Free Once Upon a Time by Barbara Fradkin Page B

But I’m rambling too much, I’m sorry. Inspector, you haven’t touched your tea.”
    He was licking the last flakes of the apple turnover off his fingers when she turned around. “Actually, a cold glass of water would suit me just as well. And please go on. I’m trying to get as complete a picture of their life as I can.”
    She shook her finger at him as if mere water would never meet the needs of a strong, active man. “I know just the thing for you.” She reached into the fridge and extracted a large jug filled with a pale amber liquid, which she poured into a glass. It proved to be a delightfully tart apple cider.
    â€œIt was the children Ruth worried about most,” she continued once she’d returned to her seat. “It was a great hardship for them to drive all the way out from Ottawa and Montreal to check on their parents, in the winters especially. When it snowed Ruth couldn’t always get the car out, and last winter she fell and broke her arm. She isn’t strong, Ruth, I believe she has that bone disease with the fancy name they talk about nowadays. Her daughter worries about her a great deal, and I think that troubles Ruth. That’s the way of it, though, isn’t it? Your children grow up and they move out on their own, and you still worry about them.” She paused to rest a maternal eye on Sullivan, who was busily picking up every flake that remained on his plate. Then abruptly she went to her pantry and removed a mixing bowl and a large canister.
    â€œMy youngest is a sergeant in the army. He’d be about your age. Although of course I don’t know if the ranks are the same in the police.” She broke an egg into the bowl. “I’m going to make you boys some apple pancakes for lunch. None of my children have stayed on the farm. It’s true all around here. All the children have gone to the city for better jobs. Soon there will be no one left farming the land. You can’t make a living on a hundred-acre farm nowadays, and the children find the life too hard. I’m not blaming them. I don’t think things are the same as when I grew up. When I was a girl, you only knew the towns and the people right around you. Who even got to Ottawa, let alone saw what life could be like in Hollywood or Paris. Today communities are losing that bond. Families are moving out, and incomers are buying up the land to escape the city. Ironic, isn’t it? But no matter how long a stranger has been here, he’s a stranger if he wasn’t born on the land. Silly, really. I liked Ruth, and I was glad for her friendship, but a lot of people wondered about her. They knew she’d grown up in London in a fancy house before the war, and they wondered why she would marry a drunken foreigner and come to live a poor life in a small Ottawa Valley town. People left here, they didn’t move here. Folks wondered that they never showed up for church except Christmas Eve and Easter Sunday at St. James Anglican. It raises eyebrows and suspicions, I can tell you. I always meant to speak to Ruth about it, but—well, the time never seemed right.”
    The sweet fragrance of butter and cinnamon filled the air as Mrs. MacLeod dropped the batter into the pan. Green’s stomach contracted emptily, distracting him from the questions he wished to ask. With an effort he forced his mind back on track.
    â€œDid you know them when they lived in Renfrew as well?”
    She shook her head. “We did most of our shopping in Eganville, which is closer. Only occasionally did we go into Renfrew, and never to their hardware store. But some of the folks around here knew of them, and that’s how the rumours spread.”
    â€œWhat rumours?”
    â€œOh, I meant about her fancy house in London and them not going to church. There’s even a rumour one of the children was not baptized.”
    Hardly a crime in today’s day and age, Green thought but