Bitter Harvest (11 page)

“Uh, no. I don’t like the things, and I’ve never needed one. But I’m getting used to roughing it. Bree, want to join me on the floor by the fire tonight?”

“I don’t have to bundle with you, do I?”

Seth snickered.

“Shut up,” Meg said. “No, Bree, you can bring your very own blankets. Maybe we can toast marshmallows and do each other’s hair.”

Now it was Bree’s turn to snicker. “Yeah, right.”

Meg turned back to Seth. “There was something I forgot to mention when you came in. Sometime this afternoon Max started barking like mad. I thought maybe he wanted to go out, but when I let him out, he went around to the back of the house. And I found footprints there, or more precisely, snowshoe prints, under one of the back windows. It was kind of strange—I didn’t see anyone around, but you can’t see that window from the street.”

“Odd,” Seth replied. “Did you see any tracks coming or going?”

“Yes, both, off toward the trees at the back of the property. Do you know who lives in that direction?”

“It’s built up a bit over the last few years—lots of new people. I’d have to check. So you don’t think it was just someone out to enjoy the snow?”

“Maybe, but why sneak up on my window? And why disappear so fast? Whoever it was must have heard Max barking and made tracks. Sorry—bad pun.”

“It is. And I can’t say. You didn’t see if anybody tried to jimmy the window, did you?”

“I didn’t look too closely, but I think whoever it was might have hightailed it away when he heard me in the kitchen. He moved fast, whoever he was.”

Bree looked troubled. “I thought it was pretty safe around here. Why would you get a Peeping Tom in this weather? And we don’t use that room anyway.”

“It
is
safe,” Seth said. “But I don’t have any explanation.”

“Come to think of it,” Bree said slowly, “I used to see people hanging around the edge of the orchard, back during the harvest. Just watching. They never got very close, and I didn’t think about it much. Maybe they just liked to watch people pick apples. We certainly had enough lookers along the road, at peak season. Speaking of which, Meg, looks like a chunk of your fence along the road is down. Might have been the snowplows that did it. There’s a lot of snow out there, and some pretty big piles.”

“We can deal with it when the snow melts. I don’t think anybody’s going to try to steal apples at the moment. Seth, when’s that food going to be ready?”

“Coming up. I’m plating now.”

“Ooh, ‘plating,’ are you? Listen to you!” Bree joked. “You been watching those fancy cooking shows? Or are you taking lessons from Nicky now?”

“I haven’t had time to stop by Gran’s lately, even for lunch. But I like to learn, and I have to do something during those long, lonely winter nights.” Seth set plates in front of them on the kitchen table. “Eat.”

After a few bites, Bree said, “Hey, this is good. You keep on watching those shows.”

Bree was right. The food was very good, and Meg was very hungry. It didn’t take long to clean their plates. When they were finished, Seth stood up and said, “I’ll let you two do the dishes—I need to get back to my house. Mom’s coming home tomorrow, and I want to make sure her place is okay. Listen, about what you said earlier . . . you want me to leave Max here?”

Meg was tempted, but she wasn’t sure how Max would fare if Seth wasn’t around all night, and besides, Bree was back now. And the electricity was back, too—she could leave lights on. “We’ll be fine. Can you make it home all right? It’s pretty dark out there. Do you want me to drive you?”

“You’ve never gone snowshoeing by moonlight? You’ve really missed something. I’ll have to take you sometime. Anyway, I’ve done it plenty of times, and I know the way home.”

“Hey, you two,” Bree interrupted, “I’m going to go upstairs and get blankets and pillows and stuff. Very slowly. You take all the time you want.” She got up and pounded up the back stairs to her room.

“Tactful girl, that.”

“She is. Either that or she’s ducking out on doing the dishes.”

“Smart, too. Listen, Meg, call me if you see or hear anything odd.”

“You think I have anything to worry about? Really?”

“I don’t know, but you seem to attract trouble. I can be back here in a couple of minutes if you need me.”

