Read Online Signs in the Blood by Vicki Lane - Free Book Online

how to build walls, and they worked on it together.” She rested one hand on a huge capstone, remembering the gentle ways of Cletus. He had never been able to learn to read, but he could construct a dry-laid stone wall that was as solid as if he'd used mortar. Miss Birdie's son had possessed an intuitive genius for finding just the right rock from a heap of miscellaneous fieldstone to fit any given space. He and Ben had spent many weekends constructing the long wall, working side by side with very little conversation. But when they were finished, Ben had told her that he had learned more from Cletus than from many of his college professors.
    She brushed the sun-warmed rock with her fingertips, thinking of this lost friend.
Another loss . . . like Sam. And just as senseless.
Suddenly she knew that she was out of small talk. She realized that she felt uneasy around Hawkins, and began to wish she hadn't invited him to the farm.
You hardly know this person, Elizabeth,
she thought.
Just because he was a friend of Sam's doesn't mean—
    But Hawkins was bounding up the set of rock steps that led to a lush planting of pink peonies and deep red rhododendrons. She followed reluctantly as he made his way along the uneven stepping-stones to the blue bench under the apple tree. Here he stopped and flung out his arms as if to encompass the whole mountainside. “This is incredible, Ms. Good—Elizabeth. Just beautiful!”
    Hawkins dropped onto the long blue bench and gazed appreciatively at his surroundings. With an inward sigh, Elizabeth resigned herself to being sociable a little longer and sat down on the other end of the bench. Hawkins said nothing but continued to look around in obvious admiration. And, as often happened, Elizabeth found herself seeing her house and her garden as if through the eyes of her visitor, delighting anew in the beauty that she
—and Sam—and Ben and Cletus—
had created.
    It is beautiful,
she agreed silently. Below the driveway the tiered vegetable garden lay in orderly rows. Pea vines covered their trellises like lacy green shawls stretched out to dry. In the raised beds, dark green parsley, golden oregano, and purple-leafed sage crowded one another, while the bright chartreuse and deep burgundy of loose-leaf lettuces scrolled in bold patterns. Elizabeth had discovered long ago that dividing each rectangular bed into three triangles and then planting contrasting colors and textures within each division would produce a kind of cut-rate formal garden—at least till all the lettuce was harvested.
    Behind the blue bench her most recently acquired rhododendron—a “Gomer Waterer”—was thick with blooms. The creamy blossoms were tinged with gold and pink
—just like a sunrise—and just like the catalogue promised.
    “So, we must be facing due east.” Hawkins broke into her reverie. “You've got the ideal location—east-facing, southern exposure”—He motioned toward the vista before them—“and then there's the view. . . .”
    The ranks of gently rounded mountains marched into a smoky blue distance. Their slopes were covered with the bright greens of the new-leafed poplars and oaks and maples, punctuated with dark evergreens. Here and there the trees gave way to an emerald swath of pasture or the raw dark red of a fresh-turned tobacco field. The sun glinted from a bright metal roof in a newly cleared area, and Elizabeth remembered that only two roofs had been visible twenty-some years ago. Now there were seven, counting this one.
At least they're so far away we can just barely see them. Our nearer neighbors we don't see at all from here.
    Hawkins was saying something more about the house's perfect location and her thoughts turned unwillingly to Sam—Sam who had insisted on the due east alignment and southern exposure for the greenhouse—Sam, who had
husbanded,
in the excellent old agricultural sense, the land.
So now we're both widows—
she thought with a rush of bitterness
—me and the