinner, both of them pretty much oblivious to his presence. He looked forward to harassing Jason about them making googly eyes at each other later when Ellie had left.

***

Pulling up to the farm store, Molly sat outside in her truck, bleary-eyed and unmotivated. She’d barely been able to sleep last night, thinking about Alex and his . . . well, weirdness and about how much she did not want to come to the farm store this morning. She propped her forehead against the steering wheel and groaned. She was in no mood to be perky and she needed to be perky by the time the customers arrived. Some days she took on the motto “fake it until you make it.” Some days, face perkiness was the only way to make it through their day.

“Is this the only milk you have?” a woman had asked last week, looking at her over a pair of sunglasses, one eyebrow raised.

“Yes, ma’am. That’s the company the local farmer’s supply to.”

“Okay, because I’m a vegan and I need something that doesn’t come from a cow.”

“Oh. Well, then . . .”

Molly had had to pause because what she wanted to say was “If you’re vegan, why are you in a store that clearly sells cow milk?” but she glanced at the woman’s cart, full of vegetables and flowers, and decided to cut her some slack. At least she was supporting farmers in her own way.

“Then, I’m sorry,” Molly said. “We don’t carry non-diary options at this time. Maybe you can try the local Weis?”

“You know this little store needs to move with the times,” the woman said unloading the items from her cart to the counter. “Milk from mammals is a thing of the past. The only ones who should be drinking cows milk are baby cows.”

“Mmmm,” Molly responded adding up the items on the cash register. “That will be $75.50.”

If the woman hadn’t been spending so much Molly might would have told her to shove off, but the money was welcome and needed in a time when local farmers were struggling. The money from the Tanner’s store didn’t only benefit the Tanners. It also benefited several families who supplied inventory – from locally raised and butchered pork, beef, and chicken to eggs, homemade furniture and hand-sewn blankets and quilts. Losing customers could mean losing income for these families as well.

Thankfully the woman left without anymore comments, though a ‘thank you’ would have been nice.

Some days Molly wondered if this would be her entire life; sitting in her family’s story, being lectured by people who called themselves “woke” about what to eat and how to live. She wondered if she’d always be just the farmer’s daughter.

Walking into the store through the backdoor she heard her Aunt Hannah talking in the office.

“I am nervous about the meeting, yes. And I’m nervous because I don’t know how we are going to come up with the money to pay off this loan.”

Molly paused outside the closed door.

What loan?

“Let’s talk to Bill and see what can be worked out,” her Uncle Walt said softly.

“I would have talked to Bill a long time ago if I had known what was going on,” Hannah said curtly.

“Hannah, Robert told me he explained why —”

“I know,” Hannah interrupted, her voice less tense than before. “I’m sorry. I’m just anxious. I’ve been looking at the numbers this morning. They aren’t great. I’m worried we won’t be able to do this, Walt.”

Numbers? What numbers? Molly’s mind was racing. Was the farm in trouble? And if so, why hadn’t her parents told her?

Her hand hovered over the door handle and she thought about walking in and asking Hannah what was going on, but thought better of it. If her family wanted her to know what was going on, they’d tell her, and, to be honest, she felt too drained to add anymore to her mental que to think about.


A bit of fiction for your Thursday: Rekindle Part 1 and Part 2

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn fiction, Fiction Thursday5 Comments

I wrote Quarantined as a short story back in April. I’ve decided to combine it with a follow-up story called Rekindle and release it at some point on Kindle Unlimited as a novella under the title Quarantined. I shared the first part of Rekindle about a month ago, but instead of linking to it, I thought I’d just share part one and two here today.

I’ll be sharing another chapter of The Farmer’s Daughter tomorrow.

Matt Grant tapped the end button on the screen of his phone and laid the phone on the coffee table next to his laptop and paperwork. He rubbed his hand across his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, feeling a tension headache pulsating in his temples.

He’d just got off the phone with his assistant press secretary, John Chambers. They’d drafted another statement for the media, answering accusations that Matt was still at work in his office in the House of Representatives.

“Just make sure they know I’m at home, self-quarantining, just like my doctor told me to,” Matt had told John, more than a touch of annoyance in his voice.

“I’m making sure,” John said. “I’m assuring them all of us are safely locked away now. Just like the critics seem to think we should be, even though our preliminary tests are inconclusive. I doubt this will satisfy them, but we can try.”

