Bitter Harvest Read online

  “So let’s get started.”

  “Us? You’ve got work to do. But I’ll stay here and keep you company while I check the Web.”

  “You mean, keep an eye on me?” Bree grinned.

  “Yes, that, too.”

  Bree vanished up the stairs and returned quickly with more bundles of papers and several folders. Meg cringed: she could see no order in them, but at least it was a start.

  “Damn, it’s still cold upstairs!” Bree said. “And I hear it’s going to go down to the twenties again tonight, so everything that’s melted will freeze solid. Good thing you got food today.”

  As Bree started moving papers around she said, “Listen, about that sampler. The usual mourning stuff is urns and willows, right?”

  “I think so. How do you know that?”

  “That’s just kind of general info—you know, weeping willows and all that? Now, on your piece you’ve got tombstones instead, and then one girl or woman weeping. Then there’s a list of a bunch of people who were family members, and who were all dead by the time the thing was made. Right?” Bree looked at Meg expectantly.

  “Yes, and that’s about as far as I got. Since all these people died before 1849, if they lived in Massachusetts they may be in the online vital records. Massachusetts did a much better job of keeping records than other states did. And before you ask, I haven’t had a chance to look in the cemetery to see if they’re buried in Granford. It’s under several feet of snow at the moment. If, on the other hand, this sampler comes from out of state, it’ll be harder to trace.”

  “From the looks of it, whoever made the sampler was the only one left to mourn. And she was only twelve, poor kid. Sad.” Bree took a last look, then settled herself at the dining room table. “I’ll get to work now—and you can start digging up dead people on the Internet.”

  12

  Seth appeared as the sun was sinking. He pulled his truck in behind Meg’s car in the shed, and then went around to open the passenger door. Max jumped down, his fascination with snow apparently unabated. Seth stared at the back of Meg’s car for a moment before he came to the kitchen door.

  Meg opened it quickly. “What news, traveler?” she said.

  “Have you been reading old books today? You sound a bit archaic,” Seth said, stepping in after stamping his boots on the stoop. Max slipped past him and skidded on the kitchen floor.

  “No, but I’ve been digging into family histories, looking for information that fits my sampler, now that I can use the Internet. Max, don’t eat that—I don’t even know what it is.”

  Seth wrestled what looked like an old sock from Max’s mouth. “Any luck?”

  “Not so far. I’m finding that a lot of things aren’t on the Internet. For starters, it looks like the family didn’t come from Massachusetts, which is going to complicate things. How about you?”

  “Not bad, all things considered. Of course, we’ve already exhausted the Granford budget for snow removal, and it’s only December. But no casualties of the storm, so far. Did the wood come?”

  “It did. Bree made sure it was stowed away, and we’re already using it. Any word on the furnace situation?”

  “End of the week—maybe. No promises. My offer still stands, if you get tired of roughing it here and want to come over to my place.”

  “We’re doing fine, thank you. Want to stay for supper?”

  “I was hoping you’d ask. What happened to your car? Skid?”

  “Nope. I was parked in the lot at the market and some idiot must have backed into me. And I thought I was nice and safe, parked next to a snowdrift. Probably whoever it was assumed it was the snow that he hit when something went crunch, and went on about his merry way. Jerk!”

  “Sorry. You do seem to be having a streak of bad luck.”

  “Tell me about it. You want something to drink? Hot or cold?”

  “Coffee would be good. I’ve been outside most of the day, and I’m not sure I can feel my fingers.”

  “Coming up.” Meg mentally reviewed the food she had bought and decided on a home style chicken stew. With dumplings. She pulled out chicken, carrots, onions, and started chopping things. When the coffee was ready, she nodded to Seth. “Help yourself.”

  “What? You aren’t going to serve me?” He stood up before she could take him seriously.

  As she chopped, Meg watched him: he did look tired, and he was moving slowly, at least for him. She had the feeling that overseeing the affairs of the town under current circumstances probably meant a lot of shoveling, and she knew how exhausting that could be. “You want to take a nap or something?”

