"Then they just stopped coming up?"

"Yeh-up. No word, no nothin'. Just stopped coming." He shrugged. "I guess that's the way it is with rich folks. Maybe they just get bored. Still..." Seth scratched his belly then his head, ending the pause with a slap of his cap against his thigh.

"This still be her place and she's a nice lady."

"I understand, Seth."

"Figured you would. Well, better get down to dinner before Esther starts to calling. Lord, how that woman can holler."

C.W. walked over to the hay pile and resumed a steady rhythm of throwing hay.

Seth slipped his hat on, paused, then added, "If you feel like jawin' a bit more, you know where to find me."

C.W. stopped and faced the old man. His chest swelled.

"Thanks, Seth. I believe I will."

Seth gummed a bit, then gave a brief wave. Before he left the barn, he threw a final sentence out. It seemed to reach C.W. after Seth had left the barn.

"You're a good boy."

The few words touched C.W. in a deep place that no words had reached in a very long time. It had been a very long time since anyone had called him a good boy. Or since he had thought that of himself.

C.W. sat on a bale of hay and rested his head in his hands.

The blue skies outside the great room were turning misty, signaling the end of her first day home in the mountains. Birds skittered in the sky, frantic at being away from home so close to dark. Nora went out on the deck to watch them arc, swoop, and bank turns, understanding how they felt. The warm day was becoming cool night. The sweet day songs had ceased; only the nighthawk, with its long pointed wings, kept up its nasal peent, peent. From the north, a wind was picking up and carrying off the first of an army of leaves. In the air, Nora could taste sweet rain.

She wrapped her arms around her shoulders. She should go in, but the cloud mist on her face refreshed her. So she stood out on the deck awhile longer to stare out at the mountains, dark purple now under lowering clouds. The clouds would soon swallow the house. Thunder rumbled in the valley.

"I'm safe now," she called back to the nighthawk. "I'm already home."

Speak them she might, she didn't feel the words in the red hush of dusk. As she stood alone in her large, unfinished, mountain home, she thought if this were a nest, she'd be wildly searching for twigs, twine, and mud to patch together a safe haven against the incoming storm. But she was a woman, with neither the practical skills nor the money needed to finish the endless projects she'd discovered today.

She had forgotten how much remained to be done. Miles and years had fogged her memory in a romantic vision of country life, leaving unremembered unpleasant details such as unfinished floors and ceilings. Memory was selective, she realized.

Esther, however, had reminded her all too clearly in her forthright manner earlier that afternoon.

They'd been walking up the short flight of stairs to the great room. On this first day, Nora had made overtures to a possible new ally. A friend, a woman friend, would be welcome. So she sought out Esther's opinions on what she'd do in the house, even though she already had her own plan firmly set in her organized mind.

Esther was not easy to approach. She was definite about her opinions and did not couch them with "I think" or with questions. She could be intimidating.

"I don't know what you're going to do all by yourself in this big house," Esther said bluntly.

"There'll be no shortage of projects to keep me busy. Besides, I'm used to living alone."

Esther raised her brows. "Well, it's going to be pretty lonely up here when you get snowed in. All those windows will make it cold too."

"I suppose," Nora replied, scanning the high ceilings and huge plates of gla.s.s that surrounded the great room. She'd look into sewing some insulated shades right away.

"All these cement floors," Esther said in the lower levels, "get icy, and there's nothing you can do to warm them up till summer-and that don't come till July."

Nora's gaze swept the pitted gray cement floors of the lower floor. This part of the house was low on her priority list of improvements.

"I'll have to get wood floors put in, someday." In the meantime, she thought to herself, a row of carpet samples might do.

"You'll probably want the upstairs john done too, I suspect."

"Not this year."

"That means you'll have to run down three flights of stairs just to pee? Long trip in the middle of the night." Esther laughed, but at the sight of Nora's face, she cut it short.

It went on like that as they toured the house, and Nora's to-do list grew. Esther also pointed out all the fine features of the house, like the redwood beam and deck, the slate roof, the rosy brick, and more copper piping than anyone else in town could dream of putting in.

"Not another house like it in the county," Esther reported.

