Free Hard Hat Man by Edna Curry

motors coming closer. A truck and tractor with a front-loader were heading their way. Obviously, his men were about to start cleaning up the mess.
    “Don’t worry about it. I’ll handle it ,” Kyle reassured her , raising his voice to be heard . “ You’d better go back inside. It’s chilly this morning and you aren’t wearing a jacket. ”
    “I suppose. I just wanted to see the damage for myself.” Jan sent a last glance at the muddy, blackened debris and hurried back down the path to the house.
    ***
    Throughout the day, Jan found herself glancing out the windows to the men loading the debris from the burned barn onto trucks . She made do with a frozen entrée heated in the microwave for lunch. The piles of sorted belongings had grown. She’d resorted to putting everything she thought the historical society might want and the things for the thrift store in separate rooms. She filled a couple of boxes of things she wanted to keep: Aunt Esther’s recipe box filled with her favorite recipes, handwritten on cards. A couple of her cookbooks. A large notebook filled with recipes and newspaper clippings. She put them in her car. She ’d go through them later to see what she wanted to save.
    She’d dreaded going to Nancy’s room upstairs, but thankfully, today the rocking chair sat unmoving. No ghost appeared. She chose a few keepsakes: Nancy’s diary, her favorite doll, a couple of Nancy Drew mystery books they’d read together that summer before Nancy had disappeared.
    Jan sank onto her bed and opened the diary. Her throat clogged with tears, she paged through it. Where are you, Nancy? Why didn’t you ever write to me after you left? I thought you loved me enough to keep in touch. You never even said goodbye.
    She read a few pages that Nancy had written that last summer. Nothing about leaving or even about a romance. How odd. And why hadn’t she taken her diary or most of her clothes? The things hanging in her closet were all things she remembered Nancy wearing that summer. I’ll probably never know the answer. With a sigh, she took the items she’d chosen downstairs, leaving the rest of the clothes, bedding and furniture for the thrift store. Perhaps some other girls would choose them and wear them again.
    By sundown, only blackened soil remained where the barn had been. The gray silo stood alone off to one side. It was made of cement staves, so hadn’t been touched by the fire, other than being covered in black soot.
    Kyle appeared at the house, very dirty and carrying a duffle bag. “Do you mind if I take a quick shower and change? Then I’ll take you into town for supper.”
    “Of course,” Jan said. “Though you don’t have to buy me supper. I have some frozen entrees here.”
    Kyle turned up his nose at that suggestion. “We’ve both worked too hard today to be satisfied with those. Humor me. I don’t like to eat alone.”
    He went down the hall to the bathroom and closed the door. A moment later, Jan heard the shower running.
    She swallowed, trying not to imagine him naked. She’d seen those muscular forearms and knew the rest of him would be just as toned. She closed her eyes, leaned back against the sofa and listened to the water running. Pictured it running over his naked shoulders, down his hairy chest and over his washboard abs. What would they feel like under her fingers?
    Shaking off the images, Jan opened her eyes, getting up to pace the living room. Suddenly she stopped and stared.
    Esther’s large family Bible lay open on the end-table. She reached out to touch it, wondering for a moment if she was really losing her mind. Hadn’t she packed the Bible in the box she planned to take back to Chicago ?
    Yet here it was, open to the family records page. She ran her fingers over the names of family births, baptisms, weddings and deaths.
    Nancy’s record was filled in completely. Date of death, too!
    She stood there in shock. She hadn’t noticed the water had stopped running or heard