Small Town Cinderella

With an hour to go before dinner she dragged the picnic table into the shade of the maples, as promised, angling it so no matter where the nephew sat he would be able to see the perennial garden, where sweet-smelling daylilies and clumps of bright yellow heliopsis were coming into their prime.

It was an ordinary, weathered picnic table, more than weathered, really—in a few years it would be sinking into the ground, its very own compost pile—but with a bit of care it looked beautiful. Her mother’s Irish linen cloth on top, a bowl of deep pink roses from the Henry Kelsey climber in the middle, sparkling glass and silverware, and the Wedgwood china her father had given her mother as a birthday present the year before he died. There was something about linen and bone china outdoors, with grass underfoot and branches overhead. No one, regardless of his personal deficiencies, could look at this table with anything but approval.

Hamish got up and gave himself a shake just before Emily heard tires in the driveway. The nephew was early, or she was late. She smoothed her hair and pulled at her dress, fanning it against her skin, then went to greet her guest.

He stood beside his car with his back to her, looking at the house. Today he had dressed more casually, but city casual, in lightweight khakis and a shirt that looked so soft she wondered if it was made of silk. She wished she’d had time to shower.

“Matthew. You found us.”

He turned, and in that moment her mental image of him, tended overnight, dissolved. The coldness that had surprised her yesterday, and that awful evaluating expression, were gone. He’d shaved, and he looked rested. Approachable.

Her body started humming about possibility again. She told it to give up. He was here for one week—less than that now—he had shown no interest in her, and he had been pleasant for all of thirty seconds since they met.

“Mrs. Bowen told me it was the house with all the trees around it,” he said. “Luckily, she added it was the third house with all the trees around it.”

“My aunt and uncle and my grandmother are the ones before us. You see why they call it Robbs’ Road.”

“Your very own road. The Robbs must be big fish.”

“Little fish, but there’s a big school of us.”

He held out a plastic-wrapped rectangle. “This was in my uncle’s freezer. Can you make use of it?”

It was a pumpkin loaf, like the ones Jack pressed on her when his crop outstripped consumer demand. Since his first harvest everyone he knew had received more loaves, pies and muffins than their appreciation for pumpkin could accommodate. “Lovely. We’ll have it with tea after dinner.”

Hamish hadn’t barked when Matthew arrived, but he kept skulking with his low-to-the-ground herding posture, circling from Emily to the newcomer and back.

“It’s all right, Hamish. Matthew is invited.”

“Is he a good watchdog?”

“He doesn’t get much testing. If he likes people he lets them do whatever they want.” She gave the dog a reassuring pat. “He growls at the cat all the time. I hope he can do it with people. My aunt and uncle’s house was broken into the other day.”

Matthew’s voice changed. “Anything taken?”

“Not that they could see. Things like that hardly ever happen around here.”

“You’re worried?”

She looked at him curiously. His manner wasn’t protective, but it ranged in that direction. Short, to-the-point questions, a sudden return to yesterday’s hardness. She found she didn’t mind it when it wasn’t aimed at her.

“Not really. There’s nothing to take. No fabulous gems. No Group of Seven paintings.”

“That’s not what most thieves are looking for—so I hear, anyway. Your laptop or your DVD player will do nicely.”

“We don’t have those, either.”

He smiled as if he thought she was joking. “I really have come to the backwoods, then. Next thing you’ll tell me you don’t have a telephone or the Internet.”

“We do have a telephone.”

“No Internet? Really? Are you Amish?”

Emily smiled. “Wouldn’t the phone disqualify me?” It was good to see him feeling a little out of his element. Not quite so in charge. “Daniel doesn’t have an Internet connection, either. If that bothers you the library in Pine Point has computers for the public to use.” She started toward the house. “Why don’t you come in and meet my mother?”

They walked side-by-side up the driveway. She caught a glimpse of the cat peering from behind an oak. The animals were behaving as if they had never seen a visitor. ‘Never’ was stretching it, but she hadn’t introduced anyone to Julia for a very long time. She wondered if it would be a good idea to prepare Matthew and, if so, how much to say.

“Maybe I should mention…my mother isn’t comfortable with new people. Right now I think all her sociability has been used up by my cousin’s wedding. Don’t worry if she ignores you. It isn’t personal.”

