Bought the Farm Read online

  And it was nice that she was following in her father’s footsteps. Billy, although he loved baseball, hadn’t shown any special talent for it. But time would tell—he might develop the skills he needed with practice.

  Shelby thought of her husband, “Wild Bill,” and smiled. Playing baseball hadn’t exactly prevented him from getting into mischief, although by today’s standards, his antics and those of his friends would be considered pretty tame and come under the boys will be boys category.

  “I’m going to go change,” Amelia said as she started toward the stairs.

  “You’re sure you don’t want anything to eat? You said you were hungry—and you love hummus.”

  “I’m fine. Thanks.”

  Shelby bit her lip. She probably worried too much, but every time she turned on the television or picked up a magazine, there were stories or articles about losing weight and the latest diet craze. Amelia was a healthy weight—she’d had a sports physical not long ago—and Shelby didn’t want to see her start dieting like so many other girls her age.

  * * *

  • • •

  Shelby was opening the door to the bathroom, releasing a cloud of moist humid air from her shower into the hall, when Amelia came out of her room. She’d changed into shorts and a T-shirt with Bobcats written on it. Her curly blond hair was pulled into a ponytail and threaded through the back of the Tigers baseball cap she was wearing. She was tossing a baseball back and forth from one hand to the other.

  “Call me when dinner’s ready,” she said to Shelby as they passed in the hall.

  “Sure.”

  Amelia ran down the stairs, taking them two at a time.

  Dear Reader, will wonders never cease! Shelby shook her head in disbelief. Amelia and her brother were not only getting along—they were actually doing something together. Something other than playing games on the computer or watching television.

  Shelby changed into a T-shirt and a pair of jeans that were clean, although a bit faded around the seams and with frayed hems.

  The door to Amelia’s room was open, and Shelby noticed the flickering light of her computer monitor. Shelby’s parents had given it to Amelia for Christmas. Amelia had been over the moon—up until then, she’d had to borrow Shelby’s laptop and that had limited the time she was able to spend on social media communicating with her friends.

  The computer was open to Amelia’s Facebook page. Shelby hesitated on the threshold. She was of two minds about parents snooping through their children’s things—on the one hand, it could mean uncovering a problem that needed to be dealt with, but on the other hand, it was an intrusion and a betrayal of trust.

  Shelby couldn’t help herself. She’d only take a peek—after all, if Amelia was putting things out on Facebook, how private could they be?

  Shelby felt like a thief as she crept into Amelia’s room, looking over her shoulder at least half a dozen times. The monitor had gone to sleep and she had to jiggle the mouse to bring up the page on the screen again.

  It wasn’t Amelia’s Facebook page after all but a page belonging to a girl by the name of Lorraine Spurlinger. The picture at the top of the page was small and grainy, but Shelby could see that Lorraine had an unfortunate bite that made it look as if she were biting her lower lip when she wasn’t. Other than that, she was fairly nondescript—brown hair that was neither particularly light nor dark and that was neither straight nor curly.

  Her face was fleshy and her eyes on the small side. Shelby felt sorry for her, but she knew from experience that girls who didn’t come into their looks in their teens often blossomed later in life.

  She was about to leave Amelia’s room, when one of the comments on Lorraine’s timeline caught her eye and she stopped to read it. Shelby’s hand flew to her mouth. How awful! She knew teens could be cruel, but this went beyond normal teenage behavior.

  The poor girl! The person who left the comment hadn’t posted a photograph of him- or herself but one of a figure whose face was hidden by a black hood. Shelby shivered. It was creepy. And the name had to be made up—Black Knight. Even in this day and age with children being given names like Apple or Breeze or Rainbow, Black Knight was a little too far-out to be real.

  Obviously other students found the remark a cause for hilarity because their replies were just as mean and spiteful as Black Knight’s original comment had been.