With the statement to the press out of the way, Matt’s mind wandered back to his brother Liam, who he needed to call and check on. Liam’s preliminary test had been positive, which was what had triggered this latest scandal in the first place. Matt was sure Liam would be fine but there was a small part of him that worried about his little brother catching the virus that was sending others to ICUs across the country. Matt wasn’t only worried about Liam’s physical help though. He was also worried about his mental and emotional health.

Liam had told Matt months ago that his marriage was in shambles. Matt had barely listened, sure his brother and sister-in-law would work things out. Matthew knew Liam still loved his wife Maddie, and Maddie still loved Liam. If they didn’t still love each other they wouldn’t be struggling so much with the idea of divorce.

It couldn’t be easy being quarantined together during a pandemic with all the issues they had with each other but Matthew was glad they were. Maybe they’d work out some of those issues and save what had been a great union at one time. As it was, their divorce proceedings had been delayed because of the pandemic. As Matthew saw it, this was a way for them to buy more time and truly be sure the divorce was what they wanted and he told his brother as much on the phone just now.

What made Matthew uncomfortable wasn’t only that he could hear pain mixed with longing in his brother’s voice when they had talked on the video call. It was also that he wondered, worried even, that maybe his marriage was bleeding out in the same way his younger brother’s had and he had been too wrapped up in himself to realize it.

Matthew and Cassie hadn’t had a lot of time alone lately. They actually had barely had time to even speak lately.

Their life had been a runaway train since the election two years ago and now it was picking up speed again as Matthew’s re-election campaign was underway. In Washington he faced daily drama and conflict whether he wanted it or not. Becoming the youngest head of the Intel Committee four months ago hadn’t helped slow things down any either.

Then there was this crazy never-before-seen virus that seemed to come out of nowhere a few weeks ago and now had him at home with his family, waiting to see if he developed any symptoms after being exposed to it more than a week ago and maybe again a few days ago. He was convinced if he had the virus, he would have developed symptoms by now, but he stayed home to make sure things looked good to the press and his constituents. Making sure things “looked good and right” to others seemed to be 90 percent of his job anymore, leaving little room for him to actually do good and right and accomplish the things he’d been elected to do.

All the drama in the House of Representatives left him little time to focus on Cassie or the kids and he regretted that. He regretted it even more when his brother’s march toward divorce had become a growing reality. He’d never pictured Liam and Maddie divorced. They were the perfect couple. They’d weathered some hard storms, but Matthew had been sure the challenges would bring them closer together. In fact, he thought it had but now he realized he’d been too wrapped up in the campaign and job to notice how much they’d actually drifted apart.

Sure, Liam, as his press secretary, spent many late nights working with him, but he imagined when he went home he and Maddie made up for lost time. Instead Matt had just learned that Liam had been working at home as well, passing out in his office, leaving Maddie alone most of the time, writing her romance novels and reaching for companionship on social media.

Matthew and Liam’s parents had been the perfect example of a stable, loving marriage. Married 54 years, Tom and Phyllis Grant made it clear each day how much they loved each other. Sure, they had argued, even in front of their children, but those arguments had been resolved usually before the sun had gone down and with a fair amount of ‘making up’. Matthew and Liam, and his sister Lana had been grateful the majority of that making up had gone on behind closed doors.

Standing from the couch to stretch, Matthew looked out the window at his own three children playing ball in the backyard and felt a twinge of guilt. Getting pregnant and carrying three babies to term had been easy for him and Cassie. They’d never had to face the heartbreak of not being able to get pregnant or of a miscarriage. Matthew felt like he’d taken being able to become a father so easily for granted.

He looked around his living room, well decorated with expensive furniture and commissioned paintings, and thought about how much of his life he had taken for granted, especially lately. He’d taken for granted the newer model car he drove, the highly-rated bed he slept on, the full refrigerator, and even fuller bank account.

He rubbed his hand along his chin and turned toward the kitchen where Cassie was making a late lunch for him and the kids. Her dark brown hair fell to her waist in a tight braid, the bottom of it grazing the top of the waistband of a pair of red workout shorts. Her favorite T-shirt, featuring Johnny Cash wearing a cowboy hat, fit her medium build well, hugging all the areas it should, especially for the benefit of her husband admiring the view that he hadn’t admired for a long time.

He watched her stirring the taco meat in the skillet and his gaze traveled down her legs and back up again, thinking about the first time they’d met in an English lecture at college.

“Pst.”

He’d leaned over the desk to try to get her attention, but she was intently focused on the professor. He had tried again.

“Pst.”

She glared over her shoulder at him.

“Do you have an extra pen?” he whispered.

