Free Out in the Country by Kate Hewitt Page B

hands. She didn’t want to look at Mark; she knew she couldn’t bear to see sympathy, or worse pity, on his face. “Well, how about we do a deal?” he asked after a moment, his voice brisk. Jess looked up in surprise.
    “A deal?”
    “Yes. I’ll recommend customers to your b&b for a weekend, if you’ll refer them here for dinner. I won’t even attempt to lure your breakfast customers away.”
    Jess managed a small smile. “Very generous of you.”
    “Isn’t it? Are you having business cards made up?”
    “I suppose.” For a moment Jess pictured the glossy cards she’d helped design for the hotel in Perthshire. She’d never picked them up from the printer’s, and she imagined them lying on some dusty shelf, abandoned, forgotten. Unneeded. “To tell the truth, it’s early days yet,” she said to Mark. “We’re still working out the zoning laws and all that.”
    Mark waved a hand. “You’ll get round that. And in the meantime, perhaps we could get together to exchange recipes?” His eyes glinted with that knowing twinkle Jess couldn’t decide if she liked or not. “Not the super secret ones, just a few new ideas to keep us both fresh?” His voice was light with an inviting lilt that made Jess blush again. She was forty-six and acting like a schoolgirl.
    “I’m sure that would be lovely,” she said. Her voice was sounding brittle again. She rose from the table, taking out her purse to pay her bill. “I need to get back--” actually she didn’t-- “but perhaps we can arrange a time at a later date?”
    “Lovely,” Mark agreed, echoing her, and from the deepening twinkle in his eyes Jess had a feeling he was teasing her. Gently. He took out his pad of paper from his apron and scrawled a few words. “Consider this one on the house, as a welcome to Hardiwick.”
    “I couldn’t--”
    “But I can.” He ripped off the paper and handed it to her. “See you soon, Jessica.”
    It wasn’t until she was outside that Jess looked at what she’d supposed to be a bill. Instead she saw with an uneasy thrill it was Mark’s phone number.
     
    “Miss?”
    Molly looked up from the papers she’d been grading to see one of her tenth graders standing uncertainly, even shyly, by her desk. She glanced at the clock above the classroom door and saw school had let out ten minutes ago. She’d been so busy--or perhaps just so tired--that she hadn’t even been aware of the bell ringing or the steady stream of restless humanity streaming towards the exit.
    “Yes...” Her weary mind groped for a name and finally came up with one. “Tonya?”
    “I was wondering if you had any more poems by the guy who wrote about the raisin?”
    “The raisin,” Molly repeated blankly before her mind caught up and she smiled. “You mean Langston Hughes. Yes, I have a whole book of his poetry.” She reached down to dig in the leather bag by her feet, her fingers curling around a slim, battered volume of poetry. “Did you like that poem?”
    “Uh-huh.” Tonya nodded. “I think I’m like the last, though.” She blushed, scuffing her trainer along the tiled floor.
    “The last,” Molly repeated, thinking of the poem: What happens to a dream deferred?/Does it dry up /like a raisin in the sun? /Or fester like a sore-- /And then run? /Does it stink like rotten meat? /Or crust and sugar over-- /like a syrupy sweet?/Maybe it just sags like a heavy load/Or does it explode? “Explode?” she guessed softly. Tonya nodded.
    “Do you ever feel that way? Like everything inside you is going to... pop out? And there’s nothing you can do about it?”
    Molly gazed at the fifteen year old girl with her intricately braided hair and gold hoop earrings, her faded sweatshirt and torn jeans and her now-bright eyes as she searched for understanding. Something caught at her heart and penetrated through the fog of tiredness she’d enveloped herself in. “Sometimes,” she agreed, although at the moment she felt like the second to last line