LITMIR.BIZ

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company’s offer, then its ultimatum. He’d upset the widow Hansen and made her older son a pedestrian. That was quite enough for one day.

      * * *

      WITH CHRISTY, David and Renee piled into the station wagon, Britt drove the three miles into Tyler. While the children teased and argued in the middle seat, she pushed in a Clint Black tape about “living and learning” and turned up the volume. The music didn’t deter the children one bit but it helped her ease the knot of worry that had begun to grow in her stomach a year ago when Jimmy died, and that now threatened to cut off her breath and smother her heartbeat.

      Not that she and Jimmy hadn’t struggled before. Life for the small farmers all across the country had come down to a basic truth: success was being able to break even; profit was an impossibility. And for her and Jimmy, debt had been a fact of life since she inherited not only the farm when her father died, but the high cost of new milking equipment. The four days Jimmy had spent in intensive care after the accident had almost bankrupted her.

      When he’d been there by her side, dark-haired and lanky and determined to look on the bright side, she’d felt as though she could handle anything. But since he was killed, she’d lost sight of the bright side. Lakeside Farm’s cash flow was down to a trickle, and it was impossible to hire someone to do all that Jimmy had done. Already putting in a full day herself, she tried to take over as many of Jimmy’s chores as she could manage and still be there for her children. But she felt like something from one of the taffy pulls described in Great-Grandma Bauer’s diary—as though she’d been stretched so far she was now stringy and limp.

      “Mom!” Christy shouted. “You passed Miss Gates’s house!”

      Britt broke out of her thoughts, quickly checking her rearview mirror before braking to a halt.

      “She’s not Miss Gates anymore,” Renee corrected importantly. “She’s Mrs....?”

      “Mrs. Forrester,” Britt supplied, backing up to a curb canopied by tall old maple trees just acquiring green buds. “No, Chris!” she cautioned as her daughter would have opened the street-side door. “Get out on the curb side.”

      “David’s in the way.”

      “David, honey, tuck your feet in.”

      “If she wasn’t so fat—”

      Whap! Sheet music to “Dance of the Butterflies” connected with David’s cheek as Christy stepped over him and past Renee, who had raised both feet onto the seat and covered her head.

      “Christy,” Britt began to scold, but the child was already running up the walk to her piano teacher’s charming cream-colored house. She knew she should correct David for insulting his sister, but lately it’d become such a major event when he said anything that she hated to discourage him, even for saying something negative. She decided to conserve her energy on all counts. She was bound to find something that would require it later.

      “I’d like to live here,” Renee said as they proceeded along the street. Britt glanced out at the fussily trimmed and gabled Victorian houses, some with orderly picket fences and others with gardens that would soon be ablaze in a riot of colors. Already daffodils and tulips were blooming everywhere.

      “You couldn’t play with the calves if we lived in town,” Britt pointed out, fighting the concern she felt when any of her children expressed a desire to live anywhere but on the farm. “And you couldn’t walk down to the lake.”

      “Yeah,” Renee agreed vaguely, gawking out the window, “but I could walk home from school for lunch. And I could go to the drugstore and buy candy bars after school like Jenny Linder does. Can I buy one today after ballet?”

      Pleased to be able to grant a modestly priced request, Britt turned toward the commercial district, then pulled up in front of the newly built concrete-block building that housed the Y.

      David leaned over the seat to kiss her on the cheek, then climbed past Renee and pushed the door open.

      “I’ll pick you up in an hour,” Britt reminded him. “Wait right inside for me.”

      David waved assent, then ran into the building.

      A block farther Britt stopped again, this time in front of a pink Victorian trimmed in purple with a wooden sign marked Teddy Bear Tap and Ballet.

      Renee leaned over to peck her mother’s cheek and said, when Britt opened her mouth, “You’ll pick me up in an hour and wait right inside the door.” She smiled impishly. “Right?”

      Britt patted her curls and held her face against her own for an extra moment. The most cheerful of her children, Renee had unknowingly saved her sanity more than once during the past year. “Right, baby. Have fun.”

      Britt wondered how many errands she could fit into the quiet hour afforded her. She had to stop by Brick’s to see if he could do anything with Matt’s bike, but that would still leave her time to check at the bank about her loan application. She decided against that instantly. She didn’t have the heart to face more rejection this afternoon.

      She would visit Judson Ingalls and see if he’d completed the nutritional evaluation of her cheesecake sample.

      A little stir of excitement distracted Britt momentarily from her worries. Her cheesecake was wonderful; everyone said so. It sold out regularly at the lodge, and Marge Peterson claimed that customers arrived early or else had to fight for the dozen cheesecake Danishes sold every morning at the diner.

      As Britt drove to Ingalls Farm and Machinery at the edge of town, she frowned at the road, thinking that there had to be something big she could do with it. At the moment she was simply toying with the idea of wider distribution. But that meant more time baking and less time running the farm. She simply couldn’t spare the hours.

      Unless the nutritional breakdown was so outstandingly low fat, low calorie and superbly nourishing that she had no choice but to market aggressively. Britt laughed as she pulled into the F and M parking lot. At least her sense of humor was still alive.

      * * *

      SHE FOUND JUDSON in his office in a rear corner of the building. He was in shirtsleeves, his tie pulled away from the open collar of his shirt, glasses far down on his nose as he studied a piece of correspondence. He looked up at Britt over the glasses as she peered around the door.

      “Britt! Come in,” he said, standing and coming around the desk to draw her into the office. “I was going to call you in the morning. I put a report together for you today.”

      “Wonderful.” She smiled, touched by his gallantry as he retained her hand until she was settled in one of the two chairs that faced his desk. She could haul fence posts by herself and he knew it, but he considered it important to see her properly seated.

      Descended from one of the Tyler founding fathers, Judson was a generous, well-respected citizen who worked hard for his community, but whose favorite place was the laboratory off his office where he’d tinkered and dreamed most of his life.

      Tall, gray-haired and gravelly voiced, he was possessed of a touching kindness and caring that reminded Britt sharply of her father. Judson had worked with her dad on several service projects. Despite the differences in their social standing, they’d become friends. When her parents were killed in an auto accident right after Matt was born, Judson had taken care of all the expenses the insurance hadn’t covered. When Jimmy died, he’d paid for the funeral. Those were kindnesses she would never forget.

      “How are you, first of all?” she asked, sincerely interested. There was always a hint of tragedy and sadness behind the kindness in his eyes. Now, since the traumatic discovery of his ex-wife’s body during the renovation of Timberlake Lodge, once Judson’s home, he’d seemed to retreat even more deeply within himself.

      Tyler was abuzz with speculation. Britt ignored it, figuring the truth would come out one day, and that it probably wouldn’t be the lurid tale gossip had embroidered.

      Though she didn’t believe for

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