Chapter 23

Back on the porch, I glanced to the west again, still appreciating that nice warm breeze. I took another deep breath, then smiled to myself, realising that I wanted to carry that fresh air smell inside with me. With that in mind, I opened the door and stepped into the house.

I could hear the whirring, grinding sound of Lisa-Marie cranking the separator and the constant falling splatter of skim milk flowing into the pail, then too, I could hear one of the pots on the stove as it simmered, its lid dancing merrily releasing its delightful odour of home cooking. The place smelled, and sounded like home, making me sigh in satisfaction.

Andy was at the table, setting out plates and cutlery and she looked up at me with a sad, sweet smile that stopped me in my tracks.

"What's up?" I asked quietly.

"Oh, I've been thinking." She said quietly. "Lets wait until we're eating and discuss it then, okay?"

"Sure. Whatever you want." I shrugged off my coat and kicked off my boots, slipping on a pair of old moccasins that I liked to wear inside. "I'm glad I went for a walk. I found that the old machine that the guys tore apart for pieces had fallen on its side somehow and was leaking stale gasoline onto the concrete floor. If too much had poured out, the fumes could have been set off by the thermostat or by the heater itself when it came on."

"Oh Damn. That reminds me, we should move the snowmobiles before the snow thaws too much. They're a pain in the butt in some ways, in the way half of the year and almost essential the other half." Andy commented.

"Good point, I think we need a special place to store them. For now they can sit handy to the door at the equipment shed, but in the long run, I'd like to have some sort of flat trailer or dolly that they could sit on. Something that we could move around easily to get them out of the way and yet make it easy to get at them when we need them."

"Dad tried that, his trailer was a bit too small though." She smiled. "You'd better wash up. Everything is almost ready to eat."

I trudged up the stairs to the bathroom, again resolving to get at the downstairs bathroom as soon as possible, smiling to myself about the fact that the girls had broken my habit of washing up at the kitchen sink quite well. Then chuckled at myself, realising that I was actually the one who had stopped washing my hands there, but it was to stop the frowns on their faces when I did, nothing more.

Another stray thought whipped through my mind, the fact that it was strange how a woman could let you know you were annoying her without saying a word. Then I realised that I was watching their faces and moods more than ever. That was probably a defensive move on my part; I didn't like anyone that I lived with being annoyed with me.

It was at that second that I realised that I was changing, adapting to life with two women in the house. Then as I was wiping my hands, I caught the odour of the potpourri that Fran had left in the bathroom and for some reason I wondered how she and her boys were doing.

"Dammit man. Your head is bouncing all over tonight." I said quietly to myself. "For cripes sake, settle down."

Perhaps I was thinking that saying it aloud would help me to follow my own advice. At any rate, it was good advice, I just hoped I could listen to it. Smiling at my own pessimism, I walked back downstairs and into the kitchen. Now Lisa-Marie was washing and rinsing the separator parts while Andy was dishing out our meal.

"Anyone need a hand with anything?" I asked.

"All I want is for you to sit down and relax for a bit." Lisa-Marie answered.

"Carry a bowl to the table with you, please." Andy added. "Here, take the carrots and spuds. We'll bring the rest."

Moments later we were all at the table and I noticed that each one of us seemed quiet and thoughtful. The only sounds were those of cutlery on the porcelain plates.

"I've been thinking about the idea of the anti-rumour campaign." Lisa-Marie broke the silence after a few moments. "The idea might only work with part of the rumours."

"Oh?" I frowned.

"Yes, some people won't want to be involved, especially if the rumour is true. Other people won't want to be involved because the truth might offend someone else." She said quietly.

"Yeah, I had thoughts about that myself." Andy added. "There are still others that might not want to be involved, not if the truth was more juicy than the rumour."

I simply sat there and nodded my head, after all they were making sense.

"I was even having second thoughts about my letter." I admitted.

"Well, your letter made me think." Andy said very quietly. "Between your letter and the idea of the anti-rumour campaign, I got to thinking about our situation and even more about my own personal life."

"Yeah, and?" I looked at her and waited for the other shoe to drop.

"Well, first and foremost, I don't think I want to have a baby just yet." Her voice was almost a whisper. "I do love you two, and I do want to live here, but in a way, I want something else too."

"Okay, and what's that?" Lisa-Marie smiled at her encouragingly.

"You don't mind?"

"What? That you don't want a baby right now, or that you want to live here, but want even more?" She still smiled. "No, not a bit for either one. Mostly, I want you to be happy and I think Tom feels the same way."

"Yep." I nodded my head in agreement. "I certainly don't want you to be unhappy."

"Well, what I'd like is to have some training in growing herbs. On top of that, I'd like to know a little bit about caring for people, so I can help out if people get injured or sick. I don't want to be a doctor or a nurse, I just want to be able to be sure that I'd do the right thing if an emergency were to crop up."

