than I am at running a business anyway. I believe I’m ready to turn Romantic Nights over to her entirely, assuming she even wants it, and go back to writing my little mysteries full time.”
She grinned at us, our shocked expressions saying it all as the waitress delivered our steaming dinners. It wasn’t easy to rattle Margo, I knew, but she was clearly nonplussed. She locked eyes with me for a few seconds, and whatever she saw there seemed to steady her.
“So what do you have to say about that?” May demanded. “Do you think I’m ready to become a woman of relative leisure?”
“I think you’ve earned the right to do whatever you damned well please from here on out,” Margo told her aunt calmly. “Now let’s eat. I’m about to starve to death.”
Chapter Two
Shortly after ten o’clock the next morning, I steered my ancient Jetta sedan carefully down the Spring Street fork that lead to the frozen pond on one side of the street and the spring-fed, running brook that ran off into the marsh on the other. About sixty ducks and half a dozen geese floated in the open brook and eyed us warily as we pulled over to their side of the street. The teenage boys who played hockey on the pond had given the waterfowl a healthy motivation to maintain some space between themselves and human beings, even those bearing cracked corn, and I never encouraged them to do otherwise. It was far safer for them that way.
“This may be one of the worst ideas I ever had. No good deed goes unpunished and all that,” Duane Starling grumbled from the back seat where he and Becky Lynn Carmichael, our part-time employees and best of pals, were unbuckling their seatbelts. Duane’s best friend was Charlie Putnam, our third partner Strutter’s son, who was attending UConn in Storrs. Duane had extended a summer job with us by making himself an invaluable employee of Mack Realty and Romantic Nights, May’s publishing company, which shared his time.
Becky slapped his arm lightly. “Stop groaning. We offered to help Kate feed the hurt and stranded birds while Emma’s visiting her boyfriend, so get on with it. How does this work, Kate?”
I was glad I’d invited the two young people to help feed the feathered ones this morning. It had been a tough winter so far, and my daughter Emma deserved the break she was taking in Oregon. Every morning from November through mid-April, she and I made the trek to the Spring Street Pond to feed the halt and the lame. Then I circled back to where Old Main Street crossed over the marsh to do the same for the little birds that wintered there, and she went over the Putnam Bridge to her job in Glastonbury as a real estate paralegal.
Summoning up an enthusiasm I didn’t really feel, I unsnapped my own seatbelt and popped open the car trunk as I climbed out. “Just follow me,” I instructed.
An icy wind made the 20-degree temperature feel more like 20 below as we huddled in the shelter of the trunk. I handed each of the young people a large plastic pitcher and pulled the tab from a 40-pound sack of cracked corn, which rested beside a bin of birdseed. That was for our next stop.
I used my teeth to pull off a glove, opened the sack and dipped my plastic pitcher deeply into the cracked corn, then gestured for Duane and Becky to follow suit. Carrying the pitchers close to our bodies, we made our way gingerly through the piled-up snow and icy patches along the narrow street as we looked for an appropriate flat spot in which to spread out the corn.
“This looks okay,” Duane said. “It just needs the snow packed down so the kernels don’t sink in.” He handed Becky his pitcher and proceeded to jump up and down on a shallow drift, causing the ducks and geese to rise, squawking in protest, and flap or swim deeper into the marsh. Duane promptly lost his footing and fell on his backside in the snow. Becky hooted.
“That’s what you get for showing off. You’re lucky you didn’t break a
She grinned at us, our shocked expressions saying it all as the waitress delivered our steaming dinners. It wasn’t easy to rattle Margo, I knew, but she was clearly nonplussed. She locked eyes with me for a few seconds, and whatever she saw there seemed to steady her.
“So what do you have to say about that?” May demanded. “Do you think I’m ready to become a woman of relative leisure?”
“I think you’ve earned the right to do whatever you damned well please from here on out,” Margo told her aunt calmly. “Now let’s eat. I’m about to starve to death.”
Chapter Two
Shortly after ten o’clock the next morning, I steered my ancient Jetta sedan carefully down the Spring Street fork that lead to the frozen pond on one side of the street and the spring-fed, running brook that ran off into the marsh on the other. About sixty ducks and half a dozen geese floated in the open brook and eyed us warily as we pulled over to their side of the street. The teenage boys who played hockey on the pond had given the waterfowl a healthy motivation to maintain some space between themselves and human beings, even those bearing cracked corn, and I never encouraged them to do otherwise. It was far safer for them that way.
“This may be one of the worst ideas I ever had. No good deed goes unpunished and all that,” Duane Starling grumbled from the back seat where he and Becky Lynn Carmichael, our part-time employees and best of pals, were unbuckling their seatbelts. Duane’s best friend was Charlie Putnam, our third partner Strutter’s son, who was attending UConn in Storrs. Duane had extended a summer job with us by making himself an invaluable employee of Mack Realty and Romantic Nights, May’s publishing company, which shared his time.
Becky slapped his arm lightly. “Stop groaning. We offered to help Kate feed the hurt and stranded birds while Emma’s visiting her boyfriend, so get on with it. How does this work, Kate?”
I was glad I’d invited the two young people to help feed the feathered ones this morning. It had been a tough winter so far, and my daughter Emma deserved the break she was taking in Oregon. Every morning from November through mid-April, she and I made the trek to the Spring Street Pond to feed the halt and the lame. Then I circled back to where Old Main Street crossed over the marsh to do the same for the little birds that wintered there, and she went over the Putnam Bridge to her job in Glastonbury as a real estate paralegal.
Summoning up an enthusiasm I didn’t really feel, I unsnapped my own seatbelt and popped open the car trunk as I climbed out. “Just follow me,” I instructed.
An icy wind made the 20-degree temperature feel more like 20 below as we huddled in the shelter of the trunk. I handed each of the young people a large plastic pitcher and pulled the tab from a 40-pound sack of cracked corn, which rested beside a bin of birdseed. That was for our next stop.
I used my teeth to pull off a glove, opened the sack and dipped my plastic pitcher deeply into the cracked corn, then gestured for Duane and Becky to follow suit. Carrying the pitchers close to our bodies, we made our way gingerly through the piled-up snow and icy patches along the narrow street as we looked for an appropriate flat spot in which to spread out the corn.
“This looks okay,” Duane said. “It just needs the snow packed down so the kernels don’t sink in.” He handed Becky his pitcher and proceeded to jump up and down on a shallow drift, causing the ducks and geese to rise, squawking in protest, and flap or swim deeper into the marsh. Duane promptly lost his footing and fell on his backside in the snow. Becky hooted.
“That’s what you get for showing off. You’re lucky you didn’t break a
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