Free Rosalind by Stephen Paden Page A

serviced Lincoln and the surrounding counties. His farm, however, hadn't produced a thing since the business took off, and he was considering selling it and buying a house in town. The truth was that he hated farming. His parents had left it to him in the will, and when his father was killed in the Big One, and his mother passed suddenly of a heart attack three years after the war ended, he took it over reluctantly. He hated farming, and didn't like his father much more than that, so he shelved the idea and fired the farmhands, leaving the barn to whither season after season. Besides, he had once told Susan, if the tire business didn't take off, the fields would still be there.
    She closed the blinds and went to her desk. With ten minutes left in the day, she grabbed her purse, locked up the station and went home.
     
    ***
    "What do you want for dinner?" she asked John.
    "I don't care. Wait, I have some business I need to take care of tonight. I'll be h ome late, just leave me a plate," John said.
    "I don't know why you have to work so late," she sneered.
    "You think part-time secretary work can keep this place going?"
    "I didn't say that. Never mind," she relented, "you're right."
    He walked over to her and put his hands on her shoulders. "Hey," he said. "I'm sorry, I'm just trying to build something here. Something for us. Besides, if we're going to try again, we're gonna need the extra income."
    She pushed herself away from John and walked to the empty basinet by the dining room window. She folded her arms and stared out at the tree in the yard.
    "What's wrong?'" he said.
    "Nothing." She let out a big sigh and turned to him. "It's this new girl in town."
    "New girl?"
    "Some stray wandered into town a week or so ago. She's staying with that waitress from the diner. She's quite the little scandal."
    "How old is she?"
    "I don't know," she replied, throwing her hands up in the air. "Young, I guess. The sheriff says she's sixteen, but when I saw her drive by the office today, she looked much younger."
    "Is that the scandal? She looks younger than she is?"
    "No, silly. Let's say she's youn ger than sixteen and she's already gotten pregnant. The good thing is she lost the baby. Fine by me. She doesn't deserve it anyway."
    "Pregnant already, huh? So sh e's loose is what you're saying."
    "Obviously," she replied.
    "Huh," he said. He stared through Susan as she turned back to the window to look at the tree in the front yard. "Well, don't worry about what the doctor said. They're human and they can be wrong too. People like us deserve to have children and by God, we're gonna have one if I have to sell every tire in my warehouse to do it." He walked over to her and turned her around. He pulled her chin up and kissed her gently on the lips. "It'll all work out. Don't you worry."
    John Byrd could lay on the charm. It was one of the things that set him apart from the other guys that they both went to school with. Most of them, to Susan's dismay, had little ambition to do anything but what their father's had done and what their mother's had expected of them. But John was from a different mold. When they had sat on the edge of the cornfield one evening their during their senior year, he had looked up at the stars and said, "I'm going to be one of them." She asked him what he meant, and he replied, "They're still there. They've been around for thousands of years, maybe even more, but they're still there. I'm gonna make my mark."
    The tire business was hardly the everlasting work of the cosmos, but in the small town of Whispering Pines, he had made his mark. But he wasn't satisfied. Sure, the town loved him and he was well respected, but he wanted more. His desire to put himself on the map constantly pushed against the confines of the city limits, but instead of stretching the business into a regional power (like its name had suggested it was), his ambition festered inside of him and something darker was born. He wanted the money and the