  Shelby was about to turn away from the computer when Amelia’s name caught her eye. She’d written her own comment under Black Knight’s, defending the hapless Lorraine and calling Black Knight out as a bully.

  Shelby felt her chest swell with pride. It would have taken courage for Amelia to stand up to the other kids that way. But these bullies shouldn’t be allowed to get away with harassing other students like this. Shelby wondered if the school administration was aware of this problem.

  Now she was in a bind, Shelby thought as she went down to the kitchen to bundle up some herbs she’d picked earlier. She would be selling them at the general store along with some of her yogurt cheese. Did she let on to Amelia that she’d seen this girl’s Facebook page? She’d have to admit to snooping, and she knew that would make Amelia angry.

  Shelby hadn’t come to any conclusions by the time she’d finished tying up the rosemary, thyme, and sage with blue-and-white-checked ribbons bearing tiny tags that said Love Blossom Farm in pretty script.

  * * *

  • • •

  As soon as she’d cleaned up the dinner dishes and turned on the dishwasher, Shelby set her laptop on the kitchen table and powered it on. Her blog needed updating—if she ignored it for too long, she would begin losing her audience.

  Shelby started writing, but the words weren’t coming the way she’d hoped. She twirled a piece of hair around her finger as she stared at the blinking cursor. She felt as if every word were being dragged out of her with a pair of forceps. Sometimes that happened. She’d found that the only cure was to leave it for a few minutes, do something else, and hopefully come back with a fresh perspective.

  She thought about her promise to Mrs. Willoughby and realized she hadn’t done anything about investigating Isabel Stone. She didn’t want to face Mrs. Willoughby’s disapproval when she saw her in church on Sunday.

  She typed in Isabel’s name and was bombarded with dozens of entries. It seemed there were more than a few people in the world with that same name. Shelby scrolled through the information until she found a link to a Facebook page she thought might belong to the Isabel Stone living in Lovett, Michigan.

  There was no profile picture—or at least there wasn’t a picture of a human. Instead, this particular Isabel Stone had posted a photo of a darling black-and-white tuxedo cat blinking at the camera.

  The timeline dated back only a few months and there weren’t a lot of entries. Shelby scrolled through them—more pictures of the tuxedo cat, a handful of funny memes, and finally a photograph that was clearly of Lovett’s Isabel Stone and a slightly younger woman who looked to be her sister.

  Bingo, Shelby thought. She scrolled some more and found a picture of Isabel obviously taken a number of years ago with an attractive man who appeared to be a good decade older. He was holding some sort of plaque—an award perhaps?

  All very nice, but it certainly didn’t tell her enough about Isabel Stone to set Mrs. Willoughby’s mind at rest. If that was even possible. Mrs. Willoughby was determined to dislike Isabel even if she turned out to be as saintly as Mother Teresa.

  Shelby clicked on the About section. There she learned that Isabel had been born in a small town somewhere in Canada and had worked as an executive secretary for Glide Corporation, a company that made parts for snowmobiles. No clues as to her personal life, when she came to the States, or what brought her to Lovett.

  Shelby sighed and powered off her computer.

  She was afraid Mrs. Willoughby was going to be disappoi
nted in her investigative skills.

  9

  Dear Reader,

  If you have children, you’ve probably already done the experiment with them where you suspend an avocado pit in a glass of water and wait for it to sprout. But did you know that you can grow numerous vegetables from your kitchen scraps? If you put a third of a tomato into a container filled with soil, cover it with more soil, water it, and keep it in a sunny place, it will eventually sprout. You can plant lemon seeds in soil as well as seeds from strawberries and raspberries. Try it with your children—they love watching and waiting for the tiny green shoots to push their way through the soil.

  Her bedroom was still dark when Shelby woke up the next morning. She flicked on the light and stretched before grabbing her usual jeans and T-shirt out of the closet. Her hair was in a tangle of curls that gave new meaning to the term bedhead, she thought as she yanked a comb through it before pulling on a sweatshirt and padding downstairs.

