Banish Misfortune (14 page)

Marianne Trainor could never look at her tumbledown farmhouse without a clutching of despair and pride. The roof was a patchwork of shingles and tin, badly in need of repair, the windows needed glazing, the porch sagged and the clapboards were cracked and split, letting in the chilly Vermont air come September. The barn was even worse, with its gentle list to the left, the holes in the roof letting in the rain and snow and stars to keep Billy and Lilly, their cantankerous Nubian goats, company. It always amazed her that a good strong wind didn't topple it, crushing the goats and the chickens in a welter of splintered wood. But it had remained strong and sturdy despite its appearance, and the goats and chickens remained.

She hated those animals, almost as much as she hated her husband. Tom was a lawyer, an overachiever, ambitious, idealistic and completely impractical. This had been his back-to-the-land kick, the last-ditch effort to save a faltering marriage that wasn't strong enough to survive the passing of years and Tom's mindless egoism. He'd come home to their small eighteenth-century gatehouse in Connecticut and announced he'd left the prestigious law firm in New York, bought a minifarm in Vermont, and they were going to start a new life. Eric was four and a half then, Shannon just born, and Marianne had stared at her handsome husband in numb astonishment.

Tom's infatuation with farm life lasted a few months. He enjoyed splitting firewood, but he was afraid of chain saws. He liked working on the old house that was little more than a hovel but he was hopelessly inept, always ending up hiring hippie labor that was overpriced and almost as inept as he was. He bought chickens and goats and a cow, bought an outrageously expensive tractor and plowed a huge garden. But the chickens pecked each other to death, leaving five—of the original two dozen—that produced one egg every four or five days but still had to be watered and fed. The goats had to be milked, but everyone hated goat's milk, and they left olivelike pellets all over the porch, making going barefoot more than hazardous. Tom decided the garden was women's work, leaving the planting, the weeding, the harvesting to the more and more harassed Marianne while he sketched elaborate designs for improving the ramshackle house and drove into Burlington to buy more and more impractical toys.

Their marriage went from bad to worse to nonexistent. They had been in Vermont for ten months when he left, in the midst of a March blizzard, to go back to New York, to his law firm and the elegant lady lawyer who was waiting for him.

That had been two years ago, and Marianne was still mad. Shakingly, furiously angry, and expected to be for the rest of her life. Tom had been generous with his support—too generous. The mortgage was paid off, the children had enough to eat, and the aging Toyota four-wheel drive was at least reliable. Marianne had renewed her nurse's license and augmented the family income by working every other weekend in Burlington. But the checks had become less frequent, missing a month now and then, sometimes two. And there was no way she could get in touch with her ex-husband—he wouldn't return her calls and he always seemed to be out when she called his firm. Barbara, the new Mrs. Trainor, insisted on an unlisted number.

At the thought of that tiny, exquisite, sophisticated creature, Marianne's strong, dirt-caked hands curved in fists. Marianne was what could be called a fine figure of a woman, large, robust, well built. Not at all like the demure second Mrs. Trainor. Marianne was six feet tall, raw-boned, wide-hipped, deep-bosomed, with a broad, freckled face, thick chestnut hair and an infectious laugh. She hadn't felt much like laughing the past few years, but for her children's sake she still did. But it was a lonely life on this tiny, remote part of the Champlain islands, with only upper-class seasonal neighbors who thought anyone who wintered in Vermont must be lacking in common sense, not to mention social acceptability. It would have helped if she had had a friend or two. But the nurses she worked with were in general much younger than her thirty-five years, and the only neighbors near her age were smug young housewives whose lives revolved around shopping and their husbands. Marianne was too old, too involved, too different to be accepted.

No one had rented the MacDowell place in several years. It was probably some writing friend of the old man's, here to hole up for several weeks to complete a manuscript. Eric had said it was a woman driving the car—at least that was an improvement over the lust-driven adventure writer of two summers ago who couldn't fathom how Marianne could spurn his heavy-handed advances. The last thing Marianne needed or wanted at this juncture in her life was another damned man, just when she was starting to make it on her own. But it would be nice if the woman at the MacDowell place could be a friend.