She rolled her eyes, ignored him, tapping the end of her own pen against her cheek gently as she kept her eyes focused forward.

“It’s just,” he leaned a little closer so he didn’t interrupt the other students. “I left my pen back in my dorm room and I want to make sure I’m taking notes.”

He was glad he had leaned a little closer. She smelled amazing. What was that perfume? He had no idea but it was intoxicating. Maybe it was her shampoo. The fluorescent light from the lecture hall was reflecting off her luxurious black strands of hair and he pondered what it would feel like to reach out and touch it. But he didn’t reach out and touch it. That would be weird. Even a 19-year old college freshman like himself knew that.

A year later, though, he was touching that soft dark hair while he kissed Cassie for the first time outside her dorm after their third date. And over the years he’d sank his hands in that hair in moments of tenderness and moments of passion. A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth as he watched his wife and thought about a few of those moments, including that time in the back of his new car after he’d landed that job at the law firm in Detroit.

He could deny it. It wasn’t only the material things of his life that he had taken for granted. He had also been taking Cassie for granted. For far too long.

***

Cassie Grant turned from where she was cooking lunch for her husband and children and watched her husband pace back and forth in the living room.

She knew he was worried about the situation with the virus, the way his office had been thrown into the middle of an unexpected scandal. She was sure he was also worried about whether he’d develop symptoms of the virus, pass it on to the children, and if his other staff members would be infected, now that it looked like Liam’s test for it was  positive. Too little was known about how the virus affected the majority of people, although early reports stated that most cases were mild.

And then there was Liam and Maddie’s marriage, which was about to end. Matt and his brother had been raised by parents who had been married 54 years. The brothers and their sister weren’t a product of divorce and Cassie wondered if the prospect of Liam’s marriage ending was weighing on Matt’s mind along with the virus.

Cassie wasn’t sure what her husband was thinking anymore, though, because Matt hadn’t been talking to her much lately. He’d been busy at the office, putting out fires, which seemed to pop up several times throughout the day, thanks to a 24/7 news cycle that never let up.

She couldn’t deny that she missed seeing her husband. She missed their date nights and family movie nights and him just being around the house when she needed him. But she knew that he was doing what he thought was right to try to make a difference for the people who elected him.

Turning the burner down she leaned back against the counter and watched Matt turn and look out the window where their children were playing. Her gaze fell on the back of his head, on his soft brown hair and she remembered with a soft laugh that day in college when they’d been studying in a private room on the first floor of the university library. The love seat they were sitting on was soft, plush, light maroon.

Papers and books were spread out in front of them and Matt was debating the importance of some moment in history to the future of something or other. Cassie didn’t know. She’d tuned him out long ago. She’d been watching him, though, amazed at how impassioned he was about the topic at hand, at the muscles in his jaw, at his long, strong fingers, at a strand of hair that had fallen across his forehead that she desperately wanted to push to the side. And she’d definitely been watching his mouth, his lips looking amazingly kissable.

Cassie was sick of listening to him quite frankly.

“Cassie, don’t you see that —”

Matt’s words were cut short as Cassie leaned forward and pressed her mouth to his, touching the side of his face gently. She pulled back and looked at him, her mouth still inches from his.

“Oh. Um. Okay. Was I talking too —”

“Just shut up, Matt.”

He laughed softly and she caught his mouth with hers again, sinking her hands into his hair, moving closer to him at the same time he moved closer to her.

He slid his arm around her and held her to him gently as the kiss continued.

“So, I guess you weren’t only interested in me as a study partner,” he said breathlessly a few moments later.

“Is that the only way you were interested in me?” she asked, her fingers still in his hair, playing with it.

A grin tugged at one corner of his mouth. “What do you think Cassie Henderson?”

She answered with another kiss, and they leaned back against the seat as they kissed, forgetting they were in a study room in the library.

Three years later they were married, a year later their first, a boy, was born. That had been 15 years ago and now they had three children, an expensive home in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., and Matt was a U.S. Congressman while she stayed home with the children, her career as a social worker long behind her.

Sure, some of that initial passion was gone, replaced with the everyday and the mundane, but Cassie recognized this as a season – a season during which marriage became more about comfortable moments and less about desire. It wasn’t that she didn’t have desire for Matt; it was just that they never seemed to have time for it anymore.

She startled out of her thoughts, smelling something burning.

“Oh no!”

She rushed to the stove and turned it down, smoke billowing from the skillet where she’d been browning meat for tacos. She moved the skillet to another burner and groaned. It looked like they’d be having peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch today.

