Any Rainy Thursday Read online

  Table of Contents

  ANY RAINY THURSDAY

  Acknowledgments

  THURSDAY

  FRIDAY AND HE RETURNS

  SATURDAY

  THE THIRD MEETING WITH MILES

  FRIDAY

  SUNDAY

  ALTHEA AND GLO

  MILES AND ALTHEA

  ALTHEA AND BARRY

  BARRY AND ALTHEA

  MILES’ REACTION

  CONVERSATION WITH CONNIE

  WITH BARRY AGAIN

  WITH MILES

  THE FIRST APPLE FESTIVAL

  IN THE ARBOR

  IN THE THUNDERSTORM

  THE SECOND APPLE FESTIVAL

  IN THE RAIN

  LEAVING

  THE BENEFIT CONCERT

  ALTHEA AND GLO

  ED’S ACCIDENT

  BARRY AGAIN

  ANOTHER PROBLEM

  THE END

  ANY RAINY THURSDAY

  JESSIE SALISBURY

  SOUL MATE PUBLISHING

  New York

  ANY RAINY THURSDAY

  Copyright©2018

  JESSIE SALISBURY

  Cover Design by Fiona Jayde

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, business establishments, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials.

  Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Published in the United States of America by

  Soul Mate Publishing

  P.O. Box 24

  Macedon, New York, 14502

  ISBN: 978-1-68291-722-0

  www.SoulMatePublishing.com

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  To all my children:

  Leslie, Wanda, Alan, Verna, and Joel

  Acknowledgments

  “Bonny Eloise” was written in 1859 by C.W. Elliot and J.R. Thomas and was very popular in its day.

  And many thanks to my writers’ group, “The Talespinners,” for all their critiques, and to my patient and helpful first readers.

  THURSDAY

  A thunderstorm was building on the western horizon, purple-black clouds roiling above the distant trees. The August air was increasingly oppressive ahead of the approaching storm. Althea Ivie watched the towering clouds with a growing hope that it would actually rain this time. The thirsty earth needed more than just the teasing showers of the past two weeks. Her vegetable gardens needed water. There hadn’t been a proper rain in over a month, and her irrigation system wasn’t working properly. Again.

  She stood in front of her farm stand, relishing the occasional puffs of cooling air and willing the rain to come and revive them all, body and soul. Althea loved to walk in the summer showers, but if it were really going to rain this time, she had to prepare for it. Her stand was sturdily rustic, an old post-and-beam building with wide double doors that now stood open. Across the front was a covered but not fully enclosed space where she displayed much of her produce, bushel baskets of corn and crookneck squash. The wooden sign created by her grandfather was fastened to the eaves between two large center posts, the hand-carved letters spelling “Ivie’s” now pale tan against the faded blue paint she had no desire to renew. A wrought iron door knocker was securely fastened to the post to the right of the sign, a horse’s head holding a heavy ring in its mouth. It made a very satisfying clank when rapped against its iron plate.

  Althea patted the horse head as she passed it, running her fingers along its worn-smooth mane. It had been put there by her grandfather, and as always, she had a kind thought for him and her Uncle Raymond who had given her what was left of the ancestral acres. It provided and nourished the life she loved and would continue, if she could somehow manage it.

  Althea glanced again at the lowering clouds, crossed her fingers for luck, and moved the baskets of corn and cucumbers to the back of what she thought of as her patio. Unless the wind blew directly into it, the back wall with its open shelves remained dry. The roofed-over area was mostly hard-packed dirt floor, but a row of recycled roof slates formed a path to the interior.

  She had closed the stand an hour ago, but she put a favorite CD in the player, a choral group with a selection of old English ballads and roundelays, and relaxed in the old rocking chair Raymond had left there, the one Aunt Emily had lovingly recaned. She leaned back, closed her eyes, listened to the music, and waited for the rain. The rising breeze brought a delicious coolness and the sweet scent of washed grass. It was raining somewhere not far away and her spirits rose.

  The sun disappeared behind the bank of clouds, and the thunder moved closer with each flash of lightning. The rain came gently at first, huge drops splattering against the ground and raising little puffs of dust, then suddenly slashing sideways across the front of the stand, driven by a gusty wind. The cold spray was heavenly on her upturned face, but she was forced to withdraw from the splashing rain. The crashes of thunder close behind the lightning flashes were exhilarating, but this was not the rain she loved to walk in, and she would not venture out into it to walk to her nearby house. She switched on the lights against the gathering darkness, thinking she might as well do a little straightening up while she was here. Instead, she stood in the doorway and simply watched the storm.

  Somewhere between the almost continuous claps of thunder, Althea heard a car approaching. Mildly curious, she peered out into the darkening storm. There was little traffic on her road outside of commuting and business hours. She had no close neighbors and the road wasn’t a shortcut to anywhere, so who would be out in this?