Jessica sat slumped
in the uncomfortable front seat of her Subaru station wagon and stared at the rambling house in front of her, the clear blue of the lake shimmering just beyond it. The house was a late-Victorian cottage, with a wraparound porch that cried out for wicker rockers, weathered shingles and cedar shakes on the roof. The place was absolutely beautiful, spotless and quite deserted, with a curiously expectant look. As if it were just waiting for Jessica to move in.

She must have been reading too many bad romances.
Houses don't wait for people,
she thought, pulling her cramped muscles out of the driver's seat and onto the curving dirt driveway, the keys clutched in her hand. There was a soft glow from the late-afternoon sun, softening the aging contours of the house, and for a moment Jessica let herself dream. Dream that there were people in the house, awaiting her, longing for her. A man in the kitchen, a baby at his feet, both looking up at her with a welcoming smile
…

She shook her head. The shadowy man of her momentary fantasy looked far too much like Springer MacDowell, and the child at his feet had the same dark eyes and silky black hair. Fantasies like that were far too dangerous. Springer MacDowell was gone, and the tiny mite inside her had nothing to do with him. Nothing at all.

She heard the noise of the ancient automobile from a distance, chugging up the road, and for a moment a sudden panic washed over her. She could close her eyes and see Springer, his long body folded behind the compact seat of his Lotus, chasing after her. But the Lotus growled, purred, hummed; it didn't chug and buck and grumble. Her icy blue eyes opened in time to see the disreputable Jeeplike vehicle pull to a stop behind her Subaru, and she watched with mingled despair and amusement as an earth mother tumbled out, followed by two grinning urchins.

"Hi, I'm Marianne Trainor," the earth mother said, advancing on the waiting Jessica. She found herself looking up into warm brown eyes, a wide, smiling mouth, and she found herself smiling back.

"Jessica Hansen," she replied, holding out her thin, well-shaped hand, only to have it swallowed up in Marianne's large, dirt-stained paw. She waited patiently, unused to small-town ways.

"We're your neighbors down the road." Belatedly Marianne noticed the garden still clinging and quickly brushed it off against her faded jeans. "My son, Eric, saw you driving down to the lake, so we thought we'd visit and make sure everything's okay. Uh, are you friends of the MacDowells?"

This was done with an embarrassed lack of delicacy, and Jessica belatedly caught on. This amazon had come to check on the house for Hamilton and Elyssa. "Yes, I am. I'll be staying here for a while."

"A while?" Marianne questioned.

"Quite a while. If I can take the winters. Ham doesn't think I can, but I intend to prove he's wrong."

That wide, enchanting smile lit Marianne's face again, warming everyone in her vicinity, even Jessica.

"You'll be able to take it all right," she said firmly. "And we'll help you out. You're the first woman I've seen in the past three years that doesn't make me feel like the Incredible Hulk. I'd do anything to keep you around, if just to convince the locals that I'm not the only tall woman in the world."

Jessica laughed, a rusty-sounding chuckle. "Aren't you a local?"

Marianne shook her head. "Not me. I'm a transplant from Connecticut." A loud screech from the disreputable car caught her attention, and she dived back in, emerging with a towheaded daughter on her hip. "This is Shannon, and that suddenly quiet young gentleman is Eric, who's quite desperate to know whether you have any children. We're sort of remote out here."

"No children." Jessica turned to the boy, giving him a tentative smile. "Not till mid-April, that is."

"Just in time for a spring snowstorm." Marianne groaned. "That is, if you're planning to still be here."

"Oh, I'll still be here."

Marianne gave a brief glance around the packed car. "Is your husband with you? I didn't think to ask before."

"No husband," Jessica replied tranquilly.

Marianne was obscurely pleased. "Boyfriend?"

