A Family for the Farmer by Laurel Blount Read Free Book Online Page B

back down on the plate. “These look real good, but I can’t eat your food, Emily, until I’m sure you understand where I stand on this. I know you’re finding it hard to believe, but I’m on your side here. I want to help you.”
    â€œEven though you’ll get the farm if I don’t stick this out?” She offered him a wry smile, but this time his expression remained serious.
    â€œThis farm is yours by rights. Miss Sadie was your family, not mine, and I’m sorry she left things like she did. I truly am.”
    He sounded sincere, and Emily felt a niggle of guilt. Abel had no family worth speaking of. His mother had run off when Abel was just a boy, leaving him to deal with his younger brother and their moody, alcoholic father as best he could.
    Her grandmother had told her about the morning Abel had knocked on the farmhouse door. A fourteen-year-old boy with hungry eyes, he’d asked if he could split firewood for her in exchange for some food for himself and his little brother.
    â€œI almost ran him off the property,” Grandma had told Emily, shaking her head ruefully. “I’d been living next to the Whitlocks for too long not to be suspicious of them. Most of them would steal anything that wasn’t nailed down. But he was nothing but a boy, skinny as a beanpole and so famished he was shaking. No telling when he’d eaten last. Elton Whitlock never cared much about anything that didn’t come straight out of a liquor bottle, and he sure wasn’t troubling his sorry head about feeding those boys of his after Gina left him. But that young’un had more gumption in his little finger than the rest of his kin put together. He wouldn’t even eat the sandwich I brought out to him unless I let him earn it. So in the end I just handed him the ax and let him get on with it.”
    At the end of that day, Sadie Elliott had a neatly stacked woodpile that would last her for a month of cold weather, and young Abel had gone home with a new shirt on his back, a basket stuffed with eggs and vegetables from her garden and a job on Goosefeather Farm for as long as he wanted it. Abel had been family to Sadie ever since that day, and Emily knew it.
    She got very busy peeling the paper off a muffin before she spoke. “You don’t have to apologize for meaning a lot to my grandmother, Abel. And I don’t blame you for the way she left her will. You and I both know nobody could talk Grandma into doing anything she didn’t want to do.”
    Abel heaved a deep sigh, and she looked up from her muffin to find him smiling that lopsided smile of his. He looked relieved. “That’s good to hear.” He stripped the paper off one of his own muffins and broke off a generous chunk.
    â€œThat doesn’t mean I’m happy about being put through this trial by farm, or whatever you want to call it,” Emily cautioned. “It’s the craziest thing I ever heard of. I don’t know what Grandma was thinking.”
    â€œThe letter didn’t tell you?”
    Emily shrugged. “Grandma never thought I appreciated Goosefeather Farm the way she wanted me to. It looks like she just wanted one last opportunity to change my mind. She was always convinced I belonged here.”
    â€œMaybe you do,” Abel said simply, breaking off another chunk of muffin.
    â€œBelieve me, I don’t.” He looked as unconvinced as her grandmother had every time they’d had this particular conversation. Time to change the subject. “How are those muffins? I baked them yesterday morning.” She was tinkering with her apple spice muffin recipe, and she thought adding the extra ground cloves had been a good idea.
    â€œReally good. But then you always were a good cook, even when you were a little slip of a thing. Better than Miss Sadie, rest her soul. Her muffins were like hockey pucks.”
    Emily smiled, remembering. “She mixed them too much.