  The approaching car’s lights flashed on the roadside trees from the other side of a wide curve to the left of the stand and, in Althea’s opinion, was moving much too fast for the weather conditions. As it rounded the curve, the vehicle encountered a rush of water across the road, the overflow from the ditch beside the slight incline toward the curve. The dirt edge of the road was slick with rain and the car slid, pushed sideways by the surge of water. It came to a crunching halt in the ditch opposite her, tilted a little toward the side of the road, but remaining upright.

  Althea didn’t recognize the vehicle—it looked to her like an old Jeep—as one of her neighbor’s, so she hesitated, debating if she should go and offer help and to see if the driver was injured. After a long moment, a man emerged from the vehicle, pulled his jacket up over his head, and sprinted toward her. Althea stepped backwards as he stumbled to a stop beside her, shrugged his jacket off his head, and brushed the rain from his face.

  “Thank heavens for you,” he gasped. “Seeing your lights was a godsend. I have no idea where I am.”

  She had never seen him before. He was thirtyish, slender but well built, and dark h
aired. He was dressed in worn jeans and a green tee with some lettering on it. One hand was clenched around his cell phone.

  Althea asked, “Are you all right? What happened?”

  He looked directly at her, unsmiling and appraising her until she felt uncomfortable. “I’m okay. I think I blew a tire just before I hit that water and slid.”

  Irritated by his intense gaze—his eyes were an unusual shade of grayish green—she said a little more sharply than she intended, “I think you were driving too fast.”

  “Probably.” He turned toward the road again. “I was trying to get home before the storm hit. I hate driving in a thunderstorm. Somebody said this was a shortcut.”

  She decided that he was quite good looking, close to her ideal of Hollywood handsome with his even features, wide set eyes, and a sensitive mouth that looked made for smiling.

  She asked, “To where?” She noted his shirt, which read: “I march to a different accordion.” What kind of person have I run into this time?

  The phone in his hand sounded with a ringtone she recognized with surprise as a snippet from “The March of the Toreadors.”

  The young man raised the phone. “Ted?” Then, relief plain in his voice, “I’m off the road.” He glanced at Althea. “What road is this?”

  “Larson.”

  “Really? I’m at a farm stand,” again in Althea’s direction, “What’s it called?”

  “Ivie’s.”

  He repeated, “On Larson Road at a farm stand called Ivie’s. Yeah. I’m okay, inside where it’s dry.” He lowered the phone but did not loosen his grip. “This is Larson Road? I live on it somewhere. I always go the other way.”

  Most of the residents lived at the other end closest to the village center. She thought she knew them all. “So where do you live?”

  He blew out a long trembling breath, smiled slightly in her direction, and loosened the grip on his phone. “We rented an old farm, me and Ted, a few weeks ago, some place I think the real estate people called Loomis.”

  “I know where that is.” It had been empty since Mrs. Loomis had died last spring and her husband had moved into assisted living. It was the last working farm in the neighborhood, but now the cows and pigs were gone and the fields were getting weedy. There was no one in the family interested in continuing it. She hadn’t heard that it had been rented. “Are you farmers?”

  He grunted. “Hardly. Going back to nature, living off the land?” He shook his head. “That’s an ideal. A fantasy Ted and Glo have. They have this grand idea about bringing that all back. They can see how it used to be.”

  “Not you?”

  “Not really. I just need a place to sleep and they need the rent money.” He glanced around the stand and then faced her directly. “So do you farm here? Raise all this stuff?”

  Althea considered how to answer that, what to tell a stranger, even if he was a new neighbor, since she did live alone. “Your friends are going to try to revive the Loomis’ farm?” It was an intriguing idea. “It used to be a show place. Prize-winning cattle and Green Pastures Awards and all that.”

  He shook his head. “They aren’t into cows. Thank goodness. The orchards, I think. At least at first. There’s a crop out there. Some nice pears. Maybe some pick-your-own sort of thing. And there are the Christmas trees.” He squinted out into the storm, which did not seem to be abating although the wind had lessened. He shuddered noticeably and turned back toward her. “It shouldn’t take Ted long to get here, should it?”

  There was a note of anxiety in his voice and Althea wondered if he were afraid. “It’s only a half mile up the road.”

  “Really?” He was appraising her again, regarding her boldly but perhaps in a different light, and again she was uncomfortable. He raised his head and turned around, listening. “That music? That can’t be ‘Greensleeves.’” He walked to the door and peered into the stand.

  Her music choices had gotten that reaction before. “Why not? It’s a lovely song.”

  “It is indeed. Who’s singing?”

  “A British chorale.”

  “I don’t think I’ve heard them.”

  “They do some really nice stuff.”

  A car pulled up in front of the stand.

