"Well, well," he said. "I must say that when Mom told me a police lady was coming today, I didn't expect someone like you. I'm Ned Jameson, and I'll shake your hand when I'm a bit cleaner."
"Casey Martinelli. Isn't the ground a bit wet for turning today?" she asked innocently, and she was unprofessionally gratified to see a flush of anger start up, before he decided that it was the simple question of a female nonfarmer.
"A bit. Not too bad." He turned to put the black rubber boots he carried onto a sheet of newspaper near the door, and she glanced at his clothes. Mud from knee to hips and fingertip to shoulders was probably not normal. She turned away to conceal her smile.
The cat had disappeared from the window seat, Kate noticed, replaced by Hawkin, who was seriously discussing a multicolored, much-jutting Lego construction with a small brown-haired boy in patched jeans, while a toddler with a head of the most stunning red curls Kate had ever seen sat glued to Hawkin's other side, her little round body twisted forward to watch their faces as she followed the conversation with serious concentration.
Kate exchanged an amused look with Red Jameson and moved to one side to let pass a slim woman with darker red curls and a heavy casserole in her hands. She plunked the pot on the table, wiped her hands unnecessarily on her apron, and held out her hand to Kate.
"Joanna Olsen. The two monsters are mine, Teddy and Marta. My neighbor was going to watch them for me but one of hers is coming down with something, so we'll just have to shout over them."
"They'll be fine, Joanna," said her mother's voice from behind Kate. "Let's sit down now, Miss Martinelli there, and Alonzo, you can sit there."
"It's Casey, Mrs. Jameson."
"Then I'm Becky. What's wrong, Teddy? Oh, all right, you can move your chair next to him. Where's Ned?"
"Upstairs changing. He was kind of muddy."
"I told him…" began his father.
"Now, Red, we know you told him not to, but he was anxious to do something and he's gone next week, so he had to try. You'd have done the same thing when you were thirty. We won't wait for him, though. Some salad, Casey?" Her voice was almost sharp and she thrust the bowl to her guest in an emphatic change of topic. "I hope you like tomatoes. Ned grows them year-round in his greenhouse."
Lunch was a full farmhouse meal, a hot dish of chicken and herbed rice, hot mixed vegetables and a salad, two kinds of bread rolls, three jams, and bottled spiced peaches for dessert. Kate ate more than she usually ate in an entire day, and when after the meal Joanna carried a heavy-lidded Marta off upstairs, she wished she could join the child, thumb in mouth and all.
Ned Jameson had come in halfway through the meal and dug into the food with great concentration, answering direct questions without looking up from his plate. The conversation eddied around him, his sister juggling admonitions to her offspring with tales of her cousin Vaun, of whom she was obviously very fond and very proud. Red and Becky Jameson contributed, and even Teddy piped up.
"Auntie Vaun is teaching me to paint. She said that if I like it I can have my own paints maybe for Christmas. She painted a picture of me. I had to sit very still, and she gave me a Lego space cruiser to put together so I'd sit still enough, but Matty's too little to do that, so she just makes drawings of her."
"I've seen that painting," said Hawkin. "It looks just like you."
"Was that in her studio?" asked Kate.
"When I was there yesterday," he said, nodding.
"Did you see Auntie Vaun?" Teddy asked quickly. "She's sick, isn't she? Is she going to be all right?"
Spoons around the table stopped in midair. Ned Jameson's jaws went still as he awaited Hawkin's pronouncement, oddly intent.
"You like your Auntie Vaun, don't you?" Hawkin asked the child.
"I love her," he said simply. "And she loves me."
"I could see that in the painting. I hope she'll be okay. I'm not a doctor, but some good doctors are taking care of her."
"She's in the hospital."
"I know. I've seen her."
"I can't visit her, I'm too young," he said, disgusted.
"Maybe you could make her a drawing, so she knows you were thinking about her." It was the suggestion of an experienced father, Kate realized, and wondered why she always forgot that side of him.
The child tipped his head, thinking.
"She likes my drawings. May I be excused, Mommy, so I can make a picture for her?"
"You don't want the rest of your peaches? Okay, you come up with me and we'll find your crayons."
Becky Jameson brought in coffee and began to clear the dishes, refusing any help. Kate and Hawkin were left alone with Red and his son, who had not yet spoken to each other. Hawkin stirred sugar into his cup and opened a polite topic of conversation.
"You grow hothouse tomatoes, Ned?"
"Not commercially, it's too expensive, but it's nice to have a few of the summer vegetables in winter."
"What do you do, then?"
"Farm this place, some experimental stuff I'm doing with the local organic farmers' organization. Fruit mostly, but the last year or so I've been growing those tiny vegetables that fancy restaurants like. Inch-long carrots, beets the size of marbles, that kind of thing. I don't think they have much flavor, myself, but people buy 'em, so I grow 'em."
"Can you make a living out of that? You hear a lot about farms closing down these days."
Kate wondered where Hawkin's sudden interest in agriculture came from, or was going to. Ned seemed reluctant to answer.
"Oh, yes. Well, not a great living. Farmers don't drive Rolls Royces, but the bills get paid. Course, a lot of us have other jobs, too, just to help out, during the slack times."
"What do you do? Your other job?"
"I make deliveries." Red was looking oddly at his son.
"Truck driving, then? Long distance?"
"Sometimes."
"Yes, I think your mother mentioned that you were going away next week. Must be hard on your wife."
"Oh, she doesn't mind; it doesn't happen that often." Here Red interrupted with a snort, and when his son shot him a look of barely controlled rage, Kate realized what Hawkin was after, though she was not at all sure how he had known it was there.
"It doesn't," he insisted. "And the money's damn good."
Teddy came back into the room, crayons and paper in hand, and climbed into the chair next to Hawkin, who helped him clear a place for the pad, automatically placing a half-full glass of milk to one side without taking his interested gaze from the young man across the table.
"The money's not the reason—" began Red, but Hawkin seemed not to hear him and talked over his words.
"I've always been fascinated by those big rigs—an eighteen wheeler, is it? A refrigerator truck?"
"Usually. It's owned by the local co-op of organic farmers. Three of us have licenses, so we take turns with deliveries. Usually the truck's only half full, so we fill up with stuff for the other growers." The young man spoke easily, but he seemed to be warmer than the room's temperature would account for.
"Mostly California?"
"Yeah, some Oregon."
"And Nevada, and Utah, and Texas," broke in his father. "It's a crazy thing to mix with trying to grow crops."
Several things happened at once. Ned shoved his chair back with a crash just as his mother entered, and the oblivious Teddy reached for a crayon just as Hawkin put his own arm out to place his napkin on the table. The anger from one end of the table and the maternal consternation from the doorway were both drowned by a child's horrified shriek as the contents of the glass shot across the drawing, over the edge of the table and all over the front of the young artist. Only Kate, seated directly across from them, saw that it was Hawkin's hand rather than Teddy's arm that had propelled the glass, and by the time it had been cleared and wiped and the child taken upstairs for dry clothes, the air had cleared.