“No need,” Mike reassured her. “I checked on it when I got up, and saw that someone had done it earlier.”
Puzzled, Rachel frowned at him. “Earlier? It’s nine minutes to five a.m.—who would be up this early?”
“Oh, we’re all early risers. Especially when motivated. Don’t forget your e-mail,” he instructed her, nodding at the computer screen. “It looked urgent, and we don’t know how long the power from the county can be maintained, what with this storm and all.”
Bemused, Rachel turned back to the screen, clicked on the appropriate icon, and started sorting through the list of e-mails received. The latest one puzzled her even more than her early-rising guests. It was from “Lappschaum & Assoc.” and the subject line read “Pursuant to the Request of Mr. Theodore Swanson.” Teddy Swanson was one of their longest-standing guests, according to Steve. He came every single summer, stayed for four weeks, visited all his friends and relatives in the area, then went back to Minneapolis–St. Paul. He was something of a local legend, too, for he had been doing so for most of his eighty-four years, ever since graduating from the local high school and going off to college three hours to the north, where he had found a wife and started a family.
Opening the e-mail, Rachel read the contents. Her hand crept up over her mouth, tears prickling in her eyes. Someone had written to inform them that Mr. Swanson had died in his sleep. Steve would be devastated, as would his parents, who had hosted Teddy for decades. As had the previous generation of Bethels.
She forced herself to read on…and the hand covering her mouth to hold back her grief now covered up its urge to gape. It seemed that Mr. Lappschaum was Teddy Swanson’s executor for his will…and that Teddy had left a trust fund for Steve’s future children, to ensure they would have a college education, whenever Steve and she got around to having them. It wasn’t a huge amount of money, but with compound interest, it would be enough to ensure at least two offspring had the chance to attend some college or university somewhere across the States.
It was an incredibly generous gift from a man who had been a delight for the Bethels to host. Even though she personally had known him only a few summers, she had enjoyed taking care of the elderly gentleman’s needs. He would be missed, but remembered for a long time, especially with this unexpected piece of philanthropy. Closing the browser window, Rachel made her way to the kitchen in a daze. The sad and the happy news could wait until Steve returned from the barn; she had breakfast to make.
ADJUSTING HIS KNIT CAP ON HIS HEAD ONE LAST TIME, Steve opened the door of the lean-to, ready to grab his snow shovel and start forging a path to the barn. The shovel wasn’t there, however. Neither snow shovel hung on their assigned pegs hammered into the board running along the outer wall, nor was the regular shovel, which should have been hanging in the tool-shed-style room. Confused, he closed the lean-to door, then opened the back door to the mudroom, expecting to have to climb up over the couple of feet of snow that had piled up over the back porch.
A snow-dusted trench greeted his eyes, wide enough for two people to pass, and the faint sound of voices in the distance met his ears. Bitter cold seeped into his lungs, and swirling white still fell from the dark sky. Treading over the crunchy, squeaky snow that had begun to reaccumulate at the bottom of the artificial, somewhat broad, curving canyon, he found the source of the cleft in the drifts when he was within viewing distance of the bright glow from the large fluorescent light hung at the peak of the barn roof. Three bodies worked in rotating tandem as he stopped and watched, goaded by the accented voice of the slender woman in black. They had followed the path of the rope he had strung, straight to the barn entrance.
“That’s it! Put your back into it! Four more shovels to go! Keep it up, David; you’re doing well! Three more shovelfuls! Watch that clump, Joey, it’s about to fall! Two more shovels…and it’s my turn again!”
Joey stepped to the right as Dave stepped back, and Bella stepped up into Joey’s place on the left. She hacked at the snow with her spade-tipped shovel while Joey scooped up the broken chunks of snowbank and tossed them up over the head-high snowbank enfolding them. Breathing hard, David leaned on his shovel and watched them for a moment, then idly glanced behind him. He blinked at the sight of Steve standing there, watching them, then straightened and held out the shovel.
“Here. Your turn. I’m bushed.”
“Nonsense!” Bella asserted as she lunged the implement in her hands at the wall of snow between them and the small side door set in the end of the barn wall, next to the larger, sliding doors. “Exercise is good for you! All those endorphins, pumping through your blood! Plus it will make us appreciate our breakfast all the more. Five more shovelfuls, Joey, then it’ll be our host’s turn!”
Guessing what was expected of him, Steve stepped up behind them, waited for his turn, and slotted himself on the left as Joey stumbled back, breathing just as hard as his friend had. “Man!” He gulped, his breath steaming in the snow-swirled air. “Where does she get all that energy?”
Steve found himself hard-pressed to keep up with her, even though he was fresh and she must have been working the two boys for at least half an hour. She continued to chop into the snow with the spade in her hands, switching sides with him so that he could scoop away the loosened snow. Joey stepped back in after a few more minutes, having regained some energy. Within a minute after that, they reached the door and had to take more care so as not to damage the wooden planks of the siding, scraping more than shoveling.
Grinning, Bella twisted open the door as soon as the way was mostly clear, and gestured Steve into the warmth of the building. “There you go! Mind you, I want to enjoy fresh milk and eggs for my breakfast when you are through. Come along, boys. Unless you want to muck stalls and pitch hay while you’re at it?”
Muttering their refusals as politely and quickly as they could pant, the two youths followed her, taking the shovels back with them. Amazed at how the odd, black-clad woman could get such honest work out of the local pack of troublemakers, Steve shook his head and stepped inside. It was only a couple minutes after five, and he could hear the lowing of the ladies in their byres. Or rather, not in their byres, he noted with satisfaction. Pete was already leading what looked like the second cow out of her stall, taking her to the dairy room for food and milking, just like he had the previous afternoon. It was a relief for Steve to see that their girls would’ve been fine without him.
Shedding a layer as the heat of the barn seeped into him, Steve headed for Ellen’s stall; she needed to be hand-milked for the colostrum, rather than put on the machine that would send her first-milk into the same pails as the rest. But when he got to her, he found she’d already been milked. When Pete came back, he grinned shyly at Steve, who was straightening from checking the now slack udder.
“Already done it, Mr. Bethel; she gave it up easy, too. Of course, I was smart enough to wash my hands in hot water so they’d still be warm when they touched her. It’s in the fridge with the rest, in the processing room. I wasn’t sure you’d make it out here in less than three hours, given how deep th’ snow got overnight; then I heard Miz Bella yelling at Dave an’ Joey, making ’em clear a path to the barn. Made me right glad, too,” he added, taking Eliza’s halter and backing the lowing cow out of her stall. “I mean, you showed me the microwave and the frozen stuff in the deep-freeze, but I ain’t so good at cookin’, even with prepackaged stuff. Miz Rutherford’s cookin’ beats my own hands-down, any day.”
“It also beats my own,” Steve agreed, entering the last stall and taking the halter of the remaining cow. “And she loves doing it, too, which is the important part. We’re having chicken gravy on homemade buttermilk biscuits once we’re done cleaning, milking, and cleaning again in here.”