“Is there anything I can do, or not do, to help her feel more at ease?”

Emily shook her head, but said, “It helps if you don’t stare at her.” She touched his arm. “Thank you.”

“For?”

“For asking.” She led the way up the cement steps and pulled open the door to the kitchen. Her mother waited by the stove, standing almost at attention. She shifted when they came in, then stilled, her body more rigid than before.

“This is Matthew, Mom. Daniel’s nephew. Matthew, my mother, Julia Moore.”

Julia’s eyes flashed his way, then settled on a patch of air near him. Her voice loud from nervousness, she said, “You look like Daniel.”

“If that’s so, I’m lucky. Uncle Daniel is considered the height of Rutherford evolution.”

Julia smiled at the wall.

She likes him, Emily thought, then quickly told herself there was no need to be pleased.

It was even hotter in the kitchen than it was outside. “I’m sorry to disappear, but I really need to get out of these work clothes. Mom, could you fix us all something to drink?” She turned to Matthew. “There’s lemonade or iced tea. I picked up some beer, but it might not be very cold yet.”

“Lemonade sounds great.”

Emily left the two of them getting in each other’s way beside the fridge and nipped into the bathroom for a quick wash. There she came face-to-face with her reflection.

Oh, no. She’d greeted him like this? Stood beside his car chatting and feeling like a hostess, like this?

Not all her hair had frizzed into an auburn puffball. Sweat flattened some of it to her forehead. Her chin was smeared with icing sugar where she’d scratched a mosquito bite, and raspberry juice and flecks of meringue dotted her dress. And she had thought he wasn’t polite.

At this stage, brushing would only make matters worse. She flattened the puffy sides of her hair and fastened it behind her ears with bobby pins, then scrubbed her face and neck and dabbed concealer on the bite. There. All the way from grubby to almost clean in less than a minute.

Matthew and her mother were still in the kitchen. Emily sprinted up the stairs to her room, leaned against the door to make sure it clicked shut, then pulled off her dress and threw it on the bed. She stood in her underwear with a feeling she’d never had before, a complete and blank-headed uncertainty about her clothes. She’d never understood how women could frantically claim they had nothing to wear. Now she did. She had nothing to wear for a home-cooked meal with Matthew Rutherford.

She took a flashlight from her desk and went into the closet. It was tucked under the eaves, large but unlit, like a cave. The ceiling sloped steeply so that dresses and slacks fit at one end, blouses in the middle, and nothing but pairs of shoes at the other end.

The jackets, skirts and slacks she wore to work would be too hot and too businesslike, her jeans and shorts too casual. Her supply of flowered, plaid or paisley sundresses, comfortable and cool to wear over coordinating T-shirts, were as shapeless as sacks. Why hadn’t she noticed that before?

One of the dresses was a solid blue, almost the color of gentians. She tried it without a shirt underneath. It looked dressier that way, but still casual and summery. She buckled on low-heeled sandals—the only pair that had never seen garden soil—and hurried back downstairs.

WHILE MS. ROBB made herself presentable and her mother behaved as if he didn’t exist, Matthew took a good look around the kitchen. There was nothing worth noting. It wasn’t impoverished, or up-to-date, or luxurious.

As far as he’d been able to tell that went for all the properties owned by the Robbs. The relatives who had just got married—the children’s author and the computer whiz pumpkin grower—were giving the original homestead a new lease on life, but it had obviously been moldering away as you’d expect of a house over a hundred years old.

He wandered into the living room, an action that got Mrs. Moore’s attention. Was there something she didn’t want him to see?

Ah, the books.

He went to the shelves for a closer look. They were mostly hardcover, some very old and a bit bedraggled—first editions? He could feel Mrs. Moore behind him, emanating silent protest.

“Treasure Island.” He pulled it from its place and opened it to check the copyright date. Reprinted 1931. Probably not valuable—he didn’t know enough about that to be sure. “I must have read this three times when I was a kid.” He smiled over his shoulder. “You, too?”

“I haven’t read it.” Her voice and posture were stiff.

“You should. You won’t be able to put it down.”

“One day.” She almost snatched it from him, then examined it carefully, checking for injury. He moved along and chose another book, small, with a faded, wine-colored cover. This time she rescued it before he got it open.

