Chapter 11
“This could be your last time to stretch your short legs for a couple or three days,” Brodie said as he led the pig down the row separating the peach and apple trees.
“For the next little while you’ll have to stay under the trailer.
The weatherman said that a cool front is blowing in, not enough to cause issues with the crops or the orchards, but it will bring another rain with it. ”
He slowed his pace to match Pansy’s short little legs, and they walked all the way to the end of his property.
A barbed-wire fence separated his place from forty acres of undeveloped land with nothing but weeds growing on it.
“I should buy that land and plant organic corn on it. I bet I could outsell Audrey. What do you think, Pansy?” he asked.
The pig flopped down on her belly and closed her eyes.
“Don’t care one way or the other, do you?” Brodie sat down on the dry straw under an apple tree to rest. He had just spent two days roofing a barn and another two starting the framework inside the building to divide it into three sections—store, workroom, and apartment.
Tripp might very well never come out of the barn, especially if he found a place to ship good quality leather to him.
“He’s a hermit at heart even though he did have to deal with people every day in the oil business,” he said.
Pansy didn’t even open one eye to acknowledge that he was talking.
“I’m glad that he and Knox stuck around home when I left. Mother would have been so lonely if we’d all flown the nest,” he whispered.
The pig grunted but still didn’t look up.
Thinking of his brothers staying home while he looked for adventures took his thoughts to the time he spent on his first six-month deployment in the Middle East. He had lived in Bandera, Texas, his whole life and couldn’t wait to see the world, but after a couple of weeks he was homesick for his mother’s cooking, his brothers’ arguing, and his father’s advice.
After his time in the sand, he had thought he would never get enough of family again.
But he was wrong. He had had enough of Knox’s joking and Tripp’s bickering that very day to make him appreciate the peace and quiet of his farm.
When they are both in their own places, and you have a house here, you are going to miss them. His mother’s voice was back in his head.
“Yep, but tonight, I’m glad to be alone with my own thoughts,” Brodie whispered.
Pansy stood up and tugged on the leash. Brodie got to his feet and followed behind her. She took him east toward Audrey’s place and down the edge of the fence until they reached the part that was still broken down. Then she flopped down again and closed her eyes.
He pulled on the leash, but she wouldn’t budge. “Come on, girl. We are only a few yards from the trailer. I don’t want to carry you, but I will.”
She opened one beady little eye and then closed it again. Brodie reached down to pick her up, but she wiggled free and snuggled up to the fallen fence post. “Stubborn, just like the whole female race,” he grumbled.
“Poor piggy.” Audrey appeared out of the darkness and sat down on the other side of the tangled barbed wire still lying on the ground from the broken-down fence. “She might not like to be compared to the ladies in the human race.”
“You are on my property,” Brodie said.
“I am not,” Audrey argued. “I’m on my side of the fence.”
“I believe that my land extends to one foot beyond the fence,” Brodie informed her.
“Well, pardon me,” she said with a head wiggle and moved back a few inches. “Do I need to get a tape measure?”
“Nope,” Brodie answered and eased down beside Pansy. “I reckon you are on your land now. What are you doing out this late?”
“Trying to find some peace and quiet,” Audrey answered. “Aunt Hettie’s either been in a pout or in a tantrum all week.”
“I understand completely,” Brodie said with half a chuckle. “Bernie has stormed around for days saying that I have ruined her reputation as a matchmaker.”
“You’d think that two old women who have lived as long as they have would have better sense than to waste what time they have left hating each other,” she said with a sigh.
“Maybe hate is the fuel that keeps them alive,” Brodie suggested.
“I’ve heard Aunt Hettie’s side of this feud, but I don’t think that’s the whole story,” Audrey said. “Want to compare notes?”
“You go first,” Brodie replied.
“The story coming from this side of the fence is that Bernie swept into town and took over Aunt Hettie’s place in the church. She used to take care of the flowers in the foyer and was the head honcho for organizing funeral dinners as well as the quilting club,” Audrey said.
“From this side, Bernie told too many stories about her bar in the senior Sunday school class, and she flirted with the old widowers. Hettie called her down, so Bernie retaliated by threatening to put a bar in one of the old empty houses in town and hiring Walter away from the farm to work in it,” Brodie told her.