"No boyfriend, either. Just me and junior." She patted her flat stomach.

"You won't find much in the way of male companionship around here," Marianne felt compelled to warn.

"Good. I think I've had enough of male companionship to last me for quite a while," Jessica replied. "Want to join me while I explore the house?"

Marianne grinned. Her hideous day was rapidly improving. "Glad to. We can even show you where things are—my husband and I stayed here for a month before we moved into our house. I miss being so close to the lake, but it's colder in the winter."

Jessica followed Marianne's sturdy frame up the front steps, with the silent Eric taking up the rear. "What do you and your husband do up here?" she questioned idly.

"I homestead, which means I try to keep body and soul together without spending any money and rarely succeed. I also work weekends in Burlington at the hospital. In obstetrics," she added with a grin.

"That's reassuring to hear. And your husband?" The cottage smelled of closed air and mothballs and cedar, and Jessica had the curious feeling she should have been carried over the threshold. By whom, she mocked herself. By Springer?

"My husband," Marianne said carefully, "is a lawyer in New York. We don't see much of him and his new wife."

Jessica heard the slight thread of pain in Marianne's matter-of-fact voice and nodded, filing it away for future reference. "Sounds like we're going to have a matriarchal society on this end of the island," she commented.

"Sounds like. There's Andrew Cameron at the old Hill place, but no one sees much of him except at town meetings, and there's Helene LaPlante still out at her farm. She just sits there and knits and gossips, but she's a good old soul despite her nasty tongue. She has three large, not too bright grandsons who are more than willing to help split firewood, clean chimneys and do anything you'd rather not do, but you have to keep them in line."

"And that's all?"

"That's all on this end of the island. Missing the city already?"

Jessica looked around at the snug confines of the front living room, the multipaned windows looking down over the lake, the old wicker furniture and the fieldstone fireplace, and she gently stroked her belly. "This is heaven," she said with a sigh. "I don't ever want to go back."

"Wait till the first snowfall," Marianne warned. "But I think you've got what it takes. It's a good place to raise kids, even if it is lonely."

Jessica smiled dreamily out at the lake. "It's home," she said. "It's home."

"Where the hell is she?"

"Don't swear at me, Springer," Elyssa said in a deceptively tranquil tone of voice. "I didn't put up with it when you were a teenager and I won't put up with it now."

Slowly Springer counted to ten, forcing his tightly clenched hands to relax. "Sweet, dear Mother," he said in a deeply sarcastic voice, "would you please tell me where Jessica Hansen has disappeared to? Peter and Jasper haven't the faintest idea, and they're as mad as hell."

"They're not nearly as mad as Rickford Lincoln," Elyssa said, smiling complacently.

"And he's not nearly as mad as I am. Where is she?"

"Why should you be mad, Springer? I don't recall that you have any rights over Jessica."

His hands had clenched again, and slowly he loosened them. He'd forgotten how frustrating his mother could be when she was being reasonable. "No rights at all," he agreed. "Where is she?"

His mother leaned back against Ham's sofa and eyed her son. "If she wanted you to know she would have left word," she said more gently. "I'm afraid I can't tell you."

"But you know where she is?"

"I know. Leave her be, Springer. She's been through too much during the past few months—she needs some time to herself. Maybe later..."

"Later I'll be working," he snapped. "I can't afford to jet back and forth between coasts looking for a neurotic female who has no idea what she wants out of life."

"Give her time to find out."

He glared at his mother, totally out of tune with her for the first time in years. "I don't—"

"I know, you don't want to. But you've got other responsibilities right now. School's about to start, and Katherine needs you. Go back to Washington, Springer. If and when Jessica is ever ready for you she'll let you know. And if she doesn't, I will."

He opened his mouth to protest, to inform her that he didn't give a damn about Jessica Hansen and her high-strung psyche. He snapped it shut again. "I'll have to trust you," he said finally. There was nothing else he could do.