He turned at a sound on the stairs. There was Ms. Robb, clean and tidy and unduly alert, looking quickly from him to her mother and back. He got it. Don’t touch the books.

“This could be a lending library.” He smiled, trying to put them both at ease. “You two must own a copy of every book in the world.”

“It’s my mother’s collection. She’s getting there.”

“I don’t want every book. Just the main ones.”

“The main ones?” he asked.

“The ones that changed things.”

“How do you decide?”

She slipped the books he’d handled back into place, making sure they were lined up with the others, then left the room without another word.

He raised his eyebrows at her daughter. “Don’t touch?”

“It isn’t the end of the world if you do.”

But it was. The mother seemed every bit as obsessive as he’d been told. The daughter, an anxious caregiver. He felt a moment of sympathy, but got rid of it. Objectivity was going to be difficult. He needed time to get used to how gentle she seemed, how soft.

“You must have chosen that dress to go with your eyes.”

The comment startled her. It startled him, too.

“I chose it because of the sale tag.”

“A lucky chance, then.”

His voice was acting on its own, sounding almost intimate. He went to the kitchen, expecting physical distance to bring emotional distance with it. “Can I help with dinner?”

She followed, bustling around, and loaded him with serving dishes to carry outside. Every couple of minutes she threw him puzzled glances, and he found himself wanting to tell her that everything would be all right.

BY THE TIME they sat under the maple trees, Julia on one side of the picnic table, Matthew on the other and Emily on the very end of her mother’s side in an attempt to sit beside both, or neither, she was upset with herself for judging him so quickly the day before. After all, he had just finished a long, hot drive, and some kind of problem in his family had brought him here.

He was different today. Relaxed, friendly to her mother, helpful with dinner…and then there was that moment in the living room. She still felt a catch in her chest remembering the way he’d looked at her when he commented on her dress. Her eyes were not the color of gentians, she knew very well they weren’t, but she felt less embarrassed now about the mess she’d been in when he arrived.

He hadn’t volunteered any more information about himself, though. Not where he was from or what work he did or where Daniel had gone. Most people would have covered all that in the first few minutes. Then it would have been easy to move to more personal things, like whether visiting Three Creeks alone meant there was no woman in his life and where he belonged on the Rutherford family tree. Her only clue to that was his Ontario license plate.

She waited until all the food had been passed around once. “Matthew, do you belong with the Toronto batch of Rutherfords, or the London batch, or the one that’s scattered around the Ottawa valley?”

“I grew up in Ottawa.”

His voice was nice when he wasn’t being guarded. Deep, but quiet and warm, not loud like Uncle Will’s. “Right in the city? I’ve never been there.”

“You’ve never been to the capital?”

“Is that awful? I’ve never seen the Parliament Buildings or the tulips in spring.” The longest trip she’d taken was to Alberta with her mother to visit Susannah. “We should travel more, shouldn’t we, Mom? Maybe one day we could go to Europe, like Liz and Jack.”

“There’s no need to go to Europe,” Julia said flatly.

“Well, not a need—”

“You sit for hours. It’s bad for your legs.”

“Liz is the cousin who just got married?” Matthew asked.

Emily turned to him, glad to avoid getting into details about blood clots. “They’ll be spending two months exploring the ruins of British castles.”

“That’s an unusual honeymoon.”

“Jack has been surprising us since he first moved here. Right, Mom?”

Julia didn’t answer, so Emily kept going. “All the farmers in this area plant grain, but Jack put in blueberries and pumpkins, then Christmas trees. Everybody thought he was crazy. You have to wait ten years to harvest them.”

“Lots of people must do it.”

“If they can afford to wait.”

“And Jack can?”

Emily nodded. “We all thought he’d go bankrupt. Then we found out he’d already made his fortune with computers.”

“An actual fortune, or just a nest egg?”

“A fortune.” She offered Matthew another potato scone. “My other cousin, Susannah, had an even odder honeymoon. She and Alex went to the Gobi Desert to dig for dinosaurs.”

“Adventurous.”

She smiled at her mother. “Doesn’t Europe sound tame after that? If we went, you could visit museums and see real papyrus fragments.”

“Behind glass.”

