Bitter Harvest by Sheila Connolly Read Free Book Online Page A

oven and set the timer. “Me doing all the housework and you sitting there and kibitzing.”
    “How about I wash the dishes?”
    “Deal. I hate washing dishes. Was yours a traditional household? I mean, your mother cooking, your father doing the heavy stuff?”
    “Kind of, even though Mom usually had a job. Well, early on she was working for Dad, doing the billing and accounting. She trained us kids to do a lot of the housework, although we bickered about it.”
    “Forward-thinking woman,” Meg said approvingly. “I don’t think I ever saw my father with a sponge in his hand. We did have a cleaner who came in once a week. I know it sounds kind of pampered, and I guess it was. It was a rude shock when I started living on my own and realized that things got dirty and stayed that way until I did something about it.”
    “You poor thing! So did you hire Merry Maids cleaners?”
    “I did not! I learned. Good thing, or I’d be totally lost with this place. And now I’ve acquired even more skills. You ready for minestrone?”
    “Starving.”
    “Good.”
    She fed Max and Lolly—putting Lolly’s dish on the countertop, since she didn’t trust Max not to scarf up any food he could reach—then dished up the minestrone. “I think there’s a bottle of wine in the fridge. Should I open it?”
    “Why not? I promise you I’m not driving anywhere tonight.”
    Meg realized she hadn’t heard a vehicle pass for quite a while—not even a snowplow. “I don’t think anyone else is either. Who orders the plows out? The selectmen?”
    “You’re looking at one, remember. The answer’s yes, but the snow-removal budget has been cut each year for a while now. And right now, if we sent out the plows—all two of them—the snow would blow right back over the roads in minutes. It’s a judgment call, but the plan is to wait until morning and see what’s what. Of course, the state is responsible for the highways, so they’ll do Route 202—when they feel like it. Don’t hold your breath.” Seth dipped into his soup. “Hey, this is great.”
    After dinner Seth cleaned up the dishes as promised. Back to the front parlor, Meg found that the fire had burned down to coals. It might have been sixty degrees in the room, but after passing through the unheated dining room it felt almost balmy. She’d managed to find a deck of cards in a drawer, and when Seth arrived they quibbled for a while, trying to find a card game in which they were evenly matched.
    “Look, I played hearts in college, and then bridge, but we just weren’t into poker,” Meg grumbled. “Are we going to be reduced to Go Fish? War?”
    “Kind of mindless, aren’t they? You ever tried Russian Bank? Spite and Malice?”
    She shook her head. “I’ve never even heard of them. Did you play a lot of cards with your family?”
    “On and off. Dad was always very competitive, and not particularly patient. But Mom and the three of us kids used to play, back in the Dark Ages before video games. I guess we kind of outgrew it. I know we stopped before I went to college.”
    “My folks played with some regular bridge groups, but I didn’t have sibs, so that was kind of limiting—just three people. We did jigsaw puzzles for a while—I think Mother still has all of those, in the attic.” She hesitated a moment. “You know, we could just talk.”
    Was it her imagination or did he stiffen slightly? “About what?”
    “Don’t go all funny on me—that’s talk with a small ‘T,’ not a capital one. It’s just that you and I have been through a lot, some of it pretty intense, and we’ve been physically intimate, but there’s a lot I don’t know about you, or you about me. That’s all. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.” When Seth didn’t answer immediately, she wondered if she’d done something wrong.
    Finally he said, “Let me take Max out, and you can figure out whether you want to leave Lolly in the kitchen. Oh, and check the weather forecast