The Grass Widow by Nanci Little Read Free Book Online Page B

up.” Ott’s voice was flat. “Ain’t a way in the world.”
    “There’s a will,” Joss said curtly. “Means there’s a way. Give the missus my best.”
    Ott looked at Doc; Doc shook his head in silent warning. Dismissed, Mr. Clark grumbled away, and Joss sat glowering at the scarred heel of the boot resting on her knee.
    “It was a fair offer, Joss,” Doc said quietly. “Allowed for crops in.” She huffed a chilly laugh. “Ever’body but me knows what my claim’s worth? Maybe I need to go talk to Mister Carpenter over t’the bank. Get his idea on it.”
    “You won’t hear much different than what Ott said.”
    “You see everyone in town in a week.” She gave him the glare she had been aiming at her boot. “Tell the whole damned lot of
    ’em the Bodett place ain’t for sale!”
    “Well,” Aidan mused, when Joss had let the kitchen door slam behind her, “if she does sell, she’ll have driven the price up.”
    Doc snorted a humorless laugh. “She’ll die before she sells.”
    He went back to his labor, and in a while Joss came grumpily back to her chair.
    Aidan requested Doc teach her to plow. She didn’t have the
     
    brute strength the job required, but she walked with him, and it was there behind the patient horse Charley that he asked his medical question of her. Joss studied them from her rocker at the edge of the field as Doc rested in the traces. Even from her distance she could see the shiver that took Aidan, and how her arms hugged herself against that internal chill as she stared at the ground and spoke words Joss couldn’t hear.
    When Doc was fed and gone Joss helped Aidan with the dishes, and they sat at the table to read in the last of the daylight: Aidan a days-old newspaper Doc had brought, Joss Don Quixote, but the Spaniard couldn’t capture her and at last, quietly, she asked. “Is there something I should know, Aidan?”
    Aidan looked up as if the words had reached across the table to slap her, and silence hung long between them before finally, softly, she said, “You’ve not wondered why I was sent here?”
    Joss scratched her lower lip. “I wondered what sort o’ folk would send you off to a hard place an’ people you didn’t know, an’ feelin’ you had no home to go back to.”
    “You’re not stuck with me forever. Just—” She drew a shaky breath. “Just until the baby’s old enough that I may return with a story of a dead husband. No one will believe it, but the glaze of propriety will be spread.”
    Joss drew the place-ribbon across her page and closed her book; she stared at the cover. Tight-lipped, Aidan waited. It was long before Joss spoke. “Do you miss him?”
    She looked away, unable to answer.
    “Aidan...” Her voice was soft and cautious. “Do you—did you—love him?”
    “I—” She jerked loose the bow of her apron, and wadded the cloth and flung it to the table. “Why haven’t you even a floor in the kitchen? A real floor, with boards, not dirt?” The tears that had been dammed up since Doc’s gentle question tried to flood over; she jammed them back and fled for the privacy of her room, slamming the door so hard the iron latch bounced back open.
    “A floor?” She gave the door a vicious kick, hurting her toe; the
     
    latch caught and she threw herself onto the bed. “ A floor? Have you lost your mind?” She drove her face into her pillow. “A floor!
    She’ll think you’re insane!”
    A hand touched her shoulder and she recoiled, barely choking back a scream.
    “Aidan, I’ll make you a floor in the kitchen. I’ll make floors all through the house if you want them, but don’t turn from—”
    “You know perfectly well a floor has nothing to do with it!”
    “I know.” Again, her hand found Aidan’s shoulder; again, Aidan flinched. Joss stood and paced the room a helpless turn.
    “Aidan, you don’t have to go back until—or unless—you want to. I thought we’d long since settled that.”
    “I don’t need your