In Reach Read Online Free PDF

Esther.
    When he answers, Leland’s voice sounds gruff. Not like him, in real life.
    “I called to thank you,” she says.
    “Did you like it?” There, that high whine at the end. That’s more like him.
    “It’s beautiful.” She doesn’t say, I can’t wear it, you damn fool.
    “Rosalee helped pick it out.”
    “Oh.” She should have known. She sinks a little, a surprise to herself.
    “It was my idea.”
    Okay, then. Feeling bold, she says, “Some time, if you want to drive out to the farm, I wouldn’t mind.”
    The three of them drove out to that farm often, Esther in the backseat with blankets and pillows. They watched the sunsets, the pheasants floating above the wild hay. Janet has missed that bit of country. It took her back to her childhood.
    Months go by, robins show up, the forsythia blooms, and one day Leland calls. “Thought I’d take you up on that offer,” he says.
    She’s not coy. Sees no point. “I’d like that,” she says.
    “What about now?”
    She has a day planned, but it can wait. There’s little urgency left in her goings-on. “I’ll meet you in the alley.”
    They drive the ten minutes to the farm. If there’s a coal train, it can take fifteen or twenty, but the tracks are empty today. Her heart speeds up when Leland pulls into the long drive. There’s that meadow, crowning with larkspur. Across the creek. Past the windmill and into the yard. The house isn’t much, never has been. Marty waves from the front porch. Having Marty on the place is one step shy of it being vacant. Leland keeps him around to ward off thieves. That, and for old time’s sake.
    Leland drives out past the alfalfa field, along the old windbreak creaking with age. He stops the car in that north pasture. Leland doesn’t run livestock anymore, so this stretch has reverted to prairie. It’s her favorite part of the place, wild and bountiful, flooded with insects and birdsong, monarch butterflies scavenging for milkweed, dragonflies with cellophane wings, dark-veined like stained-glass windows. Leland still keeps bees in this section, stacked hives abuzz. The honey is pure amber, dark and golden. He pays somebody to harvest the honey now, having lost the dexterity to move fluidly and not excite the hive. They stop under a stand of cottonwoods. She breathes in the scent of sweet clover and sighs.
    “Beautiful,” she says.
    “I remember how you liked it,” Leland says.
    They sit for a while, not talking much. Old companions with shared history. Janet soaks in the ease of it, the pleasantness. She wants nothing more than this, friendship and a whiff of countryside.
    He doesn’t call for a while, and then one day he does. She’s eager for it, and that bothers her. He says he’s got a surprise for her. Something lights up in her, and that bothers her, too. She doesn’t want to count on anything from this man. He’s not steady. Plus, she’s too old to start up any fuss.
    She agrees to meet him in the alley, settles into his car, rideswith him out to the farm. He looks boyish, smiling like he’s got a big secret. She’s annoyed, with him and with herself. Such damn fools, the both of them. What’s he got to show her? A new litter of barnyard kittens? A prairie plant they’ve not noticed before? How big the alfalfa has gotten?
    She’s trying to decide whether she’ll give him the satisfaction of thinking he’s pleased her, the way a person fakes a response to an unwanted surprise party, one your best friend doesn’t even attend and you’d rather be free to take your Saturday night bath, when he pulls up alongside the barn and stops the car. There’s some newfangled contraption parked there that looks like an overgrown tricycle.
    Leland scrambles out, giddy as hot grease on a griddle. “C’mon,” he says. With some difficulty, he works a stiff leg over and straddles the seat. Janet has gotten herself out of the car, but she hasn’t strayed far from the front fender. “Git on,” Leland