The blaring of the smoke alarm only made the humiliation that much worse.

Matt rushed into the kitchen, waving a newspaper at the smoke. “Whoa there! Let’s not add burned down house to our list of bizarre occurrences for the month.”

“Sorry. I guess I got distracted.”

Matt pulled the battery from the fire alarm. “No big deal, right? It might can be salvaged.”

He grimaced at the charged edges of the meat in the pan. “Or maybe the dog would like a treat.”

Cassie sighed. “I’m not sure even Barney should eat that. Anyhow, I’ll make the kids some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. You want one?”

“You know what? Yeah. I haven’t one of those in years. Crustless?”

Cassie shook her head. “What are you, 6?”

“Just for sentimental reasons,” Matt said with a wink. “My mom used to make them that way for me.”

Cassie pulled the bread out of the bread box and Matt slid the peanut butter and jelly across the counter.

“So, being quarantined with me has to be pretty boring for you, huh?” he asked.

“Not really,” she said with a smile, spreading peanut butter on slices of bread. “But it is weird seeing you here this time of day or, well, much at all.”

Matt winced softly. “Ouch.”

“Well, it’s not your fault. You’re busy.” He couldn’t read her tone of voice but sadly it seemed more apathetic, more along the line of “that’s just the way it is” than anything else.

Matt leaned back against the counter, sliding his hands in his dress pants pockets. He looked at his dress shoes, chewing on his bottom lip, thinking. First, he thought about how absent he’d been in his family’s life. Then he thought about how he was quarantined at home but for some reason he was still wearing dress shoes, a dress shirt and tie, as if he was on his way to a meeting or a congressional hearing.  He had apparently forgotten how to relax, unwind, and kick back.

He cleared his throat. “I guess I can go to change into something more comfortable. It doesn’t look like I’ll be doing anything business related for a few days anyhow.”

When he returned wearing a pair of sweatpants and a Garth Brooks t-shirt the children were already around the table, munching on sandwiches and drinking chocolate milk.

“Daddy! Sit next to me!” his youngest, Lauren, called, tapping the back of the chair next to her.

“Okay. I can do that.”

His son Tyler eyed him over his glass of chocolate milk as he drank from it. At the age of 13 he waffled between being interested and detached most of the time Matt interacted with him.

“It’s weird seeing you here,” Tyler said bluntly as Matt sat down.

Matt looked into his son’s bright blue eyes, noticing the acne starting to form along the top of his forehead near his closely cropped hairline.

Matt wasn’t sure how to take the comment. Did Tyler mean “good weird” or “bad weird”? Should he ask? Did he even want to know?

Luckily, he didn’t have to decipher his son’s meaning for long.

“But it’s a good weird, right?” Cassie asked, as if she could read Matt’s mind, and after 15-years of marriage, she probably could.

Tyler grinned. “Yeah. It’s a good weird. Just weird.”

Gracie, the middle daughter, smiled sweetly at Matt and then giggled around a mouthful of sandwich.

“I like you being here, Daddy.”

Matt smiled back at her, reaching across the table to cover her hand with his. “I like it too, sweetie. Maybe something good will come out of all of this, huh? At least you will all see me a little more often.”

His gaze focused on Cassie and he saw she was watching him, but again he was having a hard time reading her feelings. Was she happy they’d all be spending more time together? Or was the extra time with him simply a reminder for her how much she didn’t need him around anymore?

Fiction Friday: The Farmer’s Daughter Chapter 13

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn Fiction Friday16 Comments

As I’ve mentioned here before, I usually make changes to the final product from what I share here on the blog. I move chapters around, add parts, delete parts, fix typos (as best as I can), try to fill plot holes and simply tighten the writing before I kick it to Amazon or wherever I choose to publish it. I made changes from what I shared on the blog to both of my previous books, more to the second than the first one. I already know there are going to be a lot of changes to The Farmer’s Daughter before the final publication in the Fall of 2020 (you know, if the planet doesn’t catch fire by then with the way 2020 is going).

I also know that The Farmer’s Daughter is going to be one in a series, but I don’t know how long the series will be yet. It’s going to be at least three books so far, with a possible novella about Franny and Ned when they were younger. The first is, of course, The Farmer’s Daughter, the second will be The Librarian (which I sneak peaked here on the blog, but the final book will definitely change from what I shared as an excerpt here), and the third will be The Pastor’s Wife. I’m not sure where else I’ll go from there.

