Chapter 11

"What's going on?" asked Jill, a little breathlessly, after her mother and Zack were gone.

"I have no clue," I said.

"Oh Bob, I screwed things up so much," she moaned.

"Your heart was in the right place," I said.

"But he really IS a great guy, and I just KNOW she'd love being around him if she got to know him."

"Maybe that's what she's doing," I said. "Getting to know him, I mean."

"Do you think so?" she asked hopefully.

"Let's just say for the sake of having reasonably comfortable holidays ... that I hope so," I said.

I didn't find out what went on during that tour until January, after the kids had gone back to school. There were some clues, of course, but I'll get to them later. For now, I'll just describe it the way Lynne did when she told me about it while we were sitting next to my wood stove one cold evening, working on a jigsaw puzzle.

She said that once they got away from the house, Zack began apologizing profusely. He claimed it was all his fault, and that he talked Jill into inviting him home for the holidays.

"Is that so," Lynne said, her voice brittle.

"Yes Ma'am," said Zack emphatically.

"So how did she know all about the fact that you wanted to seduce me?" asked Lynne.

"Um ... she didn't know," he tried.

"She told Bob that was the whole point to you coming here," said Lynne.

"Oh." He looked deflated. "It wasn't the whole point," he added.

"Is that so," said Lynne again.

"Jill really did tell me a lot about you," he said. "I had a girlfriend in high school. We were in love. I know everybody says teenagers don't understand what love really is, and it might be true, but we believed we were in love and it FELT like love to me. Anyway, she was riding around in a car with a bunch of her girlfriends and they got hit by a truck and she was killed. Nobody understood how I felt about that. They said it was a tragedy, and sad, but that I'd get over it, and that there would be other girls and all that stuff. But the sadness I felt was bone deep. I knew it would never ever be completely gone. I knew Jill's dad was gone and I could see that same sadness in your eyes in that picture she showed me, and I knew you'd felt the same thing I had felt." They walked on a few steps. "Plus you are a stone fox, of course. I can't deny recognizing that."

The juxtaposition between his heartfelt confession, and his boyish ... boyishness ... was so stark as to cause Lynne to actually stop and stare at him. She had been touched by the story of his girl friend, only to be shocked by his blatant reference to Lynne as a sexual being.

"I'm sorry!" he blurted again. He looked anguished. "I always say the wrong thing when I'm around a woman I really like."

Lynne stood there, looking at him for a few seconds.

"How can you really like me?" she asked pointedly. "You only met me a couple of hours ago."

He looked confused at first, and then thoughtful. He actually took the question seriously.

"Well ... you're smart. You really are doing most of the right things in managing your orchard, at least according to what I've learned so far in my classes. And you're interesting and fun to talk to. I love your laugh." He grinned weakly.

"Is that all?" She wasn't letting him off the hook.

"No," he answered. "But it's hard to explain. While we were talking, you know, before lunch, you weren't talking to me like most adults talk to somebody my age. And you for SURE weren't talking to me like most adult women have ever talked to me."

"What does that mean?" asked Lynne.

"You acted like you were really interested in what I was saying," he said.

"I was," she said, surprised that he'd find that odd.

"Well most women wouldn't be that interested," he said. "And besides that you're so..." He trailed off, looking uncomfortable again.

"So what?" asked Lynne.

"It wouldn't be polite to say it," he said guardedly. "I really don't want you to be madder at me than you already are."

"I'll try to control myself," she said. "Out with it. What am I?"

He seemed to argue with himself for some time before he answered. "You really are a remarkably beautiful woman," he finally said. "I can't explain why I think that. I mean you're not beautiful like a model," he said artlessly, "but there's something about you that just makes me want to..." He blushed and went silent again.

"Want to what, Zack?" she asked, her eyes boring into his.

"Oh man," he moaned.

"Come on, Zack," she wheedled, like she was talking to a five year old. "Tell me what you want, Zack."

His eyes cleared. Suddenly his twenty years of world experience told him something he hadn't paid attention to before this moment. That was that this woman was toying with him ... teasing him at a minimum ... and maybe even baiting him, at worst.

"You know what I want," he said, his voice suddenly deeper. His eyes said clearly that he believed what he'd just said.

Lynne leaned back. The sudden change in his deportment from shy, embarrassed young man, to confident young lion made her heart flutter.

"You have to know that's how you affect a lot of men," he said, turning the tables on her.

"I do not," she said defensively.

