Help Wanted: Husband?. Darlene Scalera

roofs that looked like they leaked, apple boxes so old the pine was splintering away from the nails. It’d be backbreaking hard work getting this place up and running again with no help except for a woman with a hard spine and soft gray-green eyes who thought she could become a farmer by sitting in her front parlor reading.

      Lorna turned on the water. “It was my impression we came to an agreement, Mr. Holt.”

      “It was my impression you hired me, then fired me faster than rabbits reproduce.”

      “Then I hired you again.” Her voice was calm as a country morning, but she was scrubbing her hands too hard, too long.

      “This place is in pretty sad shape.”

      She turned off the water, shook out a towel, swiped at the water splatters on the sink’s edge. “Are you afraid of hard work, Mr. Holt?”

      “No, ma’am. Work hard, play hard. That’s my belief. Keeps life interesting.” It also kept a person from thinking far into the night, remembering things better off buried.

      She twisted the towel. “All right, seven thirty-five an hour.”

      “Ten dollars.”

      She wrung the towel. “Seven-fifty.”

      “Eight.”

      “Seventy seventy-five but not a cent more, and be sure you’ll earn every penny of it.”

      “Plus the bonus at the season’s end,” he reminded.

      She slapped the towel onto the counter. He smiled.

      “Plus the bonus at the season’s end. That’s my final offer, Mr. Holt.” She flung up the lid of a bulky-shaped, bright white appliance. “If you prefer to pursue opportunities elsewhere, that, of course, is your prerogative.” She lifted out a loaf of perfect bread, brown, smooth crowned, the smell alone enough to make a man give thanks. She set it on a wire rack. “I wish you good luck and Godspeed.”

      That loaf of bread. His grandmother had made bread like that. And pies. Oh Lord, his grandma’s pies. He could still see her, standing in a kitchen as old and dingy as this, her hard-knuckled hands cutting the lard into the flour, giving the bowl a quarter turn, cutting straight in again until the dough formed into soft crumbs. In late spring, there’d be rhubarb. Blueberry and peach would follow in the summer; apple and squash in the fall. His mother had been warned early in her marriage to stay out of her mother-in-law’s kitchen, which suited her just fine since she had never been one much for cooking anyway. When they moved out West, whenever his father had mentioned pies, his mother had always declared she’d go to her grave without ever making a pie. She had, too. After his father had died, she’d pretty much stopped cooking altogether.

      “Do you make pies?”

      “This isn’t a diner, Mr. Holt.”

      He smiled, the smell of the fresh bread sweet as a woman. He looked at Lorna, drawn up tight beneath her loose clothes. Even her high-and-mighty gaze couldn’t take away the pleasure of that fresh bread. He breathed in deeply.

      She paused a moment before turning back to the counter. “I’ll get you clean sheets after supper…if you’re staying.”

      Out the window the sun was making its way home. He smelled the bread, could feel those clean, fresh sheets. He would stay tonight. What he would do tomorrow, he’d decide, as always, when tomorrow came. “I’ll stay.” He turned to go.

      “Did you mean what you said earlier?”

      He looked at her over his shoulder.

      “About the soil being rich, and our yields being the envy of other farmers? Or were you just saying that for the Aunties’ benefit?”

      Her expression stayed neutral, but beneath the careful tone of her voice, he heard the low leavening of hope. He remembered the hurt in her eyes earlier when she talked of the gossip about her. Yes, he’d said those things then for her aunts’ benefit, but for her benefit also. Now he saw she needed to believe. And maybe, just maybe, he needed to believe a little, too. For both their benefits—hers and his—he said, “Seeds are no more than possibilities, Mrs. O’Reilly. Plant them, and anything is possible.”

      He opened the door. She cleared her throat. He glanced back once more.

      “Thank you.” The gratitude was so quiet and right in her voice, she turned away to the counter.

      “You’re welcome,” he replied, his voice without overtones. He was still shaking his head when he reached his truck. A raise and a thank-you. Beneath that buttoned-up, tight-lipped exterior, the widow wasn’t going soft around the edges on him, was she?

      “Naw,” he told the listening land. It’d take a lot more than an extra seventy-five cents an hour and a weak moment to prove the widow wasn’t wound tighter than a fisherman’s favorite reel. He gave a chuckle as he gathered his duffel bag. He left his sleeping bag stored in the narrow space behind the front seat. Tonight he’d have clean sheets, the thought alone bringing him enjoyment.

      He started back across the yard. He couldn’t say what tomorrow would bring, never could, but tonight he’d have a roof over his head, smooth sheets, a belly full of warm, fresh bread…and a promise of land. He looked at the fields’ gentle curves, the trees waiting for new growth, the light coloring the sky. All was possibility.

      No, he couldn’t say what tomorrow would bring but, for tonight, he was here in Hope.