Had he appreciated that as a child? he wondered. Probably not. It was just home.
A pair of dogs rushed from the rear of the house to greet him with welcoming barks and swinging tails. There’d always been dogs here. These, Mick and Dylan, were mutts-as they always were-rescued from the pound. Fox crouched to give them both a rub when his father followed them out.
“Hey.” Brian’s grin flashed, that instant sign of pleasure. “How’s it going? You eat?”
“Yeah.”
“Come on back. We’re still at it, and there’s a rumor about apple cobbler.” Brian swung an arm over Fox’s shoulders as they walked back to the kitchen.
“I was going to drop by today while I was working in town,” Brian continued, “but I got hung up. Look what I found,” he said to Jo. “He must’ve heard about the cobbler.”
“It’s all over town.” Fox went around the big butcher-block table to kiss his mother. The kitchen smelled of his mother’s herbs and candles, and the thick soup from the pot on the stove. “And before you ask, I’ve had dinner.”
He sat in a chair he helped make when he’d been thirteen. “I came by to talk to you guys about the house-the farm.”
“Moving back in?” Brian asked and picked up his spoon to dig back into what Fox recognized as his mother’s lentil and brown rice soup.
“No.” Though that door would always be open, he knew. “The main part of the house is pre-Civil War, right?”
“Eighteen fifties,” Jo confirmed. “You know that.”
“Yeah, but I wondered if you knew if it was built on any earlier structure.”
“Possible,” his father answered. “The stone shed out back’s earlier. It stands to reason there was more here at one time.”
“Right. You looked into the history. I remember.”
“That’s right.” Jo studied his face. “There were people farming here before the white man came over to run them out.”
“I’m not talking about the indigenous, or their exploitation by invaders.” He did not want to get her started on that one. “I’m more interested in what you might know about after the settlers came here.”
“When the Hollow was settled,” Jo said. “When Lazarus Twisse arrived.”
“Yeah.”
“I know the land was farmed then, that the area was known as Hollow Creek. I have some paperwork on it. Why, Fox? We’re not close to the Pagan Stone, we’re outside of town.”
“We think Ann Hawkins might have stayed here, had her sons here.”
“On this farm?” Brian mused. “How about that?”
“She wrote journals, I told you about that, and how there are gaps in them. We haven’t found any from the time she left-or supposedly left-the Hollow until she came back a couple years later. If we could find them…”
“That was three hundred years ago,” Jo pointed out.
“I know, but we have to try. If we could come by in the morning, first thing in the morning before I have any clients coming in-”
“You know you don’t have to ask,” Brian said. “We’ll be here.”
Jo said nothing for a moment. “I’ll get the famous cobbler.” She rose, stroking a hand over her son’s shoulder on her way to the cupboard.
HE’D WANTED TO KEEP ALL OF IT AWAY FROM HIS family, away from home. When he drove the familiar roads back to the farm at the first break of dawn, Fox told himself this search didn’t, wouldn’t, pull his family in any further. Even if they proved Ann had stayed there on their land, even if they found her journals, it didn’t change the fact the farm was one of the safe zones.
None of their families had ever been infected, none of them had ever been threatened. That wasn’t going to change. He simply wouldn’t allow it to change. The threat was coming sooner, and harder, that was fact. But his family remained safe.
He pulled in front of the farmhouse just ahead of Cal and Gage.
“I’ve got two hours,” he told them as they got out. “If we need more, I can try to shuffle some stuff. Otherwise, it has to wait until tomorrow. Saturday’s clear.”
“We’ll work it out.” Cal stepped aside so that Lump and the two host dogs could sniff each other and get reacquainted.
“Here comes the estrogen.” Gage lifted his chin toward the road. “Is your lady ready to ante up, Hawkins?”
“She said she is, so she is.” But Cal walked to the car, drew Quinn aside when the women piled out. “I don’t know if I can help you with this.”
“Cal-”
“I know we went over this last night, but I’m allowed to be obsessive about the woman I love.”
“Absolutely.” She linked her hands around his neck so that her bright blue eyes smiled into his. “Obsess me.”
He took the offered mouth, let himself sink in. “I’ll do what I can, you know that. But the fact is, I’ve been coming here all my life, slept in this house, ate in it, played in it, ran the fields, helped with chores. It was my second home, and I never got a single flash of the past, of Ann, of anything.”
“Giles Dent wasn’t here, neither were the ones-the guardians that came before him. Not so far as we know. If Ann came here to stay, she came here without him, and stayed on after Dent was already gone. This one’s on me, Cal.”
“I know.” He touched her lips with his again. “Just take it easy on yourself, Blondie.”
“It’s a wonderful house,” Layla said to Fox. “Just a wonderful spot. Isn’t it, Cybil?”
“Like a Pissarro painting. What kind of farming, Fox?”
“Organic family farming, you could say. They’ll be around back this time of morning, dealing with the animals.”
“Cows?” Layla fell into step behind him.
“No. Goats, for the milk. Chickens, for the eggs. Bees for the honey. Vegetables, herbs, flowers. Everything gets used, and what’s surplus we-they-sell or barter.”
The scent of animals wound through the morning air, exotic to her city-girl senses. She spotted a tire swing hanging from the thick, gnarled branch of what she thought might be a sycamore. “It must’ve been great growing up here.”
“It was. I might not have thought so when I was shoveling chicken manure or hacking at bindweed, but it was great.”
Chickens clucked in their busy and urgent voices. As they rounded the house Fox saw his mother casting feed for them. She wore jeans, her ancient Wellingtons, a frayed plaid shirt over a thermal pullover. Her hair was down her back, a long, thick braid.
Now it was his turn for a flash from the past. He saw her in his mind, doing the same chore on a bright summer morning, but she’d worn a long blue dress, with a sling around her, and his baby sister tucked into it.
Singing, he remembered. She so often sang while she worked. He heard her now, as he’d heard her then.
“I’ll fly away, O glory, I’ll fly away-in the morning.”
In the near paddock, his father milked one of the nannies, and sang with her.
And Fox’s love for them was almost impossible to hold. She saw him, smiled at him. “Timed it to miss the chores, I see.”
“I was always good at it.”
She cast the rest of the seed before setting her bucket down to come to him. She kissed him-forehead, one cheek, the other, the lips. “Morning.” Then turned to Cal and did exactly the same. “Caleb. I heard you had news.”
“I do. Here she is. Quinn, this is Joanne Barry, my childhood sweetheart.”
“Apparently I have quite an act to follow. It’s nice to meet you.”
“Nice meeting you.” She gave Quinn’s arm a pat, then turned to Gage. “Where have you been, and why haven’t you come to see me?”
She kissed him, then wrapped her arms around him in a hard hug.
He hugged back-that’s what Cybil noted. He held on, closed his eyes and held tight. “Missed you,” he murmured.
“Then don’t stay away so long.” She eased back. “Hello, Layla, it’s good to see you again. And this must be Cybil.”
“It must be. You have a very handsome farm, Ms. Barry.”
“Thanks. Here comes my man.”