The French doors opened. Mrs. Lowry stepped outside, her smile as encompassing as ever, her dull-red hair wrapped partially around her thick neck. She was drying her hands and wearing a sundress with no covering on her sun-freckled shoulders, even though she was in shade and the wind out of the woods was cold and damp.
“Mr. Lowry is not home now,” she said. “Can I help you, Aaron?”
“Spud told me he was doing some garden work for you. I just wanted to make sure everything got done all right.”
“Depends on what you call all right,” she said.
“Something happened?”
“He fell off the ladder and brought the trellis down with him,” she said.
She was beaming and as always smelled like a freshly baked cake. I looked away from her. “That sounds like Spud.”
“Want to come in?”
“I’d better get back to the bunkhouse.”
“I just made a big strawberry milkshake.”
“I’d better run.”
Her eyes intensified. “I’d sure like to share it with you,” she said.
I know my face reddened. I couldn’t help it. I looked up at the sky and the yellow-and-purple marbling in the clouds. “I think we’re about to get hit with a gully washer. Jo Anne wants me to drive her to work this evening.”
“Well, she’s a very nice young woman,” she said. “And you’re a very nice young man.” She winked. I could almost hear her eyelid click.
I walked back down the slope, my face burning. I wanted to airbrush the last ten minutes out of my life.
* * *
LATE SUNDAY MORNING, Spud stopped me on the way to my car. “Hold up, Aaron.”
I pretended not to hear him. He shouted again.
“What’s up?” I said, gazing at the dirt road that led to the highway, hating the thought of the conversation that was about to ensue.
“I just went up to Miz Lowry’s to clean the flower bed and repair her trellis,” he said.
I nodded and looked at my watch. “Good,” I said.
His eyes went everywhere except my face. He picked up a pebble and threw it at nothing. “Miz Lowry said you were up there asking if I’d done my work satisfactorily. You been checking on me, Aaron?”
“Your face was marked up, so I just wondered.”
“Wondered what?”
“I wondered what happened. So I found out. You took a fall off the ladder.”
“I think you were trying to find out if I did something else.”
“I’m not reading you, Spud,” I lied.
“The heck you’re not. Rich women can get a hankering, too. I was working here a long time before you were. I know some stories.”
“I don’t want to hear this,” I said.
“I thought you were my friend.”