“Or we could go to Ireland.” One line of Robbs had come from Waterford. “I wonder if they have tours of the crystal factory. You’d like that.”

Julia perked up. She began to talk about the history of crystal, how it was made and whether the lead content was dangerous. She went on to list books she owned that were connected to Ireland in any way. Matthew listened intently, and when she switched to the botany lesson she gave whenever she was feeling comfortable and had half a chance, he showed an interest in the bark, leaf shapes and insect hazards of every kind of tree in the yard.

Emily handed him the plate of cold fried chicken. “You didn’t mention yesterday where Daniel’s gone.”

“Didn’t I?” With murmured thanks, he took the plate. “This is great chicken. Tender, crisp, not greasy.”

“Almost good for you.”

“Did Edith make it?” Julia asked.

“No, Mom, I did, this morning.” Her mother knew that. She’d been researching Egypt in the next room, complaining about the danger of fat droplets reaching her books.

“But the bean salad, that’s Edith’s.”

Emily moved the chicken to the other side of the table and passed Matthew the tossed greens. “For him to miss the wedding I’m afraid it must have been something serious.”

“There was a health emergency in the family.”

“Oh, dear. I’m sorry.”

“An aunt. He wanted to be with her.”

Any aunt of Daniel’s must be ancient. “I’m still surprised you came all this way to watch the house. Mrs. Bowen would have been happy to keep an eye on the place.”

“You’re collecting information, aren’t you?”

She couldn’t tell if he minded. “Isn’t it more of an exchange?”

“I’ll bet everyone’s waiting at the coffee shop to hear what you find out.”

“Of course not!”

Julia said, “Three Creeks doesn’t have a coffee shop.”

Matthew looked amused at that. “I guess it is a long way to come to house-sit—”

“There’s the counter at the post office,” Julia went on. “People get coffee there. And gossip.”

Matthew smiled at Emily, as if her mother had made his case. “We were planning a visit anyway. I’m researching our family history.”

“You don’t seem like a family history buff.”

“No glasses?”

“Not old enough and…not female enough.”

“You’ll have to come to a genealogy meeting sometime.”

“Are you trying to tell me genealogy meetings are full of athletic men in the prime of life?” She had said what she was thinking without realizing how flirtatious it would sound. Maybe not such a bad thing. He was looking at her again the way he had in the living room.

Julia reached for the quiche. “My husband was interested in genealogy.” She cut a thin slice and paid attention to lifting it without losing a crumb. “He liked reading the births written in my mother’s Bible. He liked the way my family uses the same names over and over.”

It was the longest speech Emily had ever heard her mother make about her father. She didn’t know anything about his relatives. “Is there a Moore family Bible?”

“This looks like Edith’s quiche.”

“No, Mom, it’s mine. Remember? I stocked the freezer with them in the spring, for hot days like this.”

“It’s sure good, whoever made it,” Matthew said. “Emily, would you be able to show me around sometime?”

“Around Three Creeks?”

“Around this farm. It could stand in for the Rutherford homestead, couldn’t it? Give me a sense of the way things were for my family—if you and your mother don’t mind.”

“I’d be glad to, but there isn’t much to see.”

“Would tomorrow work for you? After lunch?”

Julia said, “She’s busy tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow afternoon would be fine, Matthew.” More than fine. Her grudging sense of duty had disappeared. She wanted to spend time with him.

She stood up, gathering plates. “I’ll get dessert.” No doubt her mother would find it necessary to remind them Jack had baked the pumpkin loaf, but there was no way she could give anyone else credit for the raspberry meringue torte.

MATTHEW DIDN’T STAY LONG after dinner. He helped with the dishes and then Emily walked him to his car. Croaking sounds came from all around them.

“Isn’t it supposed to be quiet in the country?”

“The creek is full of frogs and toads. They make quite a racket in the evening. And then when you’re trying to fall asleep there’s the crickets and the whip-poor-will.”

He stood beside the car door, but didn’t move to open it. “I’ve never heard a whip-poor-will. Never heard of one, either.”

“It’s a bird. A plain, clumsy brown bird that whistles its name. At night, unfortunately. You probably won’t hear it in town.”

“I guess that’s a good thing. Thank you for dinner, Emily. It was a terrific meal. A group effort, I take it.”

