Free Patterns of Swallows by Connie Cook

water. She knew it, but she continued to pour boiling water
over her peaches. It was the way her mother had taught her to can
peaches, and it was the way she had taught her daughter. Not that
Pat ever canned peaches anymore.
    The boiling water might have
been superstition on her part. Everything had to be done just right
to have winning peaches. She'd be chanting incantations over the
peaches next, she supposed. But maybe this year was the year her
peaches would take first prize at the Fall Fair. Why shouldn't it be
this year? Her turn was coming, she felt sure of it. She'd been
saying the same thing to herself for years, but after all, if it was
ever going to happen, every year brought that magical year another
year closer.
    She didn't know why it mattered,
but it did. Maybe it was on account of the number of years she'd
been trying for it. When one went after a thing for that long, it
was hard not to find one's sense of personal worth all tied up with a
jar of peaches. She knew it was silly, but there! Why shouldn't she
be silly once in awhile?
    She chose the best-looking
peaches – not bruised, not too green, just the right size –
and began carefully stripping off the skins and cutting the fruit as
uniformly as she could. She'd do the jar for the fair first.
    It turned out very nicely, too.
She never could see why the winning peaches were any better than her
own. Sometimes she was even sure they were worse.
    She finished the other jars and
poured the sticky sugar-water over them, then put the rings and lids
on them, set them in the canner, and turned on the heat.
    By the time Guy came back from
picking up a paper (delivery to their street had stopped on weekends,
and they knew not why), he was good and ready for his breakfast.
They always ate later on a Saturday so the men could have a lie-in on
their day off.
    The peaches had just finished.
She tested them all and opened a jar that hadn't sealed properly
(fortunately, not her fair peaches); then dished the still-hot
peaches into the small bowls at each of the three places.
    "Graham's vehicle's not
here. Did he go out already?" her husband asked her.
    "Must have. It was there
last night when I went to bed. He turned in before I did, even."
    "I wonder where the boy's
at. Surely he wouldn't be over at that girl's place already!"
(Mr. MacKellum knew "that girl's" name very well until
Graham had started spending all his free time with her. Then he'd
developed selective memory loss.)
    "Not at this hour. I'm
surprised he's awake at all on a Saturday before ten. It's not
likely he'd be with Ruth already. He'll turn up. He must have had
an errand."
    Mrs. MacKellum waited breakfast
as long as she could, but Guy was getting irritable. His moods
didn't handle an empty stomach well.
    "Let's eat. Graham can get
something for himself when he comes in," she said finally.
    They were just finishing up (the
peaches were delicious. Mrs. MacKellum only wished the judges could
taste her peaches as well as look at them) when they heard Graham's
pickup pull into the driveway.
    "There! I told you he'd be
back," she said, satisfied. Whatever the errand had been, he
wasn't with that Chavinski girl.
    "Mom, Dad!" Graham
said, putting his head through the open door of the dining room, "I
have someone I'd like you to meet."
    "Come in, Graham. Your
scrambled eggs are cold. Sit down and eat," his mother said,
disregarding his announcement, imagining it was just one of his
pranks.
    He ignored her instructions.
    "Come on in, Ruth. Come in
here. Mom, Dad, I have a new daughter for you. Meet my wife, the
new Mrs. MacKellum." He looked like a child on Christmas
morning. The shine in his eyes and his boyish excitement tore his
mother's heart apart. Why was the world arranged in such a way that
children had to grow up at all? Couldn't time stand still once in
awhile?
    "Oh, Graham," she
whispered, her heart visible in her eyes for a moment.
    "Now don't carry on, Mom.
I know it's a surprise, but I hope it