  He laughed. “Don’t tempt me. If I lie down I may not get up again for a while. Can you talk and cook at the same time?”

  “I do believe I can. What do you want to talk about?”

  “Furnace options, for a start.” As Meg sliced and sautéed, he enumerated the plusses and minuses of several models and sizes of oil furnace . . . Meg found herself losing the thread of the story, but kept nodding and throwing in a comment now and then. Was it un-feminist of her to just tell him, you decide? Why was she supposed to know anything about furnaces? She had been a banker; now she was a farmer. Neither one included even a short course on heating systems.

  She realized that Seth had fallen silent. When she glanced over at him, he was slumped back in his chair, his eyes shut. She wasn’t worried that he was about to fall out of his chair, so she went on about her business, until she had set a casserole to simmer on a back burner of the stove. Now all she had to do was figure out how to make dumplings. She knew she’d seen her mother do it, so how complicated could it be? Not that her mother was a poor cook, just a disinterested one. And when was the last time she’d seen Elizabeth make dumplings? Twenty years ago? Meg realized her own mind was drifting, and got up and went to the shelf in the kitchen to retrieve an old copy of Fanny Farmer, the one with three generations of grease stains marking its pages. There had to be dumplings in here somewhere . . .

  Bree clattered into the room and stopped at the sight of Seth in the chair. “Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

  Meg suppressed a laugh. “Interrupt what?”

  Bree grinned. “His nap?”

  “I’m not asleep, I’m just resting my eyes,” Seth volunteered, without opening his eyes.

  “Yeah, right,” Bree replied. “When’s dinner?”

  “Half an hour, maybe?” Meg said.

  “Do I have time for a shower?”

  “Sure.” As Bree disappeared up the stairs, Meg sat down at the table with her cookbook. “Do you like dumplings?”

  Seth opened his eyes. “Are you talking to me? I like almost anything, particularly if someone else makes it. Dumplings sound great.”

  “Dumplings it is, then,” Meg said. She leafed through the book until she found the recipe she was looking for. But she still didn’t get up. She was tired, but pleasantly so. The room was comfortably warm, and the chicken stew bubbling quietly on the stove smelled wonderful. Sure, she had plenty to worry about, but finding a furnace and replacing her bumper weren’t going to happen in the next couple of hours, so she might as well enjoy the moment. Here, with Seth, in her own kitchen. How many generations of family members had done exactly the same thing? Although, she had to admit, few farmwives had had the luxury of sitting down, not with a hungry family and a few farmhands to keep fed.

  She looked up to see Seth watching her. “This is nice, isn’t it?” he asked.

  She could have pretended she didn’t know what he meant, but what was the point? It was nice. Nice to sit here; nice to sit here with him. Was this what marriage was supposed to be like? Doing nothing together—happily?

  “It is. Nothing like a demanding job to make you appreciate a little rest. I guess I’m romanticizing the past, but it feels so snug here, in a warm kitchen with light and good smells. And good company. Is Max hungry?”

  Seth looked at Max, wrapped around his feet. “Not yet. Why don’t we just sit
for a while? I’ll try to stay awake.”

  “Sounds good. How’s the rest of your family holding up? Rachel didn’t have any guests when this hit, did she?”

  “Everyone’s good, and Rachel didn’t have any bookings. I told you Mom would be back tomorrow. And so life goes on. Let’s hope we don’t get any more snow soon.”

  “Amen. Although Bree tells me it’s going to get colder.” Reluctantly Meg stood up and started assembling plates and silverware for dinner.

  After the meal Bree went back upstairs, leaving Meg and Seth alone in the kitchen. “I should be going,” Seth said.

  “You don’t have to.”

  “How’s Bree going to take my camping out here?”

  “She’s okay with it, don’t worry. You know, I don’t know what I would have done without her this year—she’s smart, and she works really hard. Except at record keeping, but I guess you can’t have everything. I wish I could pay her more, but I’m not even paying me at the moment. At least now I have a better idea of what I’m doing, which would make next season more efficient.” If there is going to be a next season, Meg thought again.