Nora would have traded grandeur for economy. All she saw was miles of unfinished floor and ceilings, rafters covered with thick sheets of clear plastic, and trapped under them, the carca.s.ses of hordes of flies, ants, and wasps. There were no doors to the bedrooms, or closets for that matter, and all the walls, from the bas.e.m.e.nt to the top-floor bedroom, were only roughed in. Electrical outlets hung from walls or frames where walls were supposed to be.

Nora's critical eye took in and calculated what it would cost to complete the five-level six-bedroom house. It was enough to weaken her at the knees.

"I'm just hoping to get done what I need to survive during the winter. And at least a door on the bathroom," she said, thinking of C.W.'s showers. "I can hold off for a while on the aesthetics." She didn't mention that once the house was finished, her taxes would also rise.

Esther stood in the center of the great room and craned her neck to view the vaulted ceilings. "Why don't you just finish it all up?" she asked. "This house has been sitting up here untended for years. In fact, every year, right about February when we're feeling pretty tight in our place, we can't help but wonder what you started this big house for, just for you and Mike and no kids."

Nora saw from Esther's expression that she envied the room.

"Why be finicky now?" Esther asked, casting a testy glance Nora's way. "Mike would finish the job in a hurry. First-cla.s.s all the way."

Nora's back stiffened. "Frankly, I wish he had finished this house. But he didn't." Nora's face was pink with indignation. "Mike left quite a few projects unfinished, and now it's up to me to tidy up. I will get it done when I can, as I can." She tightened her arms across her chest and her voice was more sharp than she had intended.

Esther's eyes narrowed, studying Nora. "You really plan to live here?"

"I do."

"Why?" She shifted her weight. "Why did you move here anyway?"

Nora expelled a long hiss of air. How often was she going to have to defend this decision? She thought a moment, trying to explain the unexplainable.

"I moved here from New York to find something beautiful again. In me and out there." She saw Esther's doubtful expression and coupled her hands in frustration. "I can't put it into words."

"When are you gonna move back?"

Esther scored a direct hit that left Nora speechless. Looking at her, Nora saw the peachy skin and sweet features of a country girl-and the brittle cool of a seasoned New York socialite. Nora's face colored, then flushed as she watched a small smile of victory ease across Esther's face.

"People like you come and go from New York all the time," Esther charged. "Dreaming of the good life. Then you learn that life is life, and up here that life is pretty tough. Next thing you pack up and go. Leavin' us behind." She sniffed and looked away, squinting. When she turned back, her eyes were hard.

"We don't take much to people who come and go."

Nora stared back with eyes wide, affronted by the hostility she did nothing to inspire.

"Speaking of which," Esther swung on her heel and grabbed her bag off the floor, "I gotta go."

Nora counted Esther's steps across the plywood. "It's not like that," Nora called to her back.

Esther turned. "We'll see," she said, then left.

Nora walked out onto the deck to watch Esther as she backed away in her Impala, turned, then drove out of sight.

She had remained standing on the deck; she stood there still, recalling Esther's words as the clouds grew heavy in the heavens. Nora gripped the deck rail tightly and fought off the dark, dull cloak of depression.

"Yes, Esther," she spoke aloud in the autumn hush. "We will see."

6.

MAY JOHNSTON STIRRED UP a potion of baking soda and warm water and set it before Seth, giving it a final spin at the table.

"Drink every drop. You need to burp."

She stood, one hand on the back of Seth's chair, the other on her ample hip, hovering like a hen as her brother grunted and slowly reached out for the brew.

"You know I won't budge till it's gone."

Seth looked up at the formidable figure of his sister. Only her stubbornness was bigger than she was.

"Don't I know it," he muttered. With a sigh of resignation, he took the cup and swallowed it down in three noisy gulps. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he grimaced. Soon after, a loud raucous burp exploded from his girth.

"Good!" exclaimed May. "See, I was right. Nothin' but indigestion."

Seth rubbed his sore chest and smiled weakly. "Yeh-up, that'll be it." Another smaller burp offered him more relief.

May took the chair opposite Seth and slowly lowered herself into it. She was no stranger to ill health but always seemed to tend to others' ills more than to her own. Diabetes had made her obese, gum disease had taken a number of her front teeth, varicose veins kept her off her feet, and every spring and fall the flowers that she adored kept her sneezing and tearing.