"Well you can take my word for it," he said. "Proof of that is our admittedly silly plan to get me here so I could try to seduce you. I really am sorry about that, and I sincerely apologize. I just got carried away by hearing about you, and by your picture. It's painfully obvious to me now that you're a much higher quality woman than would fall for that kind of thing, and you deserve better than that kind of lame treatment."

He didn't know it, but that was the exact moment that Lynne decided he could stay for the rest of the holidays.

They did, in fact, tour the orchard, as well as the rest of the farm. Zack's parents were dry land farmers in Nebraska on a family farm much like that of Lynne's, in that it was smaller than the mega corn operations around it, and they grew a variety of crops based entirely, to Zack's chagrin, on the Old Farmer's Almanac. He admitted, however, that they rarely lost a crop and that his grandfather's and father's complete confidence in the book was something he could not ignore. Nor could he ignore the fact that they made a very comfortable living selling organically grown produce. He was the first in the family to get any formal education in agricultural techniques, and did so despite, rather than because of his father's wishes. He already knew that his two older brothers would take over the farm, and that his college education wouldn't change that.

Of course I didn't know that at the time. While that was going on I was alone with Jill, though I was pretty sure that wasn't why Lynne had taken the boy off like that. In the past, every time Jill got me alone she did something about it. But not this time. She was too worried about what was going on between her mother and Zack.

"What if she's grilling him about what I do at school?" she asked anxiously.

"Do you do anything you don't want her to know about?" I asked back.

"Well no, but..."

"So stop worrying. You wanted them to get to know each other. I suspect that's happening."

"Yeah, but it's not like she's going to lose her head over him, like I hoped would happen."

"You actually thought some young ... dude, for lack of a better term ... could come in here and sweep your mother off her feet?" I looked at her like she was crazy.

"He's so smooth, and sweet!" she moaned. "I've seen him in action."

"So he takes what he can get, wherever he can get it," I said grimly.

"No, he's not like that. He just loves to flirt, and when he does that the girls just melt. He doesn't DO anything about it. He believes there should be a deep relationship before there's any sex. Girls have offered, and he turned them down!"

"Did you offer?" I hated myself as soon as I said it.

She gave me a level stare. "No."

"I'm sorry," I said. "I shouldn't have said that."

"No, you shouldn't. That must be what Mom was talking about. I'm fairly disgusted with you right now," she said darkly.

"So I guess making love is out of the question." I thought that might get a smile, but I was wrong.

"You got that right, mister," she said, followed immediately by: "When can we get married?"

Her change of subject, and the contrast between her mood and the question left me speechless.

"I'm not waiting until I graduate from college," she said firmly. "If we're going to be apart, I want to be married while we do it so that when I get pregnant, there won't be any difficulties about it."

"You're going to get pregnant?" I asked faintly.

"Of course I am!" she said in a voice that was less happy than I thought a woman talking about such things should be. "We're going to have at least three children. I was raised alone, and that's not going to happen to my babies."

"But won't that interfere with your studies?" I asked. Do NOT ask me why I brought that up. I have no idea.

"No," she said simply. "I have as long as it takes to get my degree. I'm going to work in the orchard every summer until I'm done, and then work there after I graduate too, so it doesn't matter how long it takes. Besides, the way I figure it, it could only cost me three years ... one for each baby. I'm going to nurse, and I want them nice and healthy before I turn them over to you while I go back to school."

You have to understand here that I was still off kilter, as far as thinking rationally about this. My mind was still grappling with the idea of having three babies around. I'd been around one or two, but never for that long. Not that I have anything against them. I just don't know what to do with one. So my response was, again, less than stirring.

"I'm going to be the babysitter?" I asked.

"No, silly," she laughed. "You're going to be their father."

"Of course," I said.

"I don't think we can throw something together before I go back," she said, frowning.

That was the point where age and experience gave me the edge.

"Not if you don't want to get on exactly the wrong side of the owner of that orchard you were talking about. Mothers want the wedding of their daughter to be a big deal."

"I know," she sighed. "But I don't care about it. "I just want to be married to you."

I made yet another social and verbal gaffe.

"What brought all this marriage stuff on?" I asked.

She gave me another one of those ice cold, level stares.

"You asked me to," she said, clearly enunciating each word.

"Yes, but you didn't agree to do it then. What changed?" I asked.

She walked up to me slowly and pressed the front of her body against mine. Her hands went to loosely hold my waist.

"I got my period," she said softly.

I blinked several times.

"I beg your pardon?" I replied weakly.

"I started school, which took my mind off of you during the day, but then at night I missed you so much I almost cried. And then my period started, and I realized that all that yummy, creamy sperm you gave me was wasted."