Free Windfalls: A Novel by Jean Hegland Page B

asked, pulling back from the hug and peering into Anna’s face with a mixture of pleasure and consternation. “My.”
    “But you can show me how,” Anna offered awkwardly.
    “Surely,” her grandmother answered. “Though first,” she added warmly, “I want to hear everything about how you’ve been.”
    It was the world’s most innocent question, but it caught Anna off guard. Hastily she tried to scrape together a response from the stock of answers she had used all summer. I’ve been fine, she thought, looking out across the empty acres of wheat. I’ve been just great. Everything’s going really well. But before she could say those words, other words escaped instead. “Don’t ask me that.”
    Her grandmother shot a quick look in Anna’s direction, and Anna flinched and caught herself, appalled at the rawness in her voice, terrified at the thought of what might spill out next. “Please,” she added, casting a quick imploring glance in her grandmother’s direction.
    The old woman’s face held an expression Anna had never noticed on it before—keen, unflinching, kind, and nearly shrewd. She studied Anna for a long moment, and then she nodded briskly as though she were making—or keeping—some kind of promise. Motioning toward the car, she asked, “Would you like to bring your things in now?” and the moment healed over itself so seamlessly that, except for the trembling of Anna’s hands as she lifted her suitcase from the trunk, it might never have happened.

    That evening, after the mountain of beets had been boiled and peeled and sliced and salted and packed into jars, after the hot lids had been screwed down and the filled jars had been submerged in the great kettle of boiling water and then heaved up, dripping and steaming, and set on the counter to cool, after Anna and her grandmother had eaten pot roast and mashed potatoes and boiled green beans and sipped an inch or two of the sour chablis her grandmother kept in the refrigerator to serve to company, after the dishes had been washed and dried and replaced in the china cabinet and the floor had been swept and mopped and the leftovers wrapped and put away, they went outside to sit together on the porch and try to catch a wisp of evening breeze.
    The sun had just set, and a last ruddy light filled the world, burnishing the fields and illuminating the roses that grew beside the porch railing, deepening the crimson Mr. Lincolns so that they looked nearly black and causing each of the Bridal Whites and the Summer Snows to glow like the core of a flame. But studying them from her seat on the top step, Anna felt only a dim nostalgia for how that light might once have stirred her.
    From the kitchen came the faint ping that announced another lid had sealed.
    “Nineteen,” her grandmother said, her voice almost smug. She sat in a white wicker armchair, a skein of pastel yellow yarn in her lap, her knitting needles flashing in the rosy light. “We accomplished a lot today.”
    “Yes,” Anna murmured, gazing out across the quiet fields. The sound of knitting ceased, and Anna looked up. Her grandmother was counting stitches. Despite her dexterity with the needles, her fingers were bent, the knuckles thickened with arthritis. Anna remembered how smooth those hands had felt when she’d held them that afternoon, so smooth she wondered if her grandmother’s fingertips would even leave a print. It seemed as though her grandmother had shed her very identity in the anonymous, endless labor of housekeeping, and now, looking at her grandmother’s hands, she shuddered to think how small and sheltered her grandmother’s life had been. She thought, It’s no wonder we’ve got so little to say to each other.
    “What are you knitting?” she asked, in penance for her thoughts.
    “A sweater for Dylan,” her grandmother said, holding up her needles so that Anna could admire the sweater the size of a tea cozy that was skewered between them.
    “It’s sweet,” Anna