Out in the Country Read Online Free Page B

fiftieth wedding anniversary all.”
    Molly nodded, her mind and eyes still on the papers in front of her, and Lynne decided to go upstairs and unpack.
    It had been several years since she’d been back to the farmhouse, and yet it was wonderfully the same. The narrow, steep steps of the back stairs led to a hallway still papered in cabbage roses from at least three generations ago. She’d heard about the history of the farmhouse before, of course... how Adam’s grandparents had bought it at the turn of the century, when Hardiwick had been put on the map with a rail station and a mill.
    They’d run the general store until it closed down in the 1970s, when a large new supermarket was built in a wasteland of concrete on the other side of town.
    Deprived of its train and factories, Hardiwick had turned to tourism to finance its little existence.
    Kathy had put Lynne in Adam’s old bedroom, where they’d always stayed. Little remained from his boyhood besides a baseball pennant tacked to the wall and a few boyhood sporting trophies on a shelf, next to a photograph of Adam in his Cub Scout uniform.
    Lynne peered at the picture and blinked back sudden tears. She hadn’t expected to be affected by coming to Hardiwick. She’d only come a handful of times in her twenty-five years of marriage to Adam, so she had precious few memories of the place.
    And yet the very fact that she knew this was where Adam had been born, where he’d grown up, where he’d played baseball and been a Boy Scout and crafted his first buildings--even if they’d only been in his mind--made her miss him again. Made her miss him more.
    “Are you all right?”
    Startled, Lynne turned around and saw Kathy smiling in the doorway.
    “Yes... just looking at the photos here. We never came here enough, Adam and I.”
    “You were both busy.”
    Lynne nodded, even as she silently acknowledged that Adam had been the busy one.
    “I never really think about Adam as coming from a little town in Vermont,” she admitted with a little laugh. “When I met him, I supposed he’d sprung from the city, fully formed.”
    “He loved the city,” Kathy agreed, moving into the room. She let her fingers drift over the still-polished surface of a baseball trophy. “But he loved this house, too. He and Graham did the repairs themselves, you know. Adam was a genius for finding just the right bit of wire or piping or even a bit of cornice or banister rail that had fallen off--he’d match it perfectly. Graham used to laugh at him for being so meticulous, but he said you’d be able to tell in the long run.”
    “And you can,” Lynne said, touched and a little discomfited by this new revelation into her husband’s history. When she and Adam had come for those quick weekend jaunts, they hadn’t spent much time reminiscing. The future, so wonderfully bright and exciting, had held far more allure.
    “The house looks wonderful, Kathy.”
    Kathy made a little face. “We do our best, but the truth is it’s becoming too much for us to manage.”
    Lynne felt a little lurch of fear. Even though she hadn’t come to Vermont very often, she liked knowing that she could ... that it was here, serene and waiting. “What are you thinking?”
    Kathy shrugged. “This house is part of our history, our legacy to our grandchild.”
    “Molly,” Lynne murmured and Kathy smiled.
    “We’re not going to sell up anytime soon,” she assured Lynne, “not if we can help it. We’ve a few ideas rattling around, but I won’t say anymore just now. I need to make sure there’s a hot meal on the table for our weary travellers.”
    With another little smile she slipped from the room, leaving Lynne alone with her thoughts... and her memories.
     
    Kathy didn’t mention the plans for the house for the rest of the evening, or even the next day when they all went to a local farm to pick apples and go through the corn maze.
    Lynne became hopelessly muddled and lost, but Jessica had managed to find