  The man asked, “Can I leave the Jeep there overnight? It’s kind of wet out to be doing anything.”

  “I don’t think it will bother anyone. It’s well off the road.”

  He grimaced, then laughed shortly. “Yeah. Thank goodness that bank was there to stop me. I think all it needs is to have the tire changed and I can do that.”

  She could find no response to that.

  He faced her, again obviously assessing her by undressing her with his eyes, which left her feeling exposed. “Thanks for being here, for being open.”

  The driver of the car tooted the horn.

  “Anytime,” she said, as sincerely as she could manage.

  “Well anyway, I’ll be back in the morning, after it stops raining, and get the car.”

  She didn’t answer, just watched him run to the other side of the car and get in. The driver made a three-point turn in her parking space and drove back the way they came, into the wet darkness, faster than she thought reasonable.

  The rain showed no signs of stopping any time soon, so Althea closed and barred the stand doors, turned off the CD player and the lights, and left by the back door. It was only a short run to her house, but she arrived there soaked through to the skin. It felt heavenly.

  Tomorrow morning, Friday, if it had stopped raining, she would gather the tomatoes, see what she needed for corn, and be ready to open when Connie arrived. Her cousin would tend the stand during the morning, leaving Althea free to get ready for the usual weekend customers.

  But what about those new neighbors? Would they offer those pears in the stand? She would think about that tomorrow, after the man came back for his car. And I should find out who he is. He didn’t tell me his name.

  FRIDAY AND HE RETURNS

  In the clear light of a bright, sunny morning, Althea stood in front of her farm stand enjoying the warmth. Last night’s storm had washed everything clean but had beaten down some of the sunflowers at the eastern end of the stand. Nothing else seemed to have been damaged.

  The stranger’s car was still in the ditch across from her, slightly tilted toward the bank. It was indeed an old black Jeep, dented, a little rusty, and probably before the rain had washed it, mud-covered. Why do the drivers of those things like to get into muddy places where they don’t belong? She wondered for a moment who he might be and why she hadn’t heard that he had moved into the neighborhood. She recalled him as being quite good looking, in spite of his rude stare, but then dismissed the man and his car as being of no particular interest. She looked at her place of business again and considered what needed to be done to prepare for the weekend.

  It was an old building, low and slab-sided, dating back about a hundred years, to when her great-grandfather had built the first section, a sturdy, properly south-facing three-sided shelter where he offered whatever produce he had. Uncle Raymond, her father’s oldest brother, had enlarged it over the years to accommodate the almost year-round operation it was now, and had added a covered extension across the front. It wasn’t a porch, since it was dirt-floored, so Althea thought of it as her patio. The square post holding up the western end of the roof was densely entwined in morning glory vines, their bright blue and pink flowers opening cheerfully against the gray, weather-beaten wood. The other end was flanked by an array of sunflowers, seven or eight varieties, ranging from small pale yellow sprays of helianthus to the more conventional, large almost orange flowers. Behind them, against the main part of the stand, were the giants, the kind some people exhibit at county fairs seeking bragging rights for the tallest stalks and biggest blooms. Althe
a didn’t enter contests, but they were a good conversation topic.

  Out of habit, she put one hand on her grandfather’s iron horse head door knocker, gently rubbing it while she mentally listed the morning chores.

  “I don’t remember where he got it,” Uncle Raymond had told her. “As far as I know, he put it up when he first started selling vegetables out here so that people could call him. He always said it was better’n a bell. I moved it out front here when I extended the roof.”

  Raymond had taken over the stand from his father over fifty years ago and enlarged the business, inviting neighbors to use it as well. Althea had made the business more professional – she bought produce from neighbors as well as jellies, relishes and other crafty items made by friends. There was a refrigerator in the back, a used commercial model she had found online, in which she kept eggs and an occasional bouquet of cut flowers. She also carried a selection of sodas made by a local company. That seemed more fitting than a big national brand. She wasn’t into big and national, nor much into sodas.

  Althea spared a kind thought for Uncle Raymond. She was fond of him, and eternally grateful that he had given her the opportunity to own the family farm when Aunt Emily had passed on and he retired south to where some of her cousins lived. The farm was much reduced from the hundred acres her great-grandparents had cultivated in the late 1800s. She knew, rationally, she never would, or could, be as self-sufficient as they had been, but she intended to try. She was trying, in spite of setbacks like the lack of rain. And a recalcitrant irrigation system.

  “You’re the only one who cares about the land,” Raymond said when arranging the transfer of the property. She had been helping him operate the stand and the farm for several years by then, managing the finances, getting the seeds and fertilizer, and finding whatever help they needed. She grew radishes and peas and several kinds of lettuce in the spring, and in the summer offered swiss chard, green onions, summer squashes, tomatoes and cucumbers, and, of course, sweet corn.