Milky Way. Muriel Jensen

that sat on the passenger seat. “What’s that?” she asked.

      “Files,” he replied.

      “What’s that?”

      “Papers and stuff.”

      “Oh.” Satisfied, she stood on tiptoe to study the dash.

      “Renee, honey,” the widow said, appearing from around the hood and taking the child by the hand, “Mr. Marshack has to leave.”

      She stepped away from the truck, pulling the little girl with her. “Goodbye, Mr. Marshack,” she said, her eyes hostile again. “Next time you wish to speak to me, please write or phone.”

      Jake put the truck in reverse, checked that his rearview mirror was clear, then stepped on the gas, determined that the widow Hansen hadn’t seen the last of him.

      The sound of metal crunching and glass popping under his rear tires made him slam on the brake.

CHAPTER TWO

      “MY BIKE!” Matt stared down at the pile of contorted metal that had been his beloved twelve-speed, his dark blue eyes reflecting his horror. The other three children also stared, open-mouthed.

      “Maybe Mom can fix it,” Renee suggested.

      “I think it’s dead,” David said.

      “You were supposed to put it on the porch,” Christy pointed out. “Mom told you—”

      Matt rounded on her. “You shut up!” he ordered, then turned back to the “body” with a gasp of distress.

      Jake, riddled with guilt, put an arm around his shoulders. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll buy you another one.”

      “No.” Britt’s voice was firm, though her expression was sympathetic. “He always leans it up against the most convenient prop, then forgets it. I’ve barely missed running over it countless times. He’s supposed to lock it up on the porch. He knows that. It wasn’t your fault.”

      Jake had expected her to be grateful to have something to blame on him. He was surprised into feeling responsible.

      “Look,” he began, “I’ll be happy to—”

      “No,” she insisted, pulling Matt out from under Jake’s arm and putting her own around the boy. “We all have to pay the consequences of our actions. That’s one of life’s primary rules.”

      “What about my paper route?” Matt asked plaintively.

      “You’ll have to use my bike,” Britt replied.

      He rolled his eyes in distress. “Mom, come on. Your bike is dorky! I can’t—”

      “What are your alternatives?” she asked.

      Jake could see the boy struggling manfully not to cry as he continued to stare at the twisted tubing. “I could ask Howie to take over my route.”

      “Then he’ll get the money and not you. How are you going to pay your way on the Scouting trip?”

      Jake bit his tongue. He’d never been a parent, but he considered her unreasonably stern. It didn’t seem fair to remind the boy of other things he couldn’t have while he was standing over the corpse of his bike.

      “Could I speak to you for a moment?” he asked the widow.

      She gave him a cool, reluctant glance, then shooed the children toward the house. “Matt, put the bike in the back of the station wagon,” she said. “I’ll see if Brick can do anything with it.”

      As the children moved away, Jake took her elbow and pulled her down the drive, out of earshot of Matt, who was bending over the bike.

      “No,” she said quietly before Jake could say anything.

      “Look,” he countered reasonably, “I backed over the bike because I didn’t see it. I feel—”

      “You didn’t see it because he parked it in the wrong place after repeated warnings.”

      He folded his arms and frowned down at her. “You chew nails, too?” he asked.

      She glowered at him for one long moment, then sighed and squared her shoulders. “Do you have children?” she asked.

      “No, I don’t,” he admitted, “but if I did, I wouldn’t rub their noses in their mistakes.”

      She shook her head at his naïveté. “How do you suppose they learn not to make them?”

      He opened his mouth to answer, but she cut him off. “By having to live with the results. Perhaps you can afford to be more understanding because if your child made such a mistake, you could simply buy him another bike. Matt’s reality is that I can’t afford to do that, so he has to take special care of the one he has.”

      “I feel partly responsible.” Jake thrust a thumb at his chest. “And I can afford to buy him another one. Doesn’t that change the equation just a little?”

      “No,” she said, “because you won’t be around to buy him yet another one when he forgets and leaves the new one in the wrong place because the message never really got through.”

      Jake turned his head to watch the boy heave the wreck into the back of the car. “Do you really think he’d let that happen again?”

      “Twice or three times more,” she said without hesitation. “Kids are thick, Mr. Marshack. Now, if you’ll excuse me.” She glanced at her watch. “Christy has a piano lesson, David has a t’ai chi class, Renee has ballet and Matt has to deliver his route.” She started to walk up the drive but he caught her arm.

      He was surprised by how small it felt in his grip. Her bicep was muscled and firm, but he could easily close his hand around it. She looked up into his eyes and he felt that shock again, as though water had closed over his head.

      Then, unexpectedly, her eyes gentled and she gave him a half smile. “I know you mean well,” she said, “and I appreciate the generosity of your offer when you know it really wasn’t your fault. But it’s important that Matt live with this for a little while.” Then her smile took on a slightly wry twist. “Just as I have to live with the results of my inability to pay my bills. Life is hard, and that’s a truth no one escapes. Goodbye, Mr. Marshack.”

      She caught up with Matt and put an arm around his shoulders.

      Jake saw the boy stiffen stubbornly, refusing to respond to some teasing remark. Now he felt sorry for both of them.

      She certainly had a lot to contend with—the fairly recent loss of her husband, the brink of financial ruin and four children, one of whom was on the threshold of puberty with all its attendant confusion and volatility. Not to mention a porch roof that leaked.

      Jake got into his vehicle again and backed down the drive. There was nothing else he could do here. He’d delivered the company’s offer, then its ultimatum. He’d upset the widow Hansen and made her older son a pedestrian. That was quite enough for one day.

      * * *

      WITH CHRISTY, David and Renee piled into the station wagon, Britt drove the three miles into Tyler. While the children teased and argued in the middle seat, she pushed in a Clint Black tape about “living and learning” and turned up the volume. The music didn’t deter the children one bit but it helped her ease the knot of worry that had begun to grow in her stomach a year ago when Jimmy died, and that now threatened to cut off her breath and smother her heartbeat.

      Not that she and Jimmy hadn’t struggled before. Life for the small farmers all across the country had come down to a basic truth: success was being able to break even; profit was an impossibility. And for her and Jimmy, debt had been a fact of life since she inherited not only the farm when her father died, but the high cost of new milking equipment. The