She made a small sound of protest. “My grandmother and my aunt donated a couple of things. Not as much as my mother wanted you to think.” What her purpose had been, Emily didn’t know. “Thank you for being so nice to her.”

“Nice?”

“Not everyone is. She makes some people uncomfortable.”

“I can see she has her own style. That’s good, isn’t it? A little variety? I enjoyed meeting her.”

He seemed to mean it.

“You’ll have to let me know if there’s anywhere else you’d like to go while you’re here—for your family history, I mean. There’s a pioneer museum in Pine Point that might be helpful.”

“I’d appreciate that.”

Matthew smiled and got into the car. Emily waited while he backed out of the driveway, and waved when he started toward the creek road. She spent most of the walk back to the house wondering why there had been no warmth in his eyes when he had smiled so kindly.

CHAPTER FOUR

ALL JULIA WANTED to do in Pine Point was get to the Encyclopedia Britannica. She agreed grudgingly to stop for a midmorning ice cream cone, then refused to have one and stood silently while Emily tried to enjoy her single scoop of maple walnut in a waffle cone.

“Done?” she said, as Emily took the last bite.

“You know, you could be a little more cooperative. I’m not going to stand beside you groaning while you read ten pages of fine print about obscure Egyptian publications—”

“Publications isn’t the right word. There wouldn’t have been actual publishers.”

Unsure whether fondness or exasperation was her dominant emotion, Emily started for the library, barely listening as her mother explained about pharaohs and government ministers and clerks who knew how to write hieroglyphics. As soon as they stepped inside the building, Julia stopped talking and headed unswervingly for the reference section. Emily wandered off to find paperbacks suitable for long afternoons stretched out in the relative coolness of the porch.

When she had a pile of books, enough that she could discard any that didn’t catch her interest when she settled down to read, she made her way to the checkout desk, past book carts in the aisle, people reading in chairs and a toddler half-asleep on the floor. The winding route took her almost to the door of the adjoining computer room. Feeling a pleasant little jolt, she stopped. Matthew was there, intent on the screen of a microfilm reader.

She stood watching him, enjoying the focused stillness of his body. Most of the people she knew were solidly one way—-of course they had variations in their personalities—but she could say without hesitation that Aunt Edith fussed and Liz dreamed and Martin teased.

Matthew seemed different. Cold and distant on one hand; warm and kind on the other. Analytical, with an air of professionalism, but physically strong, not bookish. In spite of the suit that had annoyed her for no good reason, she couldn’t picture him doing desk work.

He was a puzzle. Maybe that was why Hamish didn’t trust him. Yesterday he’d lowered his head whenever Matthew had spoken to him and kept his tail still. The dog had met people he didn’t like before, very nice people. He wasn’t that keen on Aunt Edith. It made Emily wonder, though. Two days, and two versions of Matthew. Why assume the one she liked was more real than the one she didn’t?

JULIA PILED the reference books she’d borrowed from the library onto the kitchen table. She shuffled through them a few times, rearranging them, then placed her catalogs and several sharpened pencils beside them.

“I’ll just put my books away upstairs, Mom. Then I’m going out to the garden.” Emily wanted to pick radishes and green onion to add to the leftover fried chicken sandwiches she planned to make for lunch.

There wasn’t much time before Matthew came, but she ended up staying outside longer to deal with some weeds. She had ignored them for the past few weeks, in the name of nice fingernails for the wedding. The cat sat next to her and watched as she pulled plantain and pineapple weed from between the carrots, sometimes batting a paw at a trailing root.

“That’s it,” Emily said softly. “Kill that root! You’re such a hunter. Oh, dear.” She’d got a baby carrot by mistake. She rubbed it clean and ate it in two bites, then picked more, thinning the row. “We’ll take some to Mom. There’s nothing like baby carrots to cheer a person up.”

“Talking to the cat now?”

Emily jumped. Martin stood at the edge of the garden, his truck parked behind him. “You startled me!” She got up, brushing dirt from her knees.

He climbed through the rails of the fence and stepped over the rhubarb to reach her. Every time she saw him he looked more strained. He and Liz’s brother, Tom, were working toward organic certification. It would be a few more years before they got there and in the meantime they were using grain profits to feed cattle they couldn’t sell. Given the date, she thought she knew why he’d come.