It wasn’t something she deserved just because her name happened to be the same as that of the town’s founding father. Nor because she had money and he didn’t. She had no right to his conversation or his inner thoughts because she hadn’t earned them.
“I talk when I have something important to say.” Damn. He hadn’t meant to sound so cold.
He felt her withdraw. He needed to monitor his responses and treat her better. He wasn’t mean-spirited. Not usually. Her scent, so different from his own, filled the cab. “Why do you smell different today than yesterday?”
“You noticed?” She sounded surprised. “I thought it was a subtle change.”
“It is subtle. I mean, it’s like you changed your perfume, but didn’t. Like it’s the same perfume, but slightly different. Yesterday, it smelled more citrusy, like lemon, and today it’s more...not quite floral, but sort of like bergamot.”
When she didn’t respond, he glanced away from the road for a second to find her staring at him with her mouth open.
“I’m impressed, Noah.” She nodded slowly. “Seriously impressed. You have a sensitive nose. That’s exactly the change I made.”
“Say what? The change you made? What do you mean?”
“I make my own perfume.”
“You do?” She kept surprising him, piquing his curiosity. “I’ve never known anyone who made their own perfume.”
“I’ve been experimenting with different essential and natural oils.”
“Why? There are a million perfumes on the market.”
“I know, but I haven’t found one that suited me perfectly. There’s always something wrong with them, or something missing. Or, they’re way too strong. I like concocting original, personal scents.”
“So you added bergamot to the perfume you were wearing yesterday?”
“I have a base perfume that I’ve been slowly working on. I have several different mixtures going at any given time.”
“Why bergamot?”
“Because I like it in Earl Grey tea. It’s fragrant and floral without being sickly sweet.”
“You know, I have wildflowers in my fields.”
“What kind?”
“All kinds. You should check them out.”
“May I steal some?” May I, not can I. Perfect grammar again. He liked it.
“Of course. I also grow herbs.”
“You do? You grow them fresh on the farm?” She sounded excited.
“Yep.”
She was silent for a while and then asked, “Will you teach me about them? Help me learn to recognize them?”
“Sure.”
Silence fell again.
“May I turn on the radio?”
He nodded and she fiddled with the knobs. The cab filled with music, but she kept the volume turned low, sort of as background filler.
“So these are people who don’t have enough money to buy their own groceries?” Monica asked as they approached the small Keil ranch.
“The Keils are having trouble making ends meet right now.”
“Why? Is the father crippled or something?”
Noah tensed. “Nothing so Dickensian. Robert has been hanging onto his small ranch for years. He’s a hard worker, by the way.” A note of defensiveness had crept in.
Flatly, Monica replied, “I didn’t say he wasn’t.”
“Rich people—” he glanced swiftly down at the designer jeans she wore “—often assume that anyone out of work or hungry is just lazy.”
She stared out the window, but said, voice low and quiet, “Noah, please stop making assumptions about me. You don’t know me.”
His conscience pricked, he relented. “Fair enough. I’m sorry.” He found he was sorry in truth. They had to get along—they were stuck with each other. And this roller coaster of flaring and abating tension would exhaust them both.
She deserved an explanation. Maybe then she would understand how a simple family managing all right could suddenly find themselves in dire straits through no fault of their own. A reversal of fortune could happen to anyone. As he thought about it more, he realized that Monica probably would understand, because hadn’t Billy’s death been a reversal of fortune for her? Her fortune being her happiness?
“Robert was hanging on, doing all right for himself and his family, when his wife got ovarian cancer. Kayla beat it. She’s in remission. But the medical bills just about bankrupted them. I imagine they’ll be paying for years.”
“Oh.” Monica’s voice sounded small. “I remember Kayla from high school. She was a year or two behind me.” Then she appeared to have a thought. “They own land. Why can’t they grow their own vegetables?”
A reasonable question. “Kayla kept a large kitchen garden before the cancer, but the illness depleted her energy stores. She’s just now getting back to a semblance of normalcy. There’s only so much Robert can do. He has his own chores caring for the cattle and planting the big fields with feed. He can’t also be maintaining the kitchen garden.”
She seemed to be thinking hard.
“The problem for most people,” he explained, “especially small farmers and ranchers, is that they live close to the edge. If something happens, a child gets sick, or we have a really dry summer, they have no buffer. Nothing to fall back on.”
“Are there lots of families like that around?”
“More than you’d think. Things got real bad in 2009 with the recession. Economy’s picked up a bit since then, but not enough. People have their pride, too—which is another problem. They don’t always ask for help, then suddenly you hear they’ve gone bankrupt, or lost the ranch, or moved away for no apparent reason. I don’t want to see that happen to the Keils. They’re good people who’ve lived here for generations.”
He turned up the long driveway. The house and grounds were clean and tidy.
The last time Noah had been here was late last autumn when he’d brought a couple of boxes of root vegetables to get them through the winter. He’d helped Robert fill the old root cellar. They’d have surely eaten those vegetables by now.
He glimpsed the herd in the pasture, noticeably smaller than last summer. Robert was either selling off cattle, or slaughtering and eating them. Probably both. You can’t make money on slaughtered cattle, but a family’s got to eat.
Monica retrieved one of the boxes of food from the back.
“You sure you don’t want to wait here?” Noah held his breath. Now that she’d put him in his place, he found he was doing a one-eighty. He wanted her to visit with the Keils, wanted to make these people real to her, make this more than court-ordered community work. He needed her to understand why this was important.
“I’ll come in.”
Yes. Noah released his breath. Monica had more backbone than he’d given her credit for. Or maybe it was just morbid curiosity.
Robert and Kayla greeted them at the front door with their three young children.
Like the house, the children were clean, but their clothing had seen better days.
Kayla was thin. She used to be a