One Man and a Baby

Marching up the sidewalk to the hardware store the next morning, Ashley didn’t even let herself think about how she looked—or smelled. She knew what was going on. Rick might not be the finagler he was in his misspent youth, but they were in competition for a job and sending her into town was an easy way to embarrass her and clearly illustrate that if she got this job this would be her life. A sweaty, smelly farmworker. Dressed in the oldest clothes she could find in her drawers. Her hair matted into ringlets from sweat. No makeup.

But contrary to what Rick expected, she refused to be embarrassed. Not just because she wouldn’t let him win, but because she accepted that this was her life now. She wanted to be the farm manager. She wanted to care for the horses, dicker for new mares, negotiate the sale of foals, hire hands, settle small battles, maintain the property. She wanted to be connected to the land and the people of her small town as one of them. No longer an outsider, or her father’s daughter, but one of them.

She pushed open the hardware store door and the bell rang, alerting Bert Minor to her arrival. “Hey, Bert,” she called striding down the aisle. “I’m here to pick up the part Rick ordered this morning.”

The tall, round, hardware store owner scrambled out of the back room, drying his hands in a brown paper towel. “Hey, Ashley. How’s it going?”

“It’s going great, but apparently Rick or somebody needs some part and I was elected to pick it up.”

He looked pointedly at her oversize gray T-shirt and threadbare jeans, apparently not realizing that in some parts of the world she’d be in style.

“They must all be super busy.”

“We are super busy,” she said, emphasizing the “we” so Bert would start thinking of her as one of the workers, not just a resident of the farm. “That’s why I didn’t have time to change clothes. Besides, you might as well get used to me looking like this. Right now I’m learning as much as I can about running the place, and when my father retires I hope to be the one who takes over.”

He smiled approvingly. People in Calhoun Corners weren’t fond of outsiders and they liked it when a farm passed from one generation to the next. “Yeah. Your dad told me he was retiring.”

Though Ashley had suspected her father would probably officially retire when he returned in February, hearing that he’d already announced it in town froze her breath in her lungs. Still, she schooled her features, not so much to prevent Bert from seeing that it hurt her to hear it from him but so that he wouldn’t guess that her dad seemed to be telling everybody but her.

“He called the day before he left to go sailing and put Rick’s names on all your accounts,” Bert said, examining the screen of his computerized checkout system, subtly alerting her to the fact that everybody knew Rick was in the running for the manager job, and to him it looked as if Rick was in the lead.

She only smiled.

“So, you don’t have to sign for this or anything.” He handed her a brown bag that held something heavy. “Just don’t drop it.”

“Right.”

“And good luck with learning the ropes. I’m pulling for you.”

“Thanks.” She walked out of the hardware store and directly to her black SUV. She carefully set whatever the hell was in the bag on the floor in front of the passenger’s seat, then slammed the door closed. Rounding the hood, she passed the dress shop and stopped suddenly.