“Thank you for the thought. Maybe it was nothing, just somebody who was curious. I certainly hope so. Are we ready to say good night, since we have Bree’s permission?”

“Definitely.”

Several minutes later Seth pulled away and shrugged on his coat. “Come on, Max. We’re going home.” At the word “home” Max leapt to his feet and waited eagerly by the door. “Night, Meg. And lock your doors.”

“I will. Safe home, Seth.” She watched until he and Max disappeared into the darkness and she could no longer hear the crunch of his steps, then closed the door. And locked it.

“Is the coast clear?” Bree said, peering down the staircase, clutching pillows and blankets.

Meg suppressed a giggle. “Yes, he’s gone. So you’re camping out with me down here?”

Bree clomped down the stairs, her arms full. “It’s freezing up there! You know how much my windows leak? The panes have really neat frost patterns on them. If I want to wake up in the morning, we’d better stick together.” She went through the kitchen and dropped her bedding in a heap on the floor in front of the fire. “Do we close the doors and stuff?”

“Yes. Lolly’s already figured out the routine, and knows where all the warmest spots are. We’ll build up the fire before we go to sleep, and it should last until morning, more or less. Toughen up! We’re living on a farm.”

“Yeah, in the twenty-first century, not the eighteenth. I like modern conveniences.”

“At least we have light and hot water back. What was Amherst like?”

“Snowy, duh. Kids were sledding on the hill at the college. Looked like fun, but Michael and I stayed inside.”

“You could go sledding down the orchard hill,” Meg pointed out.

“What, you think I’m a kid?”

“Well, compared to me you are. You want anything from the kitchen before we settle in here?”

“Maybe something hot to drink. We could do cocoa and marshmallows,” Bree said hopefully, and for a moment she did look like an eager kid.

“No marshmallows, I’m afraid, but I can handle cocoa. Remind me to tell you about what we found in a closet while Seth and I were cleaning up the house.”

“Oh, you found time to clean?” Bree grinned wickedly.

“Yes, we did. Although we didn’t touch your room. If you’ve got vermin nesting in there, you’re on your own.”

“They’re probably going to freeze to death.”

Meg smiled as she made one last trip to the kitchen, which still retained some of the heat from dinner. She filled two mugs with milk and stuck them in the microwave to heat, blessing the appliance as she did so. Yes, she did like modern conveniences, too, she thought, as she watched the mugs circle slowly in the microwave. Although the process of maintaining the orchard couldn’t be much different than it was a hundred years earlier—a lot of stuff still had to be done by hand, tree by tree.

The microwave pinged, and Meg fished out the hot mugs gingerly. In compensation for the lack of marshmallows, she added a dash of brandy. Bree was an adult, and they weren’t about to go anywhere. She carried the mugs back to the parlor and handed one to Bree.

“Here you go. Have you seen Lolly?”

Bree sipped and nodded her approval. “Yeah, she’s under those blankets over there. We’re all set. Can you imagine what things would have been like before indoor plumbing?”

“You mean the, uh, necessities? That’s what chamber pots were for.”

“Ick. Chalk up one more point for mod cons.” She sipped again. “Listen, Meg—what you said about the footprints earlier. That was kind of scary. Why would anybody be snooping around here, especially in three feet of snow?”

“I have no idea. But if someone wanted to break in, that’s the side to do it—nobody can see the back of the house, and as you said, nobody uses that room.”

“Should we go check it out now? Make sure everything’s locked up?”

“I guess.” So Bree was worried, too? Meg was reluctant to point out how easy it would be to get in through any window in the house, but there was no point in upsetting Bree any further. “Now?”

“Better now than later.” Bree stood up. “You have a baseball bat or a poker handy?”

“A what? Oh, you mean something we could use as a weapon. I have trouble imagining myself whacking anybody with a bat.”

“You’d invite him into the parlor and ask him what he wants? That’ll work really well. You lived in the big bad city—didn’t you ever take any self-defense courses?”

