The Ladies Farm (5 page)

Barbara met Della’s kindness with her own. “Oh, but I already own my share of the Ladies Farm. Fifty percent.”

“What?” That was Kat, who was addressing Barbara but looking hard at Pauline.

Pauline looked down at her hands. “I think what she means—”

“You told us you owned this outright. You and Hugh,” Della said.

“And we did.” Pauline looked up, eyes wide. “I just never expected Barbara to want, to exercise …”

“It’s nothing, really,” Barbara picked up. “You know, when we lent money to Pauline and Hugh, over the years, it bothered Hugh so much. He wanted to pay interest, but of course Richard wouldn’t hear of it.”

“So he traded you part of the Ladies Farm?” Kat’s voice rose so high she almost squeaked out the question.

“No, no, no,” Barbara shook her head. “You don’t understand. Richard wanted to make sure,” and now her voice trembled, “he always worried about me. ‘What if something happens to me?’ he would say. ‘How will you live? How will you get along?’ So when Hugh and Pauline insisted we had to take something back for all those loans, Richard and Hugh drew up an agreement, giving us half of Sydon House. That way, if either one of us were widowed, we would always have a place to go.”

Kat, Della, and Rita turned to Pauline, who was nodding sadly and studying her hands.

“Well, but this isn’t Sydon House,” Rita said. “Though of course, we’d love to have you here. This is the Ladies Farm.”

“The Ladies Farm is the legal successor to Sydon House,” Pauline said, surprising everyone with her briskness. She looked evenly at Kat and Della. “Perhaps we need to meet to discuss all this, but basically, Barbara is correct. She owns half of the Ladies Farm.” She turned to Barbara. “And of course, you can stay as long as you wish.”

               Chapter 4

D
ella had not seen Richard’s grave since the funeral. There had been no stone then, of course; just that pit, and Barbara’s wailing, and the unseasonable heat that made them all slick with sweat before they even began the short walk from their cars to the green awning.

There had been so many people, Della recalled as she drove alongside the cemetery fence, that she could barely see the coffin or hear the minister’s words. In the press of mourners, no one noticed that she slipped away quickly, almost running back to her car and speeding away from them, away from Fort Worth and out onto the highway. To Sydonia, it turned out, where she had stayed and stayed as Pauline’s special guest, until it became apparent to Della that she would stay permanently.

Fitting, Della thought as she turned into the gated drive. First I saved Pauline. Then she saved me. It had been Richard who called Della, right after Hugh’s death, to see if she could help Kat talk some business sense into Pauline. They had met for lunch, she and Richard and Kat, to plot their strategy, and then Della had visited Pauline at Sydon House. Less than five years ago, Della thought, weaving along the gentle curves between the graves. Three years after the divorce from Tony.

And then one Sunday Richard visited Sydonia and he saw me there on the river, she recited silently. I was sitting in an inner tube, floating
and talking to Pauline, and reaching for another beer from the six-pack that occupied its own tube.

“It was like high school,” she could hear him say, and the words still thrilled her. “I saw you and I got a hard-on and I just wanted to coax you into the woods so we could make out.” Della sighed as she pulled the emergency brake. He had moved a little more subtly than that, of course, meeting for lunch, then dinner, ostensibly all about the business plan for the Ladies Farm. But it hadn’t taken long.

Because it was like high school, Della thought now. It was like the adolescence neither one of us had … maybe no one ever really has. Della got out of the car. We both worked so hard, all our young lives, she thought, and, suddenly, there I was in the river and there he was on the shore. Our kids were gone, our finances were stable, our time was our own, and neither one of us could see a reason not to have what we wanted.

Della had no trouble finding the right marker. She had known it would be one of those modern stones, flat and set in the ground, with nothing more than his name and the dates of his birth and death on a brass plate. But seeing it insulted her. She wanted a marble memorial to let onlookers know how much he had been loved. She wanted some description of how he had brightened the world, of how his eyes sparkled behind his glasses. Why hadn’t they listed all the money he’d given to charity, all the committees he’d chaired, the causes he’d championed, the kids he had tutored, the teams he had coached? Wasn’t there some way to make the stone convey the broad shoulders and the lopsided grin?

Della flopped down in the grass and reached a hand out to touch the stone. “Oh, Richard!” she said. There was no place for her on that brass plaque, no acknowledgment that she had ever had a place in his life.

Della had supposed that the grave would stimulate memories and that she would be overwhelmed with warm feelings toward the man who had brought her so much joy at a time when joy had seemed
impossible. Instead, she felt the distance between them and her nostalgia gave way to aggravation.

“Now look what you’ve done!” she scolded. “You had to be the great protector. Your money wasn’t enough? She had to have perpetual access to my only home?”

Somewhere beyond her sight someone was mowing, and the drone only emphasized Richard’s failure to respond. Della didn’t know what she had expected. She had avoided the cemetery because a single encounter there with Barbara might give her away. Now, knowing exactly where Barbara was, she was safe from discovery. But maybe discovery hadn’t been her only fear. Maybe it was silence.

He can’t help that he died, she reasoned. But he could have prevented this mess. And he at least could have mentioned that dalliance with Kat!

“You thought you were being gallant!” Della accused.

But that meant, Della hoped, that Richard hadn’t said anything to anyone else about his relationship with her. “Is our secret safe?” she asked. Then, in the next breath, “And what am I supposed to do with Barbara?”

Maybe he forgot all about it, Della thought. But how could you forget that you owned half a bed and breakfast? Or maybe he just figured that Barbara would never really move out there. Or maybe, Della thought, maybe that’s why it was so urgent to save the place. All those hours you coaxed from me, she addressed the stone, figuring how Pauline could eke a living from it: Were you just protecting your investment?