I don’t ever expect to be a successful or best-selling author. Honestly, I don’t care anymore. I used to. But . . . well, things change. Life changes and what we think is important in life changes. I’m just having fun now. I hope some of you are having fun reading what I’m writing and even if only a couple of people let me know they’re enjoying it, I’m okay with that. Anyhow, enough rambling, here is Chapter 13. It’s pretty long this week, but I decided not to break it into two parts.

You can catch up with the rest of the story HERE or at the link above.

Annie looked at herself in the mirror attached to the oak vanity in her bedroom and frowned. Then she wished she hadn’t frowned because when she frowned more wrinkles cut into the skin between her eyes and around her lips and even under her chin and down her throat.

She jutted her chin into the air, remembering how her mom had once advised her to lift her chin this way every day to help stretch the skin there, keeping it supple, smooth, and free of sagging. She hadn’t been consistent in the practice over the years, which must have been why wrinkles were beginning to form there and remind her of her age.

Touching her fingertips lightly on the slightly graying tips of her dark hair, Annie was transported to a time when her hair wasn’t beginning to show gray and lines didn’t crinkle at the corners of her eyes. A time when Robert Tanner had swept her off her feet by riding a horse up the hill to visit her after school each day.

Soft, warm kisses were exchanged underneath the apple tree and plans for the future were made while sipping lemonade and swinging on the front porch swing.

“How many children do you want?” Annie slid one leg up under her on the swing and turned toward Robert, anxious for his answer.

“I’ve never thought about it much, but I’d say at least two.”

Hair a mix of blond and brown fell over his forehead and he swept it back with his hand and smiled, looking at her to see if his answer had been the right one.

“A boy and a girl?”

“Sure.  Or just two boys to work the farm.”

Robert was still obsessed with the idea of being a farmer like his dad, but at least he wanted two children, just like her. She wanted one of each, though, or even two girls.

“Girls can work a farm just as well as boys,” she told him.

He’d grinned and stolen a kiss. “I’ll be happy whatever sex they are and how ever many they are, as long as I have them with you.”

Three weeks after graduation, Robert had begged their parents to let them get married.  His parents had told him: “If you think this is right, then you have our blessing.”

He approached Annie’s parents next. “Mr. and Mrs. Bentley, I know I’m only a poor farmer’s son but I love your daughter and I would do whatever I can to make sure she is taken care of, financially and otherwise.”

Her father, a machine operator for most of his life, who knew what it was to be poor and wanted more for his daughter, had refused. Repeatedly.

Her mother watched them together on the porch one night when they kissed good-bye with a fast burning passion and knew she needed to change her husband’s mind — and fast.

She turned toward her husband with wide eyes. “I have a feeling we’d better let those two get married or they may have to get married.”

Annie’s father, Leon, had looked at his wife with a bewildered expression.

“What are you saying, Eleanor?”

“I’m saying those two are about to burn up with desire for each other and I would rather they do so within the bonds of marriage.”

Leon had been shocked, embarrassed, and ready to grab Robert Tanner by the collar of his shirt and toss him in front of a combine, but he’d finally agreed with his wife. A wedding was set for the end of the summer.

Annie’s mom had been right. Three months after their wedding night, Annie was pregnant with Jason and at the age of 19 they were parents already. Molly came five years later after a couple of miscarriages that dashed the Tanners hopes of having a large family.

Those years had been tough years, of course, but Annie never regretted marrying Robert or having children at such a young age. She was grateful that Robert and God had been with her through it all. Annie pulled the pins from the bun she’d put on top of her head earlier in the day to keep the back of her neck cool. She let her long black hair fall around her shoulders and reached for the wrinkle cream she knew wasn’t really working but at least made her skin feel nice and soft.

She could hear how tired and sore Robert was even before she turned from her vanity mirror to look at him. His steps had faded to shuffles, each shuffle followed by a sharp intake of breath.

She exchanged the wrinkle cream for the pain ointment squirting it into her hand as she turned to face him.

She gestured toward the bed. “Sit on the edge over here so I can get this on your back.”

Robert grimaced as he lifted his shirt over his head and did as he was told. “Yes, ma’am.”

He winced, arching his back when cold lotion touched his skin. His muscles relaxed, though, when Annie’s hands pressed expertly in all the right spots, as if she could read his mind on where the pain was.

“Oh, that’s it. Right there,” he said, closing his eyes, enjoying the feel of her hands on his skin.

“You work too hard,” Annie said, her hands warm across his skin.

Robert laughed. “Is there such a thing as working too hard for a farmer? We don’t have a choice.”