  “Would expanding help?”

  “Where to? I don’t have any more land, unless you count the swamp. Wonder if there’s a way to grow apples hydroponically? Bree’s already talking about new stock, and what we should replace. But where?”

  “Maybe you could use some of my acreage?”

  She stared at him speculatively. “Wow. I mean, relationships are one thing, but sharing land? Planting trees on it? That’s serious.”

  “You sound like a true New Englander,” Seth said with a smile.

  “I am one,” Meg replied promptly, “and I’ve got the paperwork to prove it.”

  “That you do.” He stood up and stretched. “If I’m staying, I should take Max out again, and then I could really use a shower, if Bree left any hot water.”

  “Go for it. After all, if the water heater goes, you know how to fix it.”

  As Seth and Max headed out the back door into the dark, Meg stacked up the dishes by the sink.

  After a few minutes Seth came stomping back in with Max. “It is really cold out there. Even Max didn’t feel like hanging out.”

  They made an early night of it. Meg made a quick foray into her bedroom upstairs and backed out again quickly. It had to be forty degrees there, exposed as it was with two drafty windows, and even if she and Seth managed to generate any heat between them, it probably wouldn’t be enough. Downstairs again, then, in front of the fire. Seth must have read her mind, because by the time she came back downstairs he was stoking the fire. Bree had reappeared, too, and was studiously avoiding looking at them, and Meg had to suppress a laugh. How absurd was this? And how had people managed to make babies in houses stuffed to the rafters with family? People must have been skilled at ignoring things.

  Maybe she was getting used to sleeping on the floor, or maybe it was Seth’s arm draped protectively around her, but Meg slept surprisingly well, waking only when light from the rising sun flooded the room. Seth and Bree slept on as Meg slid out from under the quilts and blankets and tiptoed upstairs to the bathroom to do what was necessary. She sneaked down the back way to the kitchen, but Max scratched at the door, so she hurried to let him into the kitchen before he woke the sleepers. “You need to go too, Max? Hang on a sec.”

  Meg debated briefly about letting him go outside and take care of business, but she still wasn’t sure whether she could trust him to come when she called. She sighed: taking him out on the leash meant putting on her boots and coat and facing a rather brisk wake-up. She checked the thermometer outside her window: twenty degrees, as Bree had predicted.

  Max was dancing around her feet, looking anxious. “Okay, okay, I’m working on it.” She pulled on the boots and coat, disentangled his leash from the collected scarves and coats, and pulled open the door. A blast of cold air rushed into the room. No, cold didn’t begin to describe it: icy. Cutting. Bitter. Max tugged impatiently at the leash, and Meg stepped reluctantly outside, pulling the door closed behind her.

  And stopped abruptly. On the steps outside the kitchen there lay a mangled corpse—a very dead squirrel, its guts hanging out, red blood staining the snow around it. Did blood stay red if it froze quickly? Meg wondered irreverently. Max had spotted the body and was eager to investigate, tugging hard on his leash, but Meg’s stomach turned at the idea. How had the squirrel ended up on her stoop? A coyote or some similar varmint? But why would any animal have caught and killed it, then left it on her stoop? Why would any feral animal abandon its prey? Meg looked around quickly. The surface of the snow, melted by the sun yesterday, had frozen to a thick crust now. She didn’t see any animal prints, but unless an animal was heavy enough to break through the crust, there wouldn’t be any.

  A human would have used the path.

  Whoa, Meg! Why would a person sneak up and leave her a dead squirrel? That made no sense. She hadn’t heard any noises outside the house last night, but she had slept pretty soundly, so that wasn’t surprising. But why hadn’t Max heard anything?

  She shook her head in bewilderment, and stepping carefully around the squirrel, she dragged Max toward the driveway and let him do what he needed to do. By the time he was finished, Seth had appeared in the doorway and had spotted the squirrel.

  “What’s that about?” he asked.

  “You’re asking me?” Meg said. “Come on, Max, time to go inside. I found it when I came out. Didn’t you tell me there were coyotes around here?”