“That’s the story I got, too, but then Bernie set about to steal all of Aunt Hettie’s church privileges away from her,” Audrey said with a sigh. “They’re acting worse than Uncle Ira and Grandpa.”
“We did manage to put a stop to them fighting in public,” Brodie said.
“For the time being,” she said. “One tornado coming through Spanish Fort does not mean there won’t be more to come. They still might start pulling hair and throwing punches in the future.”
“Never thought of it that way.” Brodie couldn’t take his eyes off her.
The night breeze blew her hair across her face.
She took something from her pocket and whipped a ponytail up on top of her head in just a few seconds.
He had a desire to cross the barbed wire and start a long line of kisses from her slender neck to her lips.
That would definitely cause a war to rival the one between Hettie and Bernie.
After a long silence, she started to stand up.
“Why did you come here to this spot? You could have found peace in your backyard,” Brodie asked in an attempt to keep her from leaving.
Audrey settled back down and seemed to be studying him for a long moment before she spoke.
“It’s hard to explain, but when something is bothering me, I always come here.
It’s the one place you wouldn’t catch my grandparents, or Uncle Ira and his wife.
The fence was more than just barbed wire separating two farms. It set down a line that couldn’t be crossed in their hearts.
The only person who was allowed to visit both places was Hettie, and yet when she moved in with Grandpa, Uncle Ira told her never to set foot on his property again. ”
“So, this is no-man’s-land, where you could get away from it all?”
“Something like that,” she said with a nod.
Brodie nodded. “I can’t imagine the tension that you lived with. My brothers and I argued, but our home was a place of refuge and happiness. Did you ever, in all your life, find another person here?”
There was another long silence before she spoke again. Brodie wondered if maybe she was trying to decide whether to trust him with something personal about her life, or to go back to her house and leave him sitting there alone.
“My cousin Zelda and I were about eleven years old the year we found out we were related. Someone at church mentioned how much we looked alike, and an elderly woman said that it was the Tucker genes. I asked Aunt Hettie about it, and she told me to ask Grandpa. He told me to never, ever speak that girl’s name again. ”
“That seems harsh,” Brodie said.
“Yep, and it just made me more curious about her,” Audrey said.
“I would sneak out of my bedroom at night, sit here in the darkness and look over at Uncle Ira’s house, and wonder about my only cousin.
I didn’t have siblings. Mama was an only child, and so was my dad.
Mama’s parents died when she was still in high school.
Zelda was all I had, and I wondered what she was like. ”
Brodie shook his head slowly. “I can’t imagine anything like that.
My mama’s side of the family and my dad’s side always met up for a big double family reunion on Independence Day.
Everyone brought campers or tents, and we spent a few days at a lakeside park.
We fought with our cousins or laughed with them and usually bawled like babies when we had to leave. ”
“Sounds like heaven,” Audrey said. “All I had was Zelda and now Aunt Hettie.”
In his wildest dreams, Brodie would never have believed that he and Audrey would be sitting only a few feet apart and having a conversation that didn’t involve yelling or drama. “Did you ever get to talk to her before you were both grown?”
“She found me right here one night that summer that we figured out we were kin to each other. She sat down on the other side of the fence, and we just stared at each other. It was almost like looking in a mirror, only she was taller and thinner than me. We talked after a while and met here several times during the next few weeks. Then Uncle Ira caught us, and that was the end of our visits. She never came back to Spanish Fort after that year, and I didn’t talk to her until Uncle Ira and Aunt Maude’s funeral,” Audrey said and then paused for a breath.
“We sat across the table from each other at the family dinner. I offered to buy the farm, but she told me there was a contingency in the will. She couldn’t sell it outright to me or to anyone knowing that they would turn around and sell it to me. ”
“So, you waited until I bought it, and now…”
Audrey stood up. “You’ve got the whole story now. When will you let me buy this place and reunite the farms?”
“Why don’t you sell me your place, and then it will be put back together?” Brodie asked.
“Not in a million years,” Audrey’s tone went from warm to downright chilly.
“Then I guess we’ll each stay on our side of the fence until eternity dawns,” Brodie said.