Annie frowned as she rubbed the ointment into the skin on the back of his neck. “The news about Larry really shook me you know.”

Robert nodded, his eyes still closed. “Yeah. Me too.”

“Robert . . .” she slid her arms slowly down his shoulders and upper arms “You’d talk to me if . . . I mean, before you ever . . . if you ever get that down you’d —”

Robert turned quickly to face Annie, opening his eyes. “Annie. I’d never do that to you and the kids. Never. I’m not blaming Larry. I don’t know what was going through his mind that night, but I’m not doing that to you and the kids.”

He was startled to see moisture in Annie’s eyes as she studied his. “Sometimes when people are depressed,” her voice caught with emotion. “they do things they never thought they’d do.”

The skin on Robert’s palms were rough against her cheek but his touch was gentle as he cradled her face.  “Annie, I’ll never leave you that way. I promise. Do you hear me? I’ll never leave you that way.”

Annie nodded, tears spilling from her eyes, down her cheeks. Robert’s thumbs gently wiped the tears. He pressed his mouth against her forehead.

“I love you, Annie.”

“I love you too.”

She managed a smile and then closed her eyes to try to gather her emotions. His mouth warm and soft on hers was a pleasant surprise and she kept her eyes closed, reveling in a moment they found little time for anymore. She opened her eyes and smiled as he pulled away slightly, then flushed warm at the look of desire in his eyes, passion igniting where it often smoldered these days.

When his mouth was on hers again, his hands sank into her hair, pushing it back from her face. She leaned into him as the kiss deepened, hands against his chest, finding comfort in his bare skin as one hand slid down her back, resting in the small of it and the other roamed where the hands of long-time married men roam when they want to show their wives how much they still love and need them.

***

Molly’s breaths came out in short gasps as she pushed down on the pedals of the elliptical. How in the world did she let Liz talk her into this? Her muscles ached. Sweat pooled in places she didn’t even know she had places for it to pool. Her chest was constricting, but she was pretty sure she wasn’t going to die. Pretty sure anyhow. At least not yet. Thirty more minutes of this, though, and she would probably be leaving the gym in an ambulance.

 Liz, on the other hand, working out on the same equipment next to her, was smiling as she walked, watching some morning news show offering advice on “the latest fashions for the rest of your summer.”

Liz’s long dark hair was pulled back into a cute ponytail that bounced as she walked. Other parts of Liz were bouncing too but they were all the parts of a body that should bounce on a woman, unlike Molly who hated the way the extra weight on her bottom bounced as she lifted and lowered her legs.

Molly glanced to her right and caught sight of town librarian Ginny Jefferies, brilliant green eyes focused straight ahead, a determined expression on her face as she pedaled ferociously on a stationary bike. Molly couldn’t help wonder why she was at the gym. Tall and slender, Ginny seemed in better shape than most women her age, which Molly guessed to be between 50 and 55.

Maybe Ginny had gained a little weight in her belly and hips that only she could see, but it didn’t seem to Molly like she’d gained enough to be pedaling with so much drive. Then again, not everyone worked out to lose weight. Some wanted to maintain their weight or – Molly looked at Ginny’s scowl and tight jaw – simply get their frustrations out.

“How you doing?” Liz asked, barely out of breath.

“Just fine,” Molly gasped out.

“Pace yourself,” Liz offered. “You haven’t worked out in — how long has it been?”

Never, thought Molly.

“A while,” she gasped out loud.

Glancing in front of her, slightly to the left, she watched a barrel-chested man lift weights, his muscles rippling and straining with each curl. His workout tank was stretched tight against his bulging pecks and rippled six pack.

He was huge.

Too huge.

Molly didn’t like men whose muscles were so big they had to turn sideways to fit through a door. Jason was almost there, but not yet, thankfully. Alex wasn’t anywhere near that muscular. Sure, he definitely had well-toned biceps and his chest and back were sculpted in the image of near-pure masculine perfection as if they had been hand carved by an expert stone carver  —

Molly shook her head. Where had that come from? One minute she was wondering if this workout was going to kill her and the next moment she was remembering that day last week when Alex took his shirt off while lifting hay bales in the barn and she’d been unable to look away. She definitely needed to take a break and drink some water. She was beginning to lose her mind.

Snapping the top of the plastic bottle, Molly sat on a chair behind Liz and sucked half the bottle down. The water tasted more amazing than water had ever tasted to her before. In front of her, Liz’s tiny bottom was practically at Molly’s face level. Molly rolled her eyes, internally grumbling about how Liz had never struggled with her weight in the entire time they’d known each other.