  “Yes, but they seldom leave presents. Maybe Max has a secret admirer.”

  “Well, please just get rid of it. Unless you want to feed it to Max for breakfast?”

  “Uh, no, I don’t think so. Some local animals can carry diseases. If you can get Max inside, I’ll take care of this.”

  “Deal.” Meg dragged a protesting Max into the kitchen and shut the door firmly behind him. She could hear Seth crunching around the driveway—and the sound was clearly audible, even with the door shut. So whatever had left the squirrel had either been fairly light and quick on its feet—or had been deliberately stealthy. After all, Max hadn’t alerted them. That was an unsettling thought.

  By the time Seth came back, Meg had a pot of oatmeal cooking on the stove, and had laid out milk, cream, butter, and two kinds of sugar. After breakfast, Seth announced, “I’m going to check in with the plow guys, and then I’ll see if I can hunt down a furnace for you.”

  “Bless you! Once you get hold of one, how long will it take you to install it?”

  “Depends on how much ductwork I have to shift around. But probably within a day. Don’t worry, a couple more days and you’ll have heat again. I’ll stop by later and let you know what I find out.”

  “Sounds good. Drive safely, it’s icy out there.”

  “So I see. Have a good day—maybe you can track down something about the sampler.”

  “That’s my plan.”

  13

  After Seth left, Meg tidied up the kitchen and went back to the front parlor and the table of genealogy materials that awaited her. Bree roused herself and stumbled upstairs to wash up, and minutes later Meg heard her banging around the kitchen—she must have come down the back way to make herself breakfast. Meg busied herself with the family records.

  It was such a luxury to have time to do big chunks of research. Even though she hadn’t done much more than dabble in her own family history so far, she’d already found how easy it was to lose the thread of what she was pursuing, which meant that each time she sat down to work on anything she had to reconstruct where she had left things. She knew that she had a wealth of information in the sampler, but that could lead in several different and unrelated directions. She had the feeling that it was the Cox name that would hold the key, and that was where she intended to start.

  She had taken digital photos of the sampler so she wouldn’t have to handle the fragile piece to examine it closely; being able to enla
rge the needlework piece onscreen had helped her to decipher some of the faded numbers, and she had transcribed the family names and dates. Violet Cox had made the sampler, but the other people listed there were all Lampsons. Earlier she had spent time trying to find any of them in Massachusetts, where there were plenty of online records, but with little luck. If a woman from the Warren family had married a Cox, Meg had no record of it—yet. But the surname tickled some distant memory of hers, and she was quickly finding that persistence, and a dash of creativity, often helped to break through what looked like dead ends. Before she started searching online Meg riffled through her mother’s notes again. She still marveled at how much Elizabeth had accomplished, with no experience and limited time. Obviously her mother had hidden talents that Meg had never fully appreciated. She thought she remembered . . . Yes! A note scribbled in the margin of a printout: “Cox-Warren-four sibs Pittsford.” Meg stared at the notation. What had her mother meant? Apparently there was some Cox–Warren connection that had caught Elizabeth’s eye, and it led to a place called Pittsford, but Meg checked quickly online and found no Pittsford, Massachusetts. She tried other New England states and found two Pittsfords, one each in New York and Vermont. The one in Vermont seemed likelier, and when she entered that in her search engine she found it was a town almost due north of Granford, and in modern terms, a threehour drive by car. She wondered how long it would have taken by horse or carriage two centuries earlier.

  And there she stalled. Vermont records were nowhere near as accessible online as Massachusetts records. She wasn’t even sure what she was looking for, beyond the surname Cox, possibly linked with Warren.

  “Will you quit sighing?” Bree’s voice interrupted her. “I’m trying to concentrate here.”

  Meg laughed, then stretched. “I didn’t even hear you come in. All I seem to be hitting are brick walls. I’ve got some vague hints of a connection to someone who might be the young woman who made the sampler, who might have some connection to some Warrens somewhere, sometime. You know, it sounds even worse when I say that out loud.”