Someone Like You by Elaine Coffman Page B

of Parsnip’s.
    The back door slammed, and Reed looked up to watch the leisurely progress of Violette and Dahlia down the back steps. They ambled along the path arm in arm, making a stop here and there to admire a butterfly or smell the fragrance of the snowy white blooms of the rosebushes that wound through the rails of the picket fence. Their tall frames seemed somehow regal to Reed. As he watched them, their silver heads bent in conversation like conspirators, he wondered what they were talking about. At these rare moments when they’d called a truce, they seemed as happy as a pair of nesting birds. How alike they were. How different.
    Violette was as cheerful and sunny as Dahlia was gloomy and somber. And yet, in spite of their differences, their disagreements, there were times when they would disappear together, often to go walking, arm in arm, as they were now. Were they remembering the way things used to be? Reminiscing about the past? He couldn’t help but think that they must have been quite the rage in their day, beauties, both of them, and wondered why Dahlia had never married. As the two sisters passed beneath the open doorway where he stood, he saw that both had tucked white roses in the buttonholes of their dresses.
    He was distracted for a moment by the flapping of wings. He looked out just in time to see Daffy scurrying across the barnyard in hot pursuit of Susannah’s aunts. Unable to run very fast, Daffy flapped her wings to help her along and was gaining momentum when she miscalculated and slammed into the picket fence that ran around the perimeter of the backyard. Feathers flew everywhere.
    Daffodil honked once and picked herself up. She waddled around a bit in a dazed, drunken manner. Watching Daffy stumble over her own webbed feet, Reed remembered Susannah’s words and chuckled.
    The soft, muffled whinny of a horse drew his attention, and he watched as Susannah came riding across the pasture on Rosebud’s gleaming sorrel back. She was riding astride, with no saddle, her long, slender legs gleaming white in the sunlight where her dress had blown back. Her hair hugged her head, but curled about her face. Reed figured she had been down to the creek to swim and wash her hair, especially when she dismounted and carried a small bundle into the house.
    Long after she had disappeared inside, he kept seeing those long, slim legs—something he had no business thinking about. He grabbed the pitchfork from its resting place against the wall and returned to his haying. There was no room for a woman in his life. Hard work would drive that need away.
    He had not been working overly long when he thought he heard someone call his name. He paused and listened.
    “Mr. Garrett, are you in here?”
    It was Violette. “Up in the loft,” he called, “storing hay.”
    “Come on down,” she said. “I’ve brought you a big glass of lemonade.”
    “Be right there,” Reed said.
    She inhaled deeply and her eyes seemed to brighten. “Ah, I remember the times we used to play in the loft when we were children. What a delight that was. I don’t think there is anything that smells better than hay when it’s just come in from the field…or anything that makes me recall more pleasant memories.” She allowed her gaze to fall upon the ladder that went up the wall to the loft for just a moment before moving over to him. “How I wish these old legs of mine could carry me up the rungs of that ladder just one more time,” she said, then paused, reflective. “You know, it isn’t so much the things that happen to you when you grow old that I mind, but the things that you can no longer do.”
    He was moved by the depth he saw in this woman, the understanding, the wisdom. She reminded him a great deal of his own mother, and the pain of their separation, the knowledge that he could never go home again was as hurtful as it had been the day he first left Boston. He had to remind himself that the past had no place in his life