  Shelby slipped out the back door and made her way to the barn to take care of the chickens. The chickens gathered around her feet as she tossed feed onto the ground. Her bucket now empty, Shelby replaced it in the barn and headed back toward the farmhouse.

  The sky was lightening, but the air was still damp and cool and Shelby pulled her hands up inside the sleeves of her sweatshirt. The warmth the kitchen had retained felt good, but she knew that in a few hours she would be flinging open the windows and praying for a breeze.

  Her slow cooker was sitting out on her counter. She’d filled it last night with a gallon of the milk Jake had delivered yesterday along with some yogurt starter.

  She unwrapped the bath towel she’d used to keep the slow cooker warm, and lifted the lid. The milk had transformed into delicious creamy yogurt. Shelby spooned it into a fine mesh sieve that she’d suspended over a bowl to catch the whey that would slowly drain off. The resulting yogurt would be thick enough to mix with herbs and use as a spread or a dip.

  Shelby went to the foot of the stairs and called up to Billy and Amelia. It was time for them to get ready for school. Before she even turned around, she heard Billy’s feet hit the floor. Amelia was always a little slower to awake.

  Shelby checked on the yogurt, which was draining nicely and had already produced several cups of whey. She pulled off her sweatshirt, slipped into her gardening clogs, and went out the back door.

  Bitsy and Jenkins followed her out into the yard, running ahead of her and crisscrossing back and forth in front of her. Jenkins took off at full speed after some small creature he’d spotted, while Bitsy rolled around on a particularly fragrant patch of dirt.

  The air was still slightly cool and damp on Shelby’s bare arms. The scent of newly mown hay mixed with the pungent odor of manure drifted over from Jake’s pasture. She stopped and took a deep breath. She dreamed of mornings like these during the long winter months when they were trapped inside with dark skies and snow piling up outside the door.

  Drops of dew sparkled on the leaves in the garden as Shelby made her way down the rows of herbs neatly planted in straight lines. She knelt in the dirt, moist from the dew and the morning air, and picked handfuls of thyme, rosemary, and basil.

  By the time she got back to the kitchen, Billy was slumped over the kitchen table, waiting for his breakfast, and the water was running overhead in the bathroom.

  Shelby ladled some of her homemade granola into a cereal bowl, mixed in a scoop of the yogurt draining in the bowl on the counter, and added a handful of the blueberries she’d frozen from last summer’s crop.

  Billy grunted as she slid the dish in front of him, and immediately began to spoon up his breakfast.

  While he ate, Shelby washed and dried the herbs and began chopping them. As soon as the yogurt had drained sufficiently, she would mix them in and then make up the small plastic containers she used to sell the yogurt cheese at the general store and at the farmers’ market in town.

  By the time Billy and Amelia left to catch the school bus, Shelby was ready to fold the herbs into her thickened yogurt. As soon as she’d mixed them in thoroughly, she spooned the green-flecked cheese into her containers. Soon she had a tidy row lined up on the kitchen counter ready to go. She retrieved the herbs she’d tied in bundles from the container of water in the refrigerator, which she’d propped them in the night before, and added everything to the wicker basket she used to carry things.

  She grabbed the dish that belonged to the caterer and added it to her bundle and checked that the dogs’ water bowls were full. Shelby smiled at them—both were enjoying their first nap of the day in the sunbeam slanting across the kitchen floor.

  Shelby flipped out the lights and headed out the back door.

  The gas gauge on her ancient car, which she often joked was held together with rubber bands and Elmer’s glue, was hovering perilously close to the empty mark. Shelby made a face. Taxes were coming due soon and Shelby’s bank account was almost as empty as her gas tank. She sighed. She loved her life the way it was, and not having a lot of money was a small price to pay for waking up each day glad to be alive.

