“I wore him out with churning butter,” David said as he got some and slathered it on her blisters.
“Butter? You can make butter?”
“Of course. How did you think you got it?”
“By pumping the cow’s tail up and down,” she said.
David laughed. “Okay, so I’m no farmer, but I know what to do once the stuff’s in the kitchen. Taste this.” He dipped a wooden spoon into a pan bubbling on the stove and held it to her lips. When she started to take it from him, he pulled back.
“Delicious,” she said. “I’ve never tasted anything like it. What is it?”
“Alfredo sauce to go on the pasta.”
“The what?”
“Spaghetti,” he said. “You Americans call all pasta spaghetti. Are you ready to eat?”
She stood up slowly. This morning she’d raided the wardrobe in the bedroom they shared and found a pair of men’s trousers that almost fit her. They were long enough, but they were so big around the waist that she’d had to make a new hole in an old leather belt to hold the pants up. She and David had shared a laugh over both of them wearing trousers that were too big.
Edi had spent the day outside, and David had stayed in. Both of them had soon seen that the little farm was nearly falling down. With all the young, strong men at war, most of the farms were neglected, but this one seemed worse than usual.
That morning, Edi had met Hamish for the first time, and instead of seeing a gruff old man as David described, she saw sadness. “Don’t ask him anything,” she whispered to David. “I can’t bear to hear the answer.” So many people had horror stories about the loss of loved ones that Edi couldn’t take any more.
“Agreed,” David said.
She found the falling-down old shed that served as a henhouse and got a few eggs. After breakfast, she started on cleaning up the outside. As David said, she’d not had much to do with the kitchen when she was growing up, but she loved the barn and the henhouse and all the things that had made Edilean Manor nearly self-sufficient.
When she went into the house for lunch, the kitchen was sparkling, and David had just pulled bread out of the oven. That he’d done all that with one arm in a sling and his unbending leg made her smile in appreciation.
After lunch, she tackled the chicken coop. One of the fence posts around the yard had fallen over, pulling the fence down with it. If any foxes decided to enter, nothing would stop them. The wind was picking up, and Edi wanted to get the post back up before it started to rain again.
She was digging the hole and trying to hold the post at the same time when David came running, with his odd gait, and took over. She held the post while he stamped it in. Then, together, they put stones around the edge of the fence.
“I have to get back,” he said loudly over the wind that was getting stronger. “Don’t stay out here too long.”
“I won’t,” she called back, but once he was inside, she got a pitchfork and started cleaning out the inside of the henhouse. From the look of it, it hadn’t been cleaned in a couple of years. It wasn’t good for the chickens or the people eating them.
She didn’t realize her hands were blistered until she’d finished. She had a tall pile of manure outside the fence, and she’d dragged two fresh bales of straw from the barn into the chicken coop. She looked in the barn for some gloves but couldn’t find any, so she went on with the chores barehanded. By sundown, she’d made headway on the barn, both in repairing and mucking out.
S
he didn’t realize how tired she was until she went inside and sat down. David took one look at her and took over. He opened her hands, washed them, then slathered them with butter to help with the pain of the blisters.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” he said when she nearly fell asleep in the chair. “You need to eat.”
“You sound like my mother.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” David said as he set a huge plate of homemade pasta with a cream-based sauce in front of her. “I want you to eat every bite of that and drink all the milk. You need your strength.”
“Yes, sir,” she said. She was so tired that she couldn’t even keep her rigid posture of sitting upright as she ate, and she smiled as she thought of what her mother would say if she saw her daughter now.
“Want to share the reason for that smile?” David asked as he filled a plate for himself.
“I was just thinking about my family.”
“Tell me about them,” he said. “Rich farmers, right?”
“Used to be,” she said, “but the rich part is gone. We used to own an entire town, but…”