The Mulberry Tree

Now that they were on a different subject, Matt relaxed again and leaned back on his arms. “Violet didn’t always look like she does now.”

/> “So?”

“Take a guess.”

“Ah. The great equalizer: sex.”

When she said the word, Matt was pleased to see that, for the first time, she looked at him—looked at him as a woman looks at a man. He guessed she liked what she saw, because her cheeks turned a bit pink. The light was fading, but he saw her blush, then look back at her strawberries.

“Why do you want to know about the farm?” he asked.

He listened while she told him the story Patsy had already told him, that her husband had died and left her the farm. But as he listened to the words, he listened harder to her tone of voice. When she said, “my husband,” she didn’t sound as though she were talking about a man who was dead. She was talking about a man she seemed to expect to walk down the path at any minute.

“May I confide in you?” she asked, turning to look at him in the deepening twilight. “You won’t—” she began, but his expression stopped her from asking if he’d tell the whole town.

For a moment he hesitated, and it occurred to him that she was sitting on one very big secret and that she was considering how much she could tell him. He could have reassured her, but he didn’t. He wanted her to make up her own mind.

“I want to know about my husband,” she said at last. “I was married to him for years, and I thought I knew him, but he was always silent about his childhood. It was something missing between us. Yet after he died, I was told that he left me this.” She gestured at the farm. “It doesn’t make sense to me. Why did he refuse to tell me anything when he was alive, but then give me this place and leave me a note asking me to find out ‘what really happened’? If he wanted me to know about him, why didn’t he sit down with me and talk about it while he was alive?” For a moment she looked down at her hands, then back up at him. “It’s so strange to have been so close to a man, then find out that we weren’t close at all. In the weeks after his death, nothing showed up about this place, not a photo, a piece of paper, nothing.”

He watched as she tried to get her emotions under control—and as he tried to control his own. He disliked himself for it, but he was jealous of this dead husband of hers.

“How much do you know about computers?” he asked, then saw that he’d startled her.

“About as much as you know about strawberries.”

“Nothing about the Internet?”

“Well, actually,” she said, smiling, “Jimmie’s lawyer’s wife showed me how to order things over the Internet.”

Matt groaned. “Come on, help me up, and we’ll go upstairs and set up my computer and see what we can find out about this place.”

“Find out?” she asked, her eyes wide.

“Yeah. Let’s see who owns the title to this farm.”

“But—” she began, then stepped away from him.

“All right,” he said, still sitting and looking up at her. “Let’s get one thing straight between us. I may have been born and raised in a small town, but I don’t tell everything to everyone.” He raised his right hand. “I swear to you that what we find out will stay between us. I don’t care if we find out that you’re Lizzie Borden’s granddaughter.

“What?” he said when she began to laugh.

“It’s nothing. It’s just a thought I had today.”

“So tell me and share the laughter.”

She took a moment as she seemed to decide, then she told him about being glad her husband hadn’t left her a farm in Lizzie Borden’s hometown. “Those high school boys are bad enough, but can you imagine Lizzie Borden?”

Matt was having difficulty with the Golden Six being reduced to “those high school boys,” but when he recovered himself, he smiled. And then, for the first time in his life, he laughed about something that had to do with “those high school boys.” “All right,” he said, “are we in agreement?”

“Meaning, do I trust you not to tell Patsy or Janice anything you may find out about me?”

“About you or your former husband?” he asked, teasing.

“Both,” she said. “We’re the same.”

Matt took a moment to digest that statement. “I swear it on all I hold sacred,” he said at last.

“And what if Patsy asks you point-blank?”