Reflections of sunlight bounced across the gym equipment as the front door opened and someone walked in. Molly was too tired to see who it was. She tipped her head back and closed her eyes, wiping her face with the towel the man at the front desk had handed her when she’d signed in.

“What did Liz do, talk you into torturing yourself too?”

She opened her eyes and jerked her head up at the sound of Alex’s voice, her heart pounding. What was he doing here? Standing with the gym equipment as a backdrop, wearing a pair of dark sunglasses, a faded pair of jeans, a faded-white cowboy hat pulled down low on his head, and a black t-shirt that fit him amazingly he looked like he was on his way to a magazine shoot. He was insanely gorgeous, if she did say so herself and she was mortified that he was seeing her while rivulets of sweat traveled down her skin and onto her clothes.

 She didn’t want Alex to see her this way, even though he’d probably seen her just about as fat and sweaty as she was now when they were working in the barn together on those hot summer days. She stood and self-consciously pulled at her workout t-shirt as if she could pull it down enough to hide her bulbous bottom and thighs.

“Yeah, I guess,” she answered weakly, looking quickly at the floor. “It has been a bit torturous.”

She couldn’t see his eyes when she raised her gaze, but she felt him looking at her through the sunglasses. He propped his hands on his hips. “So, is this going to be a normal thing from now on? You working out?”

Molly shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe. It’s a good thing to get in better shape . . . I guess.”

Liz stepped off the elliptical, snatched her towel from the chair next to Molly’s and smiled. “Hey, Alex. I don’t usually see you here. What’s up? Here to work out?”

Alex snorted. “Yeah right. The only time you’ll see me exercising is if I’m running from something. Jason left his sunglasses here this morning after his workout. I was heading to the hardware store, so I told him I’d swing in and grab them.”

He looked back at Molly, slid his sunglasses off and hooked them in his shirt’s front pocket. “So, what? You’re doing this so you’ll look like a twig like Liz?”

“Hey!” Liz cried. “Unless saying I look like a twig is compliment, I take offense to that.”

Alex smiled sheepishly, a soft pink shading his chiseled cheekbones. “Sorry, Liz. You look great. Really. It’s just. . . well, not every woman has to look the same.”

Molly swallowed hard as Alex’s gaze returned to hers’. Her breath caught at the tone of his voice when he spoke, soft and tender. “I think you look fine already, Molly Tanner.”

He reached over and pushed a strand of hair that had fallen from her ponytail behind her ear, his expression serious, his fingertips grazing her cheek. Molly’s skin buzzed where his skin touched hers. She could barely speak, suddenly flustered.

“Well, it’s – it’s not all about looking different. Sometimes it’s just about feeling better.”

Alex laughed, the sunlight catching his sparkling blue eyes. “Do you feel better? You don’t look like you feel better. You look exhausted.”

Molly smiled weakly. “Well, I will feel better . . . eventually.”

Alex’s grin faded into a more somber expression. “Then keep it up, by all means.” He took a step closer to Molly and the intensity in his expression startled her as much as his earlier comment.

 “Just do it for yourself, okay?” he said softly. “Not for anyone else.”

Molly nodded, still trying to figure out why his tone had faded from teasing to serious. “Okay.”

Alex smiled again his eyes focusing on hers for a few seconds before he turned toward the front desk. “See you ladies later. I’d better get Jason’s sunglasses back to him before he goes blind in this sunlight.”

Molly’s heart was pounding and she knew it wasn’t only from the workout. Liz stood between her and her view of Alex.

“What was that?” Liz mouthed the words with wide eyes.

Molly shook her head and shrugged at the same time. “I have no idea,” she mouthed back.

And she truly had no idea. What alternate universe was she in right now?

“See you at the barn, Molly,” Alex called as he opened the front door. He slid his sunglasses back on, flashed a grin and waved quickly before walking onto the sidewalk. Molly’s eyes followed him as he walked toward his truck, losing sight of him when a delivery truck paused at the red light and blocked her view.

“Molly!” Liz practically screamed her name, though at a lower volume than an actual scream. “What. Was. That?!”

Molly rolled her eyes. “Oh, Liz. You know Alex. He’s just a huge . . .flirt, or goof, or however you want to say it.”

She turned to pick up her water bottle. Alex was a flirt. But why was he flirting with her?

