Matt blinked at her. When he’d had this idea, his concern had been that she’d be afraid that he’d try to pounce on her in the middle of the night. “What do you have in mind that I should pay you for room and board?”
“I’d say . . . six hundred a month, plus the price of groceries.”
“What?!” he said. “That’s outrageous!” He started to get up, all the while looking at her out of the corner of his eye, but she didn’t flinch, just sat there in utter calmness.
“If you got a motel room,” she said, “you’d pay more than that, and that’s without food, plus you’d have to cook for yourself. That means that if you moved in here, you’d be getting the services of a cook for free, and my cooking should balance out your carpentry, especially if you also do paperwork on the weekends. Actually, six hundred is too cheap,” she said thoughtfully.
“I think you’re confusing Calburn with some big city. Prices are much cheaper here.”
Bailey leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest. “Take it or leave it.”
“I’ll take it, but I don’t like it,” Matt said, frowning.
“Well, then, I guess that’s that. Should we sign something?”
“I think that shaking hands will be enough,” he said, still standing and smiling down at her. “Unless you intend to charge me for that.”
“I don’t know. Should I?”
Matt laughed. “No,” he said, holding out his hand. When Bailey got up and took his hand in hers, he held it and looked into her eyes for a moment.
Bailey was the first to pull away, then she walked to the front door.
Matt followed her lead, then stepped past her to go outside. “I’ll move in tomorrow, if that’s all right with you.”
“Yes,” she said, then hesitated. “You aren’t going to . . . you know. I don’t think I’m quite ready for—”
“Sex?” he asked.
“Oh, no,” she said, smiling. “I could stand that. It’s just involvement that I don’t want. I need to find out how I can support myself before I get involved with another man—if I ever do, that is. And I need privacy. Lots of privacy. Understand?”
“I think so,” he said hesitantly. “Sex is okay, but stay out of your life. Do I have it right?”
“Perhaps,” she said, smiling at him as she started to close the door. “But let me make it clear: if there’s sex between us, your rent triples,” she said, then softly closed the door.
Laughing, Matt walked down the driveway and got back in his truck, then leaned his head against the seat for a moment. He really and truly couldn’t believe his good fortune. He was going to get out of Patsy’s house!
As he started the engine, he kept smiling. And more than just getting out, he was moving in with a woman who could cook, a woman who seemed to know all the domestic arts. He couldn’t believe his luck.
As he turned off Owl Creek Road onto the asphalt, he hoped that Bailey didn’t find out that Patsy was charging him seven-fifty a month, plus he had to buy one week’s worth of groceries for the entire family of five adults.
Seven
Bailey didn’t awaken the next morning until nearly eight, late for her, but then, she hadn’t gone to bed until three. After Matt left, the ugly little house had seemed too empty, too full of all the things in life that she no longer had. She’d gone to bed, but she’d tossed about for over an hour, so she got up, pulled on her chinos and a T-shirt, then padded into the kitchen to get herself something warm to drink.
For a while, she’d sat at the dining table in the living room and looked at the wall that concealed a fireplace. It was when she heard a noise outside and looked at the front door, fully expecting Jimmie to walk into the room, that she knew she had to do something, or she’d spend the night crying.
In the kitchen, she had a refrigerator full of pots of jam that needed to be reheated, then put into jars, and on the floor were crates of strawberries that she’d bought at a roadside stand. Also in the refrigerator were bags of plums, a large box of blackberries, a big bag full of cherries, and the crispers were full of vegetables.
“Cry or work,” she said aloud; then she put on her tennis shoes and an apron. After she’d put the crate of strawberries on the table and found her capper in the box where she’d put her canning equipment, she set to work. Phillip had sent a man to hook her up to a cable service, so she turned on the TV and watched HGTV while she cooked.
So now, this morning, yawning, she got out of bed, dressed, and went through the kitchen into the pantry to look at the rows of jars: blackberry liqueur, cherry cordial, strawberry jam, green tomato chutney, pickled carrots, strawberry conserve, plum jam, and pickled plums. On the windowsill was the recipe box that she’d been so excited to find. Unfortunately, it had turned out to contain only a few basic recipes for meat loaf and chicken-fried steak. It had not been the great find that she’d hoped it would be.
Last night she’d run Ball jars through the hottest cycle of the dishwasher to sterilize them, while keeping the lids hot in boiling water. Since there was little work space in the kitchen, she’d set up the table in the living room, covering the surface with layers of clean white tea towels.
She first mixed the blackberries with sugar and set them in a bowl inside the small proofing oven of the big range. The fat berries needed to stay in low heat for hours, until the sugar drew the juice from them.
She capped strawberries, then divided them into two pots, one for jam and one for conserve, where the berries were kept whole. While the strawberries were simmering, she pricked the plums all over with a big darning needle, then left them in a bowl while she put cider vinegar, apple juice concentrate, cloves, allspice, ginger, and bay leaves into a pot and let it simmer.