Chapter 4

The next morning, Molly joined Laura in the kitchen.

“Mind if I have a word with you?” Molly asked her niece, Laura, bringing two cups of mint tea.

“Of course not,” Laura motioned her aunt to the screened-in back porch at the rear of the large inn.

The morning was pleasantly warm.

“What’s with the frown, Auntie? Everything okay?” Laura asked and then sipped her tea.

Molly sat in a cushioned wicker chair, opposite her niece. “I want to talk with you about this plan of yours to fix me up with John.”

Laura brow lifted. She glanced at her aunt with the kind of understanding that required no words. “John told you,” she said finally.

Molly nodded. “Yes, he did. But I knew it all by myself too.”

“Kat devised this plan to help John. You know he has socially withdrawn from women since his divorce. So, when she told me what she was trying to do, I thought about you. You’re alone too. You never got married. I think it would be a good thing for both of you,” Laura explained to her aunt.

Molly played with her hands, which she only did when she was nervous. “Look, I don’t want to mess with your plan, but ... Are you sure John is ready to move on?”

Laura fought to suppress a smile. “Are you ready to take a chance on him?”

Molly shrugged. “I don’t know, darling. What if things don’t work between us?”

Laura squeezed Molly’s hand gently, “What if they do?”

“I’m not sure which option terrifies me more, sweetie.” Molly finished her tea in silence, stood up, and went back to the inn.

John Harding began his day as he had begun every day since he was a teen, milking cows.

Of course, a few things had changed over time. As a child, he’d followed his father from cow to cow while he swabbed off udders and attached milking machines. His dad would pour the milk from the machine into a pail, change the filter, toss the used one to a barn cat, and then methodically hook up another cow before dragging the full pail to the milk house and emptying it into a cooler.

In the intervening years, a genius had come up with the idea of bringing the cows to a milking parlor and pumping the milk from the machine directly to the cooler.

The new way was worlds better than the old one, but it still meant bending to hook up the milking machine.

When he was done, John stretched his back, climbed on his horse and went for a ride.

The sun was high in the sky, spreading golden fingers of light across the fields when he came back. There was a bite in the air this morning. He smelled snow in the future. Better repair the hole in the barn roof while he still could. He tied his horse to a nearby fence and set up the ladder.

“The farm is getting old, just like me,” he thought.

He climbed up the ladder, carrying the necessary tools and materials to repair the roof.

He had just reached the top of the ladder when a car turned into his lane. The crunch of gravel beneath tires grew louder as the vehicle came closer.

John didn’t have many visitors since he divorced his cheating wife years ago. He had been lonely, though he would never admit it. He had a farm to run and little time for fooling around. Not that he was the fooling-around type.

His fingers clenched on the hammer reminiscing of times when his life had been full of fun, and so had he. His talk with Molly had brought back all those memories. Then, one day, life wasn’t happy anymore. His wife had cheated on him. She had fallen in love with another man. Maybe she never loved him. His throat went thick; his stomach churned. The hammer came down harder and harder, like trying to bang away every hurting thought.

He had never felt so humiliated, disgusted, and appalled in his whole life. He slammed the hammer onto a nail with undue force.

When John began to remember, when he felt lonely and depressed, he turned to the farm, to his work. Over the past years, this place and his responsibilities to it had saved him more times than he cared to count.