Della remembered plunging in, taking the lead. She and Kat had assembled all the Sydon House records, performed a statistical analysis of guest profiles, competing bed and breakfasts, area attractions, and even aesthetic comparisons. Then they had written the business plan, she and Kat, huddled in the office almost till dawn, when they both had left for their jobs in Fort Worth.

“I can’t believe I did all that while I was still working full time,” Della addressed Richard. “I don’t think I could do that again.”

Now, though, a chunk of the mystery fell into place. Kat and I, she thought. We both worked nonstop because Richard had asked us. It wasn’t really for Pauline. And then, no matter his intentions, we ended up contriving a place where we both wanted to live.

Still, none of this solves anything, she thought. Surely, when Hugh died, Richard must have remembered who owned what. Of course, when Hugh died, he couldn’t possibly have asked Pauline to buy out his interest. And Pauline would never have let him simply give it to her.

And, Della’s mind raced now, he probably thought Barbara—no, make that he and Barbara, since he was planning to live forever—would never want to live at Sydon House. So he just let it ride, thinking they’d work it out down the road, when Pauline was stronger, when Sydon House was in better shape.

He was just doing what he thought was best for Pauline, Della told herself. Even after Kat announced she was moving down there, he never imagined Della would end up there.

And he was right. Once the Ladies Farm got started, Della had retreated back to her townhouse in Fort Worth. After all, she had to live alone to be available for him.

They had been careful, of course. Richard had given her money for a nondescript Buick that he parked at the Fort Worth Club building. He drove his own car to the building, went upstairs to the club, then took the Buick over to Della’s and parked it inside her garage. For out-of-town trips, they flew to two separate cities, then caught second flights to their destination.

“How was San Francisco?” people would ask, and she would smile wistfully and say there was nothing more dramatic than the fog rolling in over the Golden Gate Bridge, all the while recalling the pristine sky over Vancouver Island.

She shifted around so that she was sitting cross-legged and leaned forward to stretch out her lower back. I’m too old to be sitting on the ground, she thought, but then, her back had been stiff for years.

Della had thought that being here with Richard might give her a clue about what to do, or maybe a clue about what he would have wanted her to do. But she remained uncertain. And angry.

Besides Kat and me, who else was there? Her rational side told Della that her anger was overblown. He married Barbara, she lectured herself, had a brief affair with Kat and then, years later, had a long affair with you. That doesn’t mean there was ever anyone else. And it doesn’t mean that anyone, even Barbara, meant more to him. But what if there were others? Della glowered at the stone.

Beloved husband and father
. And, she told herself as she had told herself throughout the four and a half years of their relationship, you knew that from the beginning.

Maybe she could adjust to Barbara living at the Ladies Farm. She’s not so bad, Della thought, remembering how Barbara had shooed them out of the kitchen while she stacked the dessert plates in the dishwasher. “I’ve given you girls a lot to talk about; go talk.” That had ended in Kat berating Pauline until she cried, whereupon Rita announced that if Kat didn’t stop her tirade and if they didn’t welcome that nice woman in the kitchen, she was going to marry Dave and move her shop over next to his gas station.

Kat had finally apologized to Pauline and they had agreed to take a time-out and work on it at their regular Tuesday-morning meeting. Della doubted they could do anything to change the fact that Barbara was moving in with them. Instead, she had to decide if she could stay with Barbara.

“I never once asked you to do anything that would have harmed Barbara in any way. I never asked for a holiday with you, I never demanded your attention in the middle of the night or sulked because I had no escort when you were squiring Barbara to dinners and
dances. She was your wife and I wasn’t. But I don’t want her for a roommate. I don’t care how good you were to her; I don’t have to be.”

Carefully, she unfolded her legs and stretched them out in front of her, bracing herself with her palms flat on the grass. She tilted her head and studied the grave marker. What did you want from him? she asked herself.

She supposed it was permission to move out of the Ladies Farm. She’d rent a duplex in Fort Worth and edit the newsletter there. She’d have to find a job, of course. The newsletter itself would never support her, but she could probably freelance for the Convention Bureau or the Chamber of Commerce. Someone could use an expert events planner.

There would be no river and no canoe; there would be no oak floors or high ceilings. But some things wouldn’t change much. Instead of the demands of guests, there would be the demands of clients. Instead of Flops, the bounding retriever–shepherd–setter and something they weren’t quite sure what, there would be a demure and dignified cat.

“Who knows?” she asked aloud. “Maybe back in Fort Worth, I’ll meet a man.”

Richard had worried about her loneliness more than a meddling mother would. “Do not,” he had said, holding her by both shoulders and stooping slightly so that they would be eye level, “do not leave yourself lonely over me.”

Well if I did that, it wasn’t because of you. It was because that’s how I wanted it. And maybe I want to live alone again now, maybe I’m just not cut out to live with four other women and a bunch of narcissistic guests.

I’ve adjusted to the idea that you’re not coming back, Della said silently. I don’t need the Ladies Farm to distract me anymore.

She pushed herself sideways onto her hip, then rolled up onto her knees. Leaning forward, she touched the grave marker with her outstretched fingers. She had thought about bringing him flowers, but it
seemed a foolish risk to leave something that, even days later, could raise questions.

Della stood. She had two pictures of Richard; one was of the two of them on a sailboat in the Gulf Coast, and the other was a close-up of him taken in a motel room they had shared in Toronto. The first picture resided in a safe-deposit box; the second was tucked between the pages of a paperback stored beneath her sweaters.

She used to take that picture out and look at it because she feared forgetting how Richard looked. Now, she looked at men his age and wondered if that’s how he looked now, in some other place. Photographs did not help at all.