Old Wounds Read Online Free PDF Page A

summer’s labor.
Everlastings. They call dried flowers everlastings. But, in point of fact, they’re only good for about a year. Then they fade and get dusty and covered with cobwebs. And you toss them out.
             

    Her spirits lifted as she ate her lunch—a quick bowl of ramen with dried shiitake slivers, cut-up green onions, a bright red blob of fiery
Sriracha
sauce, and an egg poached gently in the broth. Her silver spoon broke into the bright yolk nested in the soft white noodles, and she paused to enjoy the picture the vivid colors made in the cobalt blue bowl—
a picture of domestic comfort, like those old Dutch paintings.
She smiled to find herself so cheered—
and by a twenty-cent pack of noodles too. Am I a cheap date or what?
    As she washed the few dishes, the sight of yellow leaves whirling against the clear blue sky beyond the kitchen window called to her.
Maybe a walk before I go back to the shop—I could stand to get away myself.
    Lacing up her boots, Elizabeth looked around for the dogs. They were usually frantic with joy at the prospect of a walk into the woods, but at the moment they were nowhere to be seen. Off on their own adventures, no doubt.
    “Alone, alone, all all alone!” She declaimed Coleridge’s melodramatic lament in a mock-lugubrious tone and found that she was smiling again as she walked toward the grassy track at the top of the pasture. In the shade by her toolshed, she paused to check the stack of oak logs that Ben had inoculated with mushroom spawn. A lone shiitake the size of a silver dollar, its chestnut cap edged with tiny mocha dots, protruded from an upper log.
    Nearby, a shaft of sunlight through the trees illuminated an unruly patch of hardy begonias, shining through the intricate tracery of the red-veined leaves and setting alight the delicately pinky-tan winged seedpods that dangled from slender red stems like inverted candelabra.
    Beneath the trees a carpet of fallen leaves covered the still-green grass and made a satisfying crackle as she shuffled through them. Not much color yet—the occasional scarlet and some gold amid lots of brown. The earthy smell of leaf mold was pleasant and she inhaled deeply.
To every thing there is a season.
The words ran through her head as she pushed open the metal gate and stepped into the sunshine of the pasture.
    The vista here always took her breath. At the house, the view from the porch had, year by year, become more limited as the trees below grew taller. Someday she would have them cut down, Elizabeth thought, and restore the view to what it had been when she and Sam first came to the farm. It was beautiful, even with the trees blocking the view, and the far peaks of the Blue Ridge were still visible in places, but sooner or later, steps would have to be taken.
    She set out across the path that ran into the woods. The wild flowers of autumn, starry lavender asters, deep purple ironweed, and bright goldenrod dotted the mountainside above and below her. At the edge of the woods, where there was more moisture, a patch of deep blue-violet lobelia pooled at the foot of a tall persimmon tree.
    Stopping to drink in the view, Elizabeth sat on a rustic bench, one of four Sam had set along this walk. The locust logs that supported the broad oak plank were showing signs of decay and the seat was slightly wobbly.
More change. But you can’t make time stand still.
She pivoted to look up the hill, up to the southern ridge that separated Full Circle Farm from Mullmore—the one-time home of the Mullins family. The slope was thick with black pines, and the sound of the wind through them was a melancholy moan.
“Soughing”—that’s what the wind is doing. What a great word—like “wuthering.”
    She stood and looked at the ridge, considering. The ghost of a trail curled up the slope and disappeared into the pines.
That must be the route that Rosie and Maythorn used. Rosie took Sam and me and Laurel along it, that time we went to