"I sure can't see any problem with that." I smiled myself. "Just how deeply do you want to get into that sort of thing?"

"Well, I was watching you earlier today and I got to thinking about the way you were mentally preparing yourself for any problems if the cow had trouble calving." She looked at me and her face twisted into a wry smile. "I know I teased you about it, but that was really a bit of jealousy. Afterward I was thinking that if something had gone wrong, I wouldn't have had a clue what to do and I really don't like that idea. I know you can handle all the animals' problems, so I'm not too worried about that, but its people I think about, us and the neighbours. We're a long way from help and if we lose the phone, or if a blizzard comes up, we're cut off. I just want to take a few emergency courses or something along those lines. I think now might be a good time to do it."

"So basically what you want is an all-around course in extended first aid, right?" I asked. "It sounds to me almost like you want to train as a paramedic."

"Well, I'm not sure I want to go that far, I know that's a two-year course at the tech school in either Edmonton or Calgary. I think there are other courses that don't take quite as long, maybe just finding out about them would be a good place to start." She smiled. "But just how do I do that?"

"I haven't a clue, but now we know what to look for." I smiled right back at her.

"You mean, you'd be happy to have me take off and train for that. Even if it meant I had to leave for a few months or maybe even a couple of years?"

"We'd be pretty darn dumb if we tried to hold you back from doing what you wanted to do. It'd be damn silly if we did." Lisa-Marie snorted then developed a big grin. "Oh, on top of that, if you take off to go somewhere to take a course, that's really going to piss off our old biddy gossip spreader too."

"It would serve the old witch right." Andy giggled.

"Honey. Your pronunciation is getting terrible. That word starts with a 'B' and you pronounced it with a 'W' which is just not good enough. You have to watch that." Lisa-Marie said with a perfectly straight face, and Andy broke into delighted laughter.

"Now that's not nice, Lisa-Marie." I grinned. "I'll bet that in the right circumstances, she's an old sweetheart."

"Oh, come on!" Andy snorted. "The only person who spends any time around her is her daughter, and that's only because she's got nowhere else to go. No one cares much for her either."

"There you go." I grinned. "A pair of lonely people with no one else to talk to, so they just listen to the rumours and develop those in bitterness because their own lives are so dull and boring. Then they take out their bitterness on the whole world by repeating the rumours in even stronger terms."

"There's probably a lot of truth in that, but I don't think I want to befriend them to make life easier on them." Lisa-Marie snorted. "I think it's more than likely that they are simply bitter bitches with axes to grind. I think from reading between the lines in a few of her columns that the old cunt actually enjoys seeing other people get themselves into trouble."

I just stared at Lisa-Marie. I'd never, ever heard her use the 'C' word about any woman before. Andy appeared even more astounded than I was. Both of us were speechless for a short while.

"I know, I'm acting like I'm prejudiced against her, but I can't help it." Lisa-Marie's jaw was clenched and she was biting off her words like they were tough for her to admit. "I just think there's got to be a way to shut her up, to make her look like a fool and get the whole community laughing at her. It would serve her right."

"Hey, don't get you go getting bitter because she's attacking us." I frowned, not really liking the way this was going.

"Whatever." Lisa-Marie barked and stood up as she drained her cup of tea. "Let's get the dishes done and then go for a walk outside. Maybe we could shift those snowmobiles or something. After being stuck inside for days and fighting that damn blizzard while I was in town, I'm not in the mood to sit around the house."

"Well, we could always go for a ride. We've got two snowmobiles and acres of snow to play around in. Both snowmobiles have lights, don't they?" I suggested, grabbing dishes to carry them to the kitchen. "Andy, if you get the leftovers, Lisa-Marie and I will put the dishes in the sink, we can wash up later."

"You know, that's not a bad idea." Andy grinned and got a strange look in her eye. "We could go visit my folks, that would surprise the dickens out of them. I'd like to see their reaction to the idea of my going away for training in emergency medicine."

"Say, about that, we'll help you pay for it." I offered. "If you know you've got your butt covered for expenses, you'll probably feel a lot better about telling them I'd think."

"You're darn tootin' we will." Lisa-Marie agreed, quickly rinsing the worst of the dirty dishes. "In fact, I insist on it."

Andy simply stopped what she was doing and took a deep breath. "I do have some money in my bank account, but financing was one of the things I was worried about."

"Well, stop worrying." I smiled. "Education is an investment and the better educated we all are, the easier it'll be to turn a profit. I intend to make sure this farm continues to make a profit, so I'll back any kind of education. Besides, knowing what to do in the case of an emergency would come in handy anywhere, even if things change in the future in any way."

"Are you implying that I might meet a tall, dark, handsome fireman or something?" Andy teased.

"Anything is possible." I grinned as I passed Lisa-Marie a towel to dry her hands.