Liz grabbed Molly by her shoulders as she turned back around. “Molly Tanner! That man is hitting on you! I heard him. He said you look fine. Like fine fine.”

“Liz . . .”

Liz waved her hand at Molly then held it a few inches from her face. “No. Not this time. You can’t explain what just happened away. Alex Stone was trying to tell you something.” She winked. “Like, for one, that he likes you just the way you are.”

Molly laughed at her friend, but had to admit the exchange had been . . . how would she even describe it? Odd? Strange? Tantalizingly awesome?

“Liz, I’m sure it was nothing. Alex is just super friendly and a big joker. I think he was just —”

“He was clearly hitting on you, Molly,” Ginny Jefferies interrupted as she walked by, water bottle in one hand and towel the other. She didn’t look back, opening the water bottle and drinking it as she walked to the front counter to sign out.

“See?” Liz said. “Even Ginny can see it and she’s — well, experienced and full of wisdom.”

Ginny laughed as she turned to face Liz and Molly, patting the back of her shoulder length, dirty-blond hair. “Good save, Liz. I was pretty sure you were going to say ‘old.’”

Liz laughed. “No, actually. I might have thought it, but I wasn’t going to say it.”

Ginny smiled and looked at Molly. “Molly, he’s hitting on you. From the limited amount I know about him, I don’t know if that’s a good thing, so — and let me get all motherly here for a moment — just be careful, okay?”

Molly nodded. “Thanks, Ginny. I appreciate it.”

Molly knew Ginny and her mom were around the same age and Ginny had daughters of her own. Her opinion may have been tainted by maternal tunnel vision, but she meant well.

“What do you know about Ginny?” she asked Liz when Ginny had left. “She seems so, ‘put together’ for lack of a better word. Most of the time anyhow. Lately, though, something seems off. She seems sad, or melancholy, or … I don’t know how to explain it.”

Liz waved her hand in front of Molly’s face, bringing her gaze back from watching Ginny walk down the sidewalk to Liz’s wide-eyed expression. “Don’t change the subject, Molly. What are you going to do about Alex?”

“I’m not going to do anything about Alex. I’m going to go home, take a shower, head to work at the farm store and later I’m going to go work with him in the barn like I always do.”

Liz sighed. “Molly. Molly. What am I going do with you?”

Molly smiled. “You’re going to buy me a cup of coffee before I head home. That’s what you’re going to do.”

Liz rolled her eyes. “Fine. But if I do that then you’re going to consider that Alex Stone may actually be interested in you as more than simply someone who can help him hook up the cows for the milking each day.”

She looked at Liz as they walked.

“Well, if you insist on making me talk about Alex, I’m going to make you talk about Matt. Are you going to go out with him again or what?”

Liz opened the door to the coffee shop and sighed. “I’m just friends with Matt. It’s not like that. He’s easy to talk to and I like hanging out with him but — he’s Matt. I just always think of him as a brother more than a boyfriend. Maybe because he is friends with Jason and I just remember him as that weird military obsessed guy from high school.”

“He’s a nice guy, Liz.”

“Yeah, I know, but he’s also a cop. I don’t know if I can date a cop. I mean, what if I develop more feelings for him and then I’ll just worry about him out there on the streets . . .”

Molly snickered. “On the streets of Spencer? Where what — he might get punched by a drunk guy down at Mooneys or get kicked by a cow?”

Liz turned from the list of coffee flavors behind the counter and tipped her head at Molly. “Molly, you really are naïve about what happens in this county aren’t you?”

Molly shrugged. “Probably, but I prefer being clueless.”

Liz ordered herself an herbal tea with honey and a dark chocolate mocha for Molly.

“I’ll make you a deal,” she said handing Molly’s coffee to her. “You agree  to talk to Alex about the firemen’s appreciation banquet and I’ll consider going out with Matt again. Deal?”

“Liz . . .”

“Molly . . .”

Molly rolled her eyes. “Fine. I’ll talk to him. But do more than consider going out with Matt. Just go out with him already.”

Liz finally agreed, but on her way back to her car she knew she couldn’t keep her promise to Molly. She couldn’t tell Molly the real reason she didn’t want to go out with Matt. It had nothing to do with him being someone she’d known in high school or even with him being a police officer. It had everything to do with the mistake she’d made and didn’t want Matt, or even Molly, to know about.

And Molly knew she couldn’t really talk to Alex about going to the firemen’s banquet. She didn’t want to risk the relationship they had – an easy-going, teasing friendship that she knew might evaporate if she made it look like she was interested in him in way other than a friend and co-worker.