LITMIR.BIZ

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far enough. It’s time for you to come home.”

      Lorna turned to her aunt. Past Eve rose the white house, once so plain and unadorned, but now distinct. Not far were the sturdy trees that would hang heavy with fruit at summer’s end. She had land. She rested her hand on her abdomen. She had life.

      And, now thanks to her impulsive announcement, she also had an employee—an irritating, provoking, wisecracking charmer who probably wouldn’t stay any longer than to earn enough for a night of tall drinks and easy women. Yet, as of three minutes ago, she’d had someone on her side for the first time since she decided to live her life by her rules—not her family’s.

      She stretched her arms out as if to embrace all around her. “I am home, Aunties.” For the first time, the words were real.

      Eve threw up her hands. “Headstrong. Just like your father.”

      Lorna laid a hand on her aunt’s arm. “Just like my father’s sister.”

      Birdy agreed with an appreciative laugh. Eve scowled at both of them.

      “Come.” Lorna linked her arms through theirs. “Let me fix you a cup of tea and you can tell me what other news there is besides my mental instability.”

      Eve tsked with disapproval, but she watched her niece with worry.

      Lorna squeezed her arm. “Don’t fret, Aunt Eve. I’m fine.”

      “We can’t help ourselves, Lorna. You’re our little girl,” Birdy appealed. “We’re scared for you.”

      She pulled her other aunt close. “I’m scared too, Aunt Birdy. But for the first time in a long time, I feel…” Lorna tipped her head back, inhaled. “I feel like I’m breathing. Breathing deep.”

      Birdy looked at Lorna with bright eyes.

      Aunt Eve snorted. “Foolishness. Farming. You’re not a farmer.”

      “Truth is, Aunt Eve, I’m not sure who or what I am.” Lorna held on tight to her aunts’ arms. “Until about six months ago, I spent my whole life doing what one man said, hoping to please him. The next six months I spent trying to please another. And I never had an ounce of luck with either. You know why?” She stopped. Her aunts looked at each other, then warily at their niece. Lorna smiled, understanding even though no one else did. “I finally realized I can’t please anyone else if I’m not pleased with myself.”

      “This?” Eve gestured impatiently. “This makes you happy?”

      Lorna surveyed the land she was already in love with. She nodded, smiling. “Yes. This.”

      “Your father loves you, Lorna,” Birdy put forth. “It’s just that your mother…” Sadness dimmed her eyes.

      “I know.” Lorna squeezed her aunt’s arm. “I know he loves me in his way, but I also know he’s never gotten over losing his wife. And hard as I’ve tried, there’s nothing I can seem to do to make it up to him.”

      “Well, for starters, you could’ve listened to him when he told you your late husband was after your money,” Eve suggested. “Would have saved us all a lot of trouble.”

      “I know my marriage was a mistake.”

      “Hell’s bells, the whole county knows that.”

      “But I don’t regret it. It was that mistake that got me here.”

      “Welcome to Paradise,” Eve pronounced.

      “Hush. Let the child be.” Birdy’s tone was so uncustomarily stern even Lorna looked at her with surprise.

      Birdy smiled at her niece. “Let’s go have tea. I’ll tell you all about the garden club’s election. Myrtle Griffin declared it a coup.”

      “Myrtle Griffin wouldn’t know a coup if it jumped up and bit her in her girdled rear end,” Eve declared.

      “She called it a ‘coup.”’ Birdy stood her ground. “And Pauline Van Horn said it was an abomination, an affront to the very principles on which the club was founded.”

      “Oh no. Sounds like she’s throwing her hat in the ring for town clerk again next year. If the woman spent less time posturing and more time tending her dahlias, she wouldn’t have to blame the failure of her garden on everything from the European earwig to the ozone layer.”

      “Dianthus,” Birdy corrected. “She has trouble each season with her dianthus.”

      “Dahlias,” Eve insisted.

      Lorna smiled, the sound of the Aunties’ incessant quarrels as familiar and comforting as a mother’s kiss.

      It was heading toward the day’s darkening hour when the aunts said their goodbyes, Eve adding admonishments and Birdy shiny eyed, looking at Lorna with silent entreaty. Lorna kissed them both, promising to see them soon, and hurried back to the house. She’d find her new employee after she figured out what she would do about supper. Foreman. What had possessed her? He’d want a raise now before he did a day’s work. Well, he’d just have to be satisfied with the title.

      She opened the yellowed refrigerator. Maybe if she cooked him a great meal, he’d forget about wages. But what could she cook him? She’d taken nothing out, not expecting to have to feed anyone except herself and her appetite tending toward the odd lately. She looked in the small freezer. There was a steak—not T-bone but not chuck either. She could add some fried onions, perhaps a potato or two if they hadn’t gone and sprouted in the pantry closet bin. And there was that bread-making machine she’d bought on sale right after her elopement. Six weeks later she’d been a widow. Never even had time to get the machine out of the box.

      She bent down to the bottom cupboard and found the bread maker behind the stacked bowls and glass casserole dishes. She slid it out, took it from the box and set it on the speckled counter. It was so white in this old kitchen. She stepped back. She should rough up those cupboards, paint them cantaloupe. She could already picture the faux wood doors gone, their dark surfaces replaced with an orange good enough to eat. She lay her palms soft to her stomach. Her late husband had been a cad, and she’d most definitely been an even bigger fool, so starved to hear the words “I love you,” she believed the first man who’d uttered them. Yet, as she’d told her aunts, her mistakes had brought her here. Now she just had to remember the lessons she’d learned, the vows she’d made. She moved back to the counter to start supper. One glance at Julius Holt with his cocksure grin and easy laughter in his eyes and she’d remember just fine.

      THE BACK OF THE HOUSE SAGGED and wood showed bare where a piece of siding had ripped off and never been replaced. Julius stomped up the stairs, noting with disgust the second and third ones were loose. Enough work around this sorry place for ten men. But as he reached the back door, he smelled a bakery. Through the door’s window, he saw Lorna standing at the stove, her stern gaze turned to the sound of his heavy steps. Still surprise flashed in her eyes, as if she hadn’t expected him. He understood. He was just as surprised to find himself still here. With a queenly wave, she motioned him to come in.

      He opened the door into a kitchen that smelled of sweet heaven, the aroma of baking bread as thick as hay ready for cutting. He stood at the entrance on a brightly woven square of rug that he knew had to be Lorna’s touch.

      “Your company’s gone?” He noted the linoleum was lifting in one corner.

      She nodded and glanced at the clock over the refrigerator. “Supper’s at five-fifteen. You’re early.” There was no surprise in her eyes this time. Only a scolding in her voice that made him smile. She turned her narrow back to his grin. She was a prickly one, all right. Man could hurt himself on all those sharp bones and hard lengths.

      “So you meant it when you said I was the new foreman?”

      “I always say what I mean, Mr. Holt,” she told him without turning around.

      “So that’s the secret of your charm?”

      She

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