She cast all that off as "her ailments," and nothing more. Just crosses to bear, time off purgatory. Nonetheless, her own ailments kept her on the alert for the ailments of others. No flu bug could creep in her family's house without vitamin C and orange juice being rushed out. If a sore throat stung, a spoonful of honey, some lemon juice, and a splash of whisky flowed.

May had come to Seth's house soon after his wife took sick. She bathed, fed, dressed, and nursed Liza during the final months the doctors let her stay home. Then, after cancer claimed her sister-in-law, May stayed on awhile longer to help her brother and his five motherless children. She rented a trailer, parked it across the road from Seth's house, and in typical fashion, rolled up her sleeves and focused on "the babies."

That was twenty-two years ago. May had long since bought the trailer, planted her beloved perennial bed, and paved a small walkway from her trailer to Seth's back door. Her "babies" were grown up now, and "her ailments" kept her boxed up in the trailer most of the time. Still, she never let an ailment pa.s.s by without speaking on it.

"You sure that doctor came up and checked on Mrs. MacKenzie?" she asked Seth.

"Yeh-up. Saw his car come and go."

"How big did you say that lump was?"

Seth offered as detailed a description as he could between burps, knowing his sister would settle for nothing less.

"Strange, her coming back here. Thought for sure they'd put that land up for sale once he died. The Vermont Land Trust already made inquiries, you know. Nice piece a land. You sure she ain't selling?"

"Didn't sound like it. She wants to live here, so she says."

"Live in that big, unfinished house all alone? Without help?" Her meaty hand slapped the table. "That's just crazy."

"Don't I know it. Told her so but she's got her mind set. Me and the boys are gonna work on the house. They can use the work. Lamb prices are down again."

"I just hope she don't end up breakin' up the land into ten-acre parcels and selling them off. Like Widow Nealy's done." May made loud clucking noises. "Leaving her kids with nothin'."

"The widow's gonna be lonely someday...real lonely."

"MacKenzie's got some beauty views. Them out o' towners like the views."

"Like I said, she ain't selling. Not right away anyway. She's a funny thing. Stick-to kinda person. Remember how she planted all them blueberry bushes on the slope, then came over to get fresh manure?" He chuckled and wiped his mouth.

May laughed and slapped her hand again. "Lord almighty, I do too! I about died when I saw them nylon bags full of manure hangin' off them tiny little bushes. Bowed them right over."

"Deer came and ate them bushes anyway." Seth's eyes twinkled. "But she went and planted another batch."

"Yes, she did," said May, remembering now. "Deer ate them too, though."

Seth scratched his head. "Yeh-up. Hungry, ain't they?"

May picked at a m.u.f.fin, gummed it awhile, then sneaked a quick glance at her brother. He seemed comfortable enough now that the burping stopped. She decided to venture a new topic.

"How'd Esther take Mrs. MacKenzie coming back?"

Seth's face pinched and he drummed his fingers a moment. Then his eyes met May's. They spoke in a silent code established early in childhood and nurtured over fifty years of devotion. May interpreted his pain, his worry, and his hesitancy to discuss the subject.

Seth knew she understood. May was a good listener and an even better observer.

"She's up there now," Seth finally muttered. "I guess she's all right."

"Don't be so sure, Seth. Esther's all bark and no bite. She may have a hard time seeing Nora MacKenzie move in next door. She'll have to work with her every day, too."

"As ye sow, so shall ye reap." Seth's mouth was set in a hard line.

"That'll be the day I listen to a heathen preach the Bible at me!"

"Who you callin' a heathen, heathen?"

May cackled loud and hearty. Neither one of them went to church, but they each considered the other the most honest, loving Christian they'd ever known.

"Well then," May said, pushing back her chair and hoisting her largesse out of it. She, too, panted with the effort and her legs started to throb from sitting still too long. "Ain't nothing left to do but go up and see the missus for myself. Check on her ailment. Sweet little thing, up in that big house by herself. Just hope she don't plant no more blueberries. Don't know I can stand the smell!"