Local Foods 01 A Tine to Live, a Tine to Die by Edith Maxwell

Author:Edith Maxwell [Maxwell, Edith]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780758284617
Publisher: Kensington Publishing Corp.
Published: 2013-04-11T21:00:00+00:00

Cam checked the old clock on the back wall of the barn. Two forty-five. Fifteen minutes until she could be done with today, at least the public part. She looked at the shareholder sign-in sheet. Stuart Wilson was again the only one who hadn’t shown.

She sank into a lawn chair next to the farm table, the last bunch of asparagus forlorn in its bucket of water, the last of the mesclun looking a little tired at having been pawed through for more than two hours. Cam had been pawed through, too. She slouched, her feet in their muddy work boots extending in front of her, crossed at the ankles.

The complications of the day elbowed each other for her attention. Wes and Felicity telling her Pappas was curious about where Lucinda had gone last night. Well, where had she gone in such a hurry, right in the middle of the dance? What had happened to pique Pappas’s curiosity? Cam hadn’t gotten a chance to ask Lucinda this morning, and she had left an hour ago, during the busiest pickup time. Bev Montgomery had been so unpleasant to Cam, for no reason she could think of. Alluding to her past with Albert. Glaring at Lucinda and maligning her, really, with that talk about “her own kind.” Cam found thinking about all of it more exhausting than the physical work of farming.

A sweet whiff of the antique narcissus mixed with the pungent spring garlic and with the smells of the barn: old hay, honest dirt, machine oil, and dust-filtered sunlight. She inhaled deeply and closed her eyes, folding her hands over her stomach. Time to just be in the present. Farming was what she’d wanted, after all, complications be damned. Life could be a lot worse.

At the slamming of a door, her eyes flew open. Stuart dashed into the barn, stopping when he saw her.

“Sorry. Late again.”

“No, you’re good.” Cam nodded at the clock, then gestured at the table. “It’s all here for you.”

“Oh, hey, I forgot my bag. Do you have a couple I can use?”

Cam rose and dug several plastic grocery bags out of the assortment she kept in a box under the table for just that reason.

She sat again and watched as Stuart bagged the mesclun. She winced when he loaded heavier items on top of the tender greens in the bag. His hand shook slightly as he extracted the flowers from their water.

“Looked like you had a good time at the festival last night, dancing and all.” Cam smiled at him.

Stuart laughed. “Uoh, I’m not too bad at it. I used to go to Cambridge Contra every week. I really get into dancing.”

Cam raised her eyebrows.

“My old dad would be turning in his grave if he knew, though. Would have called it a sissy thing to do.”

“Really?” Cam didn’t dance, but it was because of her uncoordinated, gawky moves when she tried, not because she didn’t believe in it.

“Yeah, he was military all the way. Didn’t believe in dancing, flowers, none of the finer things in life.

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