From The Mists Of Wolf Creek. Rebecca Brandewyne

left supper for me last evening.”

      “Good heavens! Don’t tell me I forgot to give you my letter, too!” The elderly lady fumbled in her purse, eventually withdrawing a crumpled envelope marked “Hallie.” “I did. Oh, dear, I’m so terribly forgetful these days. That’s what comes of growing old. Yes, it was I who brought the food, and I intended to leave you this note, explaining everything. You poor thing! No wonder you were so confused this morning and mistook me for Hennie!

      “I’ll tell you what, Hallie—” Aunt Gwen removed her wide-brimmed straw sun hat, laying it on the old farmhouse table “—I ate at the bed-and-breakfast. So why don’t I make you breakfast instead, while you go upstairs and get cleaned up? If you don’t mind me saying so, child, it looks as though you slept in those clothes, and I noticed you hadn’t unpacked your baggage, either.

      “There are a few other things that need to be taken care of here this morning, besides, which is one of the other reasons why I came. There are still some chickens here at Meadowsweet, which need feeding. I didn’t know, of course, what you would want done with them, whether you intended to stay here permanently, making the farm your home, or whether you meant to put it on the market. So I was reluctant to sell the chickens or even to give them away. But that’s why Old Bernard is still screeching his darned fool head off outside. He’s hungry.”

      “Old Bernard?” Hallie raised one eyebrow inquisitively.

      “The rooster,” the older woman explained. “I know it’s awful, but Hennie said he was so mean that she was going to name him after Father—and I’m afraid that’s just what she did!”

      “Good grief,” Hallie rejoined lamely.

      Still, she was unable to repress the laugher that bubbled from her throat, and soon Aunt Gwen was giggling as hard as she.

      “I’m sure…poor Father…must have turned over in his very grave…when Hennie christened that old rooster,” the elderly lady said, in between bursts of merriment.

      “Well, I don’t believe Gram was ever a highly reverent sort of person,” Hallie mused aloud, remembering. “I guess perhaps she had got her fill of that growing up. Are there still bees here at Meadowsweet, as well, Aunt Gwen?”

      “Oh, yes, dear. Hennie would never have parted with her bees. In fact, right before she died, she said it was more important than ever to keep them going here at the farm, that for some unknown reason, billions of honeybees are dying all over North America. ‘Colony Collapse Disorder,’ it’s called, she told me. Without bees to pollinate our crops, many will be lost. I don’t know all the particulars myself, but I suppose it could lead to all kinds of food shortages and maybe even a worldwide famine. I don’t think anyone really knows for sure.”

      “Well, we’ll continue to take care of the bees here at Meadowsweet, then,” Hallie stated firmly, “and see that they don’t die.”

      “Are you going to remain here, then, for good, Hallie?” the older woman inquired.

      “I’m…I’m not certain yet.”

      “Is there some reason why you can’t? I mean, I know from what Hennie told me that you have both a job and a husband somewhere back East—”

      “No.” Hallie shook her head. “Well, at least, not a husband…not anymore, anyway. In the end it…it just didn’t work out. Before she died, Aunt Agatha tried to tell me it wouldn’t. But I just thought she was so bitter about not ever having got married herself that she wanted to ruin my own happiness, too. So I didn’t listen to her. But I should have, because everything she ever said about Richard—that’s my ex-husband—eventually turned out to be true. He wasn’t the right man for me and was never going to be.”

      “You’re divorced now, then, I take it?” Aunt Gwen’s tone was sympathetic.

      “Yes…yes, we’re divorced now. In point of fact, I signed the papers just before I left to come here. But that didn’t matter. Our marriage had been over for quite a while. I guess I just hadn’t wanted to face it. But now, I think perhaps that’s one of the main reasons I decided to come back here to Meadowsweet. I needed some time to myself, a quiet place to lick my wounds. So I took a sabbatical from my job—I’m a graphic designer—and I packed my bags, and well, here I am.”

      “And now I’ve thoughtlessly intruded on your solitude.” The older woman sighed deeply. “I’m so sorry, Hallie.”

      “No…no, you needn’t be,” Hallie said adamantly. “In fact, I’m glad you’re here, Aunt Gwen. Naturally, I’ve heard about you now and then over the years, but with the family being what it was, most of them on such ill terms with one another, you and I just never seemed to have a chance to meet, to get to know each other.”

      “Yes, I know, and of course, it didn’t help that until these past years, I was never around much, but usually traveling out of the country somewhere,” the elderly lady noted. “That’s why I always missed holidays, birthdays, weddings and funerals, and the like. My late husband, Professor Victor Lassiter, was an archaeologist, you see. So we were invariably off in some far corner of the world, digging up old ruins and artefacts—besides which, as you said, our family was never particularly close.”

      “Still, what an exciting life you must have led, Aunt Gwen.”

      “Yes…yes, I have. Still, I don’t mind telling you there’s a lot to be said for putting down roots and making a real home someplace permanent, instead of always living in a tent and out of a suitcase.”