Free The Matchmakers of Butternut Creek by Jane Myers Perrine Page A

probably think we’re an odd couple, George and I. I told you that before, but it’s the way I need to lead into what I’m going to say.” She stopped. “And to get my courage up to share. I told you I loved his logic and his thoughtfulness, his ability to deliberate while I leaped into things.”
    Adam nodded this time.
    She sighed and sat back in her chair. “But he doesn’t help me with logic and I can’t make him less serious because I never see him.”
    “Never?” Adam repeated.
    “You know he’s always working. He works weekends. The girls barely know who he is.”
    “He’s runs a business, Ouida.”
    “Don’t take his side,” she warned.
    Adam sat back to listen, only listen.
    “Besides, he was like that before he started his company. He’s away so much I sometimes wonder how the girls were conceived.”
    Adam didn’t comment on that, only hoped she’d move to another topic.
    And she did.
    “ Kowalski . Preacher, do you know the origin of that name?”
    “It’s Polish, isn’t it?”
    “Yes.” Ouida picked up a muffin and broke off a piece. Once she finished that, she placed the partially eaten muffin back on the plate and said, “It’s the housekeeping I have problems with. George—his middle name is Miloslaw. If you spell it in Polish, it has lines through both l ’s.”
    “Interesting. I didn’t realize the Polish alphabet—”
    But it seemed Ouida was really wound up. Her words poured from her over his. “George is third generation of the family born here. His great-grandparents immigrated nearly a hundred years ago. Everyone in the next generation was Polish. His mother came from that background, and you should see her kitchen. Do you know how often she mops her kitchen every day?”
    “Once?” he asked, although that seemed excessive to him. Before the arrival of the Firestones, he only mopped when the floor got so sticky his shoes made sucking noises when he walked across it. Since then, Hector and Janey shared that chore on a weekly basis.
    “Five. Five times a day, after every meal and again if anyone has a snack.”
    “Really?”
    “Polish people are very neat, clean people. That’s fine but I’m not Polish and I’m not Susie Homemaker.” She nodded decisively. “Oh, not that there’s anything wrong with being Susie Homemaker if a woman wants to be that. Or a man, although he’d probably be Stanley Homemaker.” She forced her lips together as if trying to keep the words from tumbling out. “What I mean,” she said slowly and clearly, “is that we’re all different. George’s mother and grandmother may have been really tidy people, but does that mean I have to do what they did?”
    “Of course not.”
    “Of course not,” she agreed and leaned back in her chair.
    This certainly wasn’t a marriage counseling session. For one thing, the husband wasn’t here. For another, it had taken off without him. This seemed more like the crumbling of a dam during the spring thaw with all the flotsam and jetsam of Ouida’s life gushing through the gap.
    “Ouida, I’m not sure…,” he began in an attempt to harness the flood and sift through the detritus.
    “George expects me to be the same kind of housekeeper, but I’m not.”
    She sniffed. Adam handed her a Kleenex.
    “You have two little girls.”
    “His mother had five children, but she kept the house spotless.” She blew her nose. “My mother was neat but she wasn’t irrational. We didn’t mind a little dust or an unmade bed or a footprint on the kitchen floor. Do you?”
    “No, I—”
    “George’s mother took those embroidered linen runners off the top of the dresser every week, every single week. She’d wash, starch, and iron them before she put them back on.” She sat back in the chair. “Starched and ironed those dresser scarves every single week.”
    “What’s a dresser scarf?”
    “It’s a piece of linen about this size.” She measured length and width with her hands. “It goes on the