the green bowl in front of her. “She earns her monthly allowance picking, so she hangs out a lot with the students and the backpackers, and…well, I don’t like it, but there isn’t much I can do about it. I hope that when she’s old enough to drive, she’ll get a job in town, but of course my husband and my father-in-law want her to help on the farm.”
“She mentioned that she’d been to stay with her Dad.”
Karen glances up at me, and at first I take it to be a warning to back off, but it is in fact an expression of relief.
“Yes. I was married before, briefly. I was too young, and—well, she was an accident.”
I try to picture this wiry, self-effacing woman, with her lean, capable hands, when she was eighteen or nineteen. Pregnant, under pressure to marry, or maybe not even under pressure, maybe happy, and eager to have a family and a home.
Light-years away from my own experience.
“Why are you worried about her?”
The busy fingers stop and sink onto the wax tablecloth.
“Well—” But what she means is not, Well, let me think, but Well, how long have you got?
“I mean, she’s a teenager,” I rush on. “She has to give you attitude.”
She smiles, but it is an unconvincing effort.
“I was a student at the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences,” she says. “I wanted to go into landscape contracting. Julianne’s father and I met as interns working at the state zoo. I was pregnant six weeks after we met, married two months later, and divorced after less than two years. Didn’t finish my degree, broke with my parents. I was working at the food market in town when Howie and I met. You can imagine that his parents were not pleased when he brought me home.”
“I don’t know. Degree or no degree, you must know a lot more about farming than other women Howie might have dated.” I’m still busy assimilating this new and unexpected information.
“Oh, yes, my father-in-law couldn’t hear enough about those fancy new ideas that people taught at college.” I didn’t think Karen Walsh capable of such withering sarcasm. But then I clearly underestimated her all round. “You’re right, she’s at a difficult age,” she agrees, changing the subject, “and nobody knows what she would be like if she wasn’t—you know. The odd one out. Don’t let her adopt you.”
“Adopt me?” I laugh, secretly relieved that Karen has identified what I suspect might become a problem.
“She has this thing about New York City. Of course she’s never been to a place larger than Shaftsboro, except once on a school trip to D.C. It’s all windmills. But if she makes a nuisance of herself, just tell me—oh, that’s the car. Listen, you’re welcome to stay for dinner, Anna.”
We look at each other for a moment and, I think, understand each other tolerably well. So I return to my desk for an hour, then change into a clean blouse and join a very polite Walsh family at the long wooden table in the garden, between the apple trees that are hanging heavy with fruit. There is fried chicken, which I have to decline, rosemary potatoes, pea mash, buttermilk biscuits, tomato and bean salad, and warm blueberry pie. I have more carbohydrates on my plate than Irene eats in a week.
“Are you happy with that, ma’am?” Pop Walsh nods skeptically at my food.
“I am, sir, thank you.” I’m not sure whether he is mocking me with the courtesy title, but I’m not taking any chances. Karen calls me Anna now, and so does Jules, who turns up late, and whose air of defiance I decode as worry that I may have squealed on her. I haven’t, but I’m still annoyed about the sticky puddle of cola on my porch, so I don’t reassure her with the smile she clearly hopes to catch from me. Instead, I stroke the dogs, of which there are two, Olive Oyl, the black giant schnauzer I met when I first came, and a chocolate-colored pointer called Jeanie, who is only moderately interested in me. Olive is still very much the exuberant puppy, with her paws on my thigh to see what I am about. I would indulge her, but the moment Pop spots her, he firmly orders her away from me.
“I don’t mind,” I assure him.
“But I do. We don’t spoil our dogs.”
I change tack, turning to Howie. “So tell me what I’m eating.”