“You don’t have to be sarcastic. And, no, I don’t have a bat or a poker, and I’ve never learned anything official about self-defense. How about a rolling pin?”

Bree rolled her eyes. “Isn’t that what they used in old sitcoms? Why is it women don’t have any useful weapons? Maybe you could throw flour in an intruder’s eyes, or soapy dishwater.”

“It could work. Or even a bucket of boiling water.”
Oh, sure—make the intruder wait while I boil water.
“Come on, Bree—let’s just do it. I refuse to believe I’m going to have to take a bat to anyone.”

“All right.” Bree sighed. She led the way across the hall, turning on all the lights as she went.

As Meg had predicted, there was no one there. The rooms were cold and empty. Meg checked out the single window that overlooked the backyard, but since the snow had been blowing around in the light wind all day, she couldn’t even make out the footprints she had seen earlier—they were just dimples in the blanket of snow, from what she could see in the light from the window. Was she supposed to have taken casts of them? Were snowshoes like fingerprints, each unique and easily identifiable?
Meg, you’re being ridiculous!
“See? There’s nothing here.”

Bree shook the sash and flipped the antique latch a couple of times. “Not now, there isn’t,” she grumbled. “At the very least you ought to put some wedges or something here so nobody can just slide the window open. Well, I don’t think anybody’s going to try to sneak up on us in the dark in this snow, so we might as well go to bed.”

“Sounds good to me.” Meg followed Bree back to the parlor, turning off lights as she went—but she left the light over the front door on.

After a final dash to the upstairs bathroom, they settled in, in front of the fire. It wasn’t uncomfortable. Sure, the floor was hard, but with the lights off, the fire was soothing, casting a golden glow on the room—and hiding all the nicks and dings and frays of the cheap furniture. Lolly settled herself in the curve of Meg’s body, purring.

“You ever get scared, being here alone?” Bree asked, her voice small.

“Sometimes. Mostly because it’s unfamiliar—I’m not used to the noises that an old house makes. I guess I was more scared when I lived in Boston. I mean, I knew there was crime there, and I had to be alert any time I walked anywhere, especially after dark.”

“You have any break-ins while you were in Boston?”

“No. I had neighbors who were robbed, but they lived on the ground floor.” And she had lived on the third floor, which had given her a false sense of security. Why would a robber climb the stairs if there were easy pickings further down? And it wasn’t as though she had a lot worth stealing, but how would a robber know that until he had broken in? It would have been the sense of intrusion, of violation, that would have been harder to live with, Meg thought.

Did she feel safe here? She wasn’t sure. She had no near neighbors—no one to hear her scream?
Stop it, Meg!
She lived on a moderately busy street, not a dirt road in the woods, so she wasn’t totally isolated. The police department was no more than a mile away, although the staffing there was pretty thin. And Bree was around most of the time. Funny how simply having another person around made her feel more secure. Would an invader be more intimidated by two women than one? She drifted off to sleep, worn out by shoveling and fighting the chill . . .

Meg wasn’t sure what woke her. Too dark to see her watch, so she had no idea what time it was. The fire was all but dead, reduced to a few glowing coals. Maybe a log had collapsed, or a knot of sap had popped. She lay still, reluctant to leave the warmth of her cocoon, and listened. She could hear the wind, and it sounded as though it had changed direction. Cold air seeped through the windows.

There—a thump. At least she thought it was a thump. She might have dismissed it if Lolly hadn’t reared up, her ears alert. Okay, she wasn’t imagining things. Another thump, on the side of the house, the side the wind was coming from. She tried to remember what could have come loose on that side. A flapping shutter? The goats butting their heads against the barn wall, bored silly? No, they usually slept at night. She strained to hear any new sounds, but the thumping seemed to have stopped. Lolly curled herself up more tightly and went back to sleep. And so should she, Meg thought. But she lay awake a while longer, listening, hearing nothing.