"Possible, yes. Probable, no. How could I possibly find a situation that would beat being here with the two of you?" Andy laughed as she wrapped an arm around Lisa-Marie on her left and me on her right.

"I don't know, but anything is possible." I leaned over and gave her a kiss, then swung around them so that I could wrap an arm around Lisa-Marie to hug and kiss her as well.

Lisa-Marie smiled and kissed one and then the other of us.

"Get your warm clothes on, you horny bugger." She grinned at me. "We're going out, not to bed."

"Should I change my britches?" I asked. "We did do chores in these clothes."

Andy sniffed and then grinned. "I'll bet almost anything that your clothes smell better than what Dad and Willy are wearing about now. Remember, we have sheep lambing early this year. That means they'll probably be tired, so we'd better get there soon or only one of them will still be up."

"Oh, I forgot about that." I glanced at the clock. "Gad. It's only seven."

"Dad will have been up since about four or so." She shrugged. "During lambing season, he goes to bed early and lets Willy take the late shift."

"Well, lets get going then." Lisa-Marie was scrambling into her gear.

"You're driving." I grinned at her as I pulled on a pair of coveralls and a heavier coat than I thought I'd really needed. "I'm not dressed for being in the front."

"He wants to ride behind you, so he can cop a feel or two." Andy laughed.

"Collateral benefits." I nodded.

"Ass." Lisa-Marie finally smiled and poked me in the ribs.

"Well, he can ride behind me, if you want?" Andy giggled as we headed for the machines.

"Going over to your mom and dad's? No, lets not make your dad frown more than necessary." Lisa-Marie chuckled. "Better he saw Tom behind me, copping a feel from me as Tom's fiancée, rather than one from his daughter as a member of Tom's harem. Lets let your dad keep a few illusions, even if he does suspect the truth."

"Yeah, I think you're right." Andy giggled. "See you there."

With that, she was on her machine, had her helmet on and with only a short warmup of the engine, she was off down the driveway.

"We'll take a bit longer, so she has time to warn her folks that we're on our way for an unplanned visit." Lisa-Marie smiled.

"Good idea." I nodded. "And don't forget, I've got no skull bucket, huh? Don't get us in an accident if you can help it."

"Oh hell, yours is still back home, isn't it."

"Yeah, along with a nice snowmobile of my own." I nodded and grinned wryly. "We still have a ton of stuff like that to move over here."

"Unh huh, not to mention a few other things, like our two riding horses and a couple of other useful little items we should have thought of." Lisa-Marie laughed. "Get aboard. That's enough warm-up and enough warning time for Andy's folks too."

In only the few minutes it took to ride down the road to the Martin's, I realised that I wasn't dressed warmly enough for riding a snowmobile at night, even if it was during a chinook. My legs were soon chilly and it didn't help that in seconds the breeze untucked my coveralls from my boots. I was glad when we pulled into the Martin's drive and slowed to a stop.

"Brrr." I grinned at Lisa-Marie, shaking one leg and then the other to see if any loose snow might have blown up my pant legs.

She thought it was funny, so she was laughing when Willy stuck his head out the door to greet us and told us to come on into the Martin's kitchen. Andy's mom was holding Andy with one arm around her waist and smiling like Andy had just given her a Christmas present. Meanwhile Andy rattled on loudly about taking EMR or EMT training, even Mr. Martin was beaming. As soon as we came inside, he hopped to his feet and came over to grab my hand to shake it.

He grinned at my slightly surprised look, then grabbed Lisa-Marie's hand and shook hands with her too.

"Thank you, both." He said quietly enough so Andy wouldn't hear. "At least someone around here can get through her stubborn streak. I think this is a great idea."

I didn't have the heart to tell him that it was Andy's idea in the first place. I thought I'd leave that up to someone else to tell him if he ever needed to know. For now, since he seemed to be happy with the idea that we'd talked her into it, I didn't want to rock the boat. I caught Lisa-Marie's eye and winked, catching the tiny nod from her in return. I was positive that Willy caught the byplay between us though. At any rate, he managed to hide his grin as he nodded his head toward a chair.

"Grab a seat. Want a freshly perked cup of coffee?" Willy offered.

"I'll pass." Lisa-Marie smiled, then walked over toward Andy and her mom.

I nodded at Willy, who went to get one for each of us, then joined his dad and me at the kitchen table. In a moment we were talking about the blizzard and the chinook. Then they were telling me about their new lambs and I was telling them about the new calf. It was a typical farmer's chat and all three of us were soon feeling right at home with each other, the way farmers from all over can seem to do. Yet there was a subtle difference, as if by some miracle a barrier of some sort had disappeared.

What surprised me at first was that they had new information about Matty Granger, then Willy pointed to his CB radio and told me that as soon as she'd gotten to town, Jean had called him to let him know they'd made the trip okay. Then she'd called him again just a short while ago, this time to tell him about visiting her granny in the hospital.