  The money the band was paying her for their use of the barn was certainly going to come in handy. And her blog brought in a small stream of extra cash. Shelby was often approached about advertising various cooking products to her growing group of followers. And she was noodling the idea of putting together a cookbook. She’d been researching how to write a book proposal, and she thought she could do it.

  Writing a cookbook would be a perfect winter project when work on the farm had slowed and sunny skies and warm breezy days weren’t luring her outside. Shelby made a mental note to start on a proposal as soon as possible.

  The drive to the Lovett General Store took only a few minutes, although Shelby got stuck behind a slow-moving tractor on one of the narrow one-lane roads. She sighed impatiently as she waited for it to turn off so she could speed up again.

  A handful of cars were in the gravel parking lot behind the store. Shelby pulled into a space next to a Taurus with a dent in the front passenger door. It looked like the same car Brian, Travis’s group’s manager, had been driving. Shelby peered through the window and noticed a set of drumsticks next to several sheets of music scattered across the backseat.

  The bell over the door tinkled when Shelby walked into the shop. Matt was hunched over the counter, with a book spread open in front of him, his eyes glued to the page.

  “Hello,” Shelby said when she reached him.

  Matt looked up, startled. He slapped the book shut. “Sorry.” He smiled. “I didn’t hear you come in.” He tapped the cover of the book. “I was reading.”

  “It must be good.” Shelby peered over the counter at the cover.

  Matt turned the book around so Shelby could read the title.

  “Behind Enemy Lines,” Shelby read. “By Damian Devine.” A picture of a car exploding against a black sky was featured on the cover.

  “Is it any good?”

  Matt grinned sheepishly. “I’m enjoying it. Jack Morrison is a sort of super operative sent to rescue innocent American prisoners held in some of the world’s worst jails.” He shrugged. “It’s male fantasy, I guess.” Matt turned the book back around. “Probably not your cup of tea, but it’s got me glued to the page.”

  ‘You’re probably right about that,” Shelby laughed. “It’s the author’s fantasy at least. He’s probably short, with ears that stick out and horn-rimmed glasses.”

  Matt flipped the book over. “No author picture, so who knows? You could be right.” He slipped the book beneath the counter. “So . . . what goodies have you brought me today?”

  “A batch of fresh herbs and some yogurt cheeses.” Shelby put her basket down on the counter.

  “Wonderful. I’m all out of both. The herbs usually sell the day you bring them in.”

  Matt lifted the ribbon-tied bunches of thyme, sage, and
rosemary from Shelby’s basket and their pungent scent perfumed the air between them.

  He put a hand on Shelby’s arm. The soothing warmth of his palm against her bare skin made her sigh.

  “How about dinner tomorrow night?” Matt said. “I’ve got an early start the next day—I have to drive down to Kalamazoo to discuss some new products for the store—but we could grab a quick bite at the diner.” He made a face. “Not the most elegant place in the world, but when it comes to down-home-type cooking, you can’t beat it.”

  The Lovett Diner was a second home to most of the locals, as well as the truckers who came through late at night, downing cups of coffee to keep themselves awake and forking up the eggs and bacon that were on the menu all day long.

  The owners—a husband and wife who’d taken over the diner nearly thirty years ago—did all the cooking. They had been using as many fresh local and seasonal ingredients as possible long before the trend caught on with fancy upscale farm-to-table restaurants.

  Shelby did some swift mental calculations. Bert would look after the kids—she was willing to do anything in her power to find Shelby a man—and she could whip up a macaroni-and-cheese casserole for them for their dinner.

  “I’d love to.”

  “Would six thirty be too early for you? Like I said, I’ve got to hit the road first thing the next morning.”

  Shelby smiled. Although Matt had been in Lovett for over ten years, he hadn’t completely shed his New York City ways. By six thirty, most of the locals not only had finished dinner but had washed and dried the dishes, had put them away, and were ensconced in front of the television watching the news, their feet propped up after a long hard day of work.