Out in the Country Read Online Free Page A

here, didn’t he?” Jessica asked. “Did you come back much, as a family?”
    Lynne considered that question for a moment. They were off the motorway and were driving through a strip of shopping outlets offering ski wear, real maple syrup, and custom-made pine furniture.
    “Not as much as we would have liked,” she finally said, “or perhaps should have. Adam was so busy with his career, travelling, working... and Kathy and Graham were always happy to drive down to the city for get-togethers.” She sighed. “It’s funny, in some ways, to think of Adam growing up as a country boy. He was always the polished city slicker to me.”
    “Always?”
    “When I met him at university in Edinburgh, he’d been living in New York for five years already.” For a moment Lynne lost herself in nostalgia, remembering the dashing young visiting lecturer who’d swept away every undergrad with his charming American twang, his ready smile. She’d been working in the reference section of the college library, and soon Adam had been finding excuses to borrow books, have her search the dusty stacks for some obscure volume.
    “Mom, I think you turn here,” Molly interrupted her thoughts, and quickly Lynne refocused on the road, turning right away from the shopping outlets. A small green road sign read ‘Hardiwick: 7 Miles.’
    Buildings gave way to rolling fields, ringed with tumbledown stone fences, reaching to the thick, grey-green horizon of the Green Mountains. There were mountains fencing the landscape on every side, Lynne remembered, so that you felt like you were enclosed in a giant’s garden.
    Above them the sky was hazy and blue, fleecy white clouds scudding across its surface.
    They drove in silence, each lost in the tranquil wonder of the world around them, although Lynne saw that Molly had turned resolutely back to her papers, oblivious to the beauty of a Vermont autumn.
    Hardiwick came upon them suddenly; the road crested on a hill, and suddenly a town rose from the fields, neatly laid out streets with brick buildings and old-fashioned lampposts. It gave the impression of a city, and yet it was only two streets wide and two blocks long.
    A tiny city, Lynne thought, driving through, noticing a new bistro she’d never seen before, half a dozen antique shops, a crafts shop, and a hardware she remembered that looked as if it had landed in Hardiwick straight from the 1950s.
    On the other side of town the brick buildings gave way to gracious homes, Victorian houses with cupolas and wide front porches, and it was the third one of these, painted a cheerful yellow with a large front garden still trailing late summer blooms, that Lynne parked in front of.
    The air was crisp and carried the faint scent of wood smoke as Lynne stepped out of the car, and Kathy and Graham both came out onto the front porch.
    “We’re so glad you’re here!” Kathy exclaimed, and turned to Jessica with a warm, welcoming smile. “And you must be Jess! Come in, come in. There’s lemonade and cookies on the back porch.”
    They spent the rest of the afternoon out on the porch, drinking in the autumn sunshine as leaves drifted lazily down to carpet the soft grass in reds and yellows.
    Lynne listened sleepily as she leaned back in her rocking chair. Kathy hit just the right note, she thought, of sympathy and interest when talking to Jessica. She could see Jessica relaxing, the tension that had been holding her together starting to loosen.
    She looked around for Molly and saw that her chair was vacant. Murmuring her excuses, she went inside and found Molly at the kitchen table, hard at work.
    “It’s Friday afternoon, Moll,” she said quietly. “Can’t you leave it for a few moments?”
    Molly didn’t even look up as she shook her head. “I just want to get it done.”
    Lynne sighed her acceptance, knowing how driven her daughter was to prove herself.
    “Well, I hope you can take a break tomorrow... we’re celebrating Gram and Granddad's