Read Sunburst for Free Online Page B

morning air cleared the mental cobwebs, and she mounted the steps still smiling at the little animal’s antics.
    Inside, she paused, inhaling the smells of the trade with a sensual pleasure. Sawdust and turpentine and wood and varnish…not exactly the smells to appeal to a romantic nature. But they appealed to hers, she thought fleetingly.
    Kyle had rarely talked of his family or his past. It hadn’t mattered until she knew they were moving here, and then she’d put together some of his rare family anecdotes and historical information she’d gathered at the library. Particularly in the mid-1800s, Europeans had flooded to the Midwest, seeking relief from famines and military rule. They weren’t urban dwellers but simple country people, wanting only to pursue the lives they knew—farming or trades—with a decent chance for their families’ survival. People who knew hardship but still had the courage and strength to follow a dream…
    The McCrerys were dairy farmers and carpenters—and probably horse thieves, Kyle had told her dryly. Woodworking was their craft, and a sizable business was built up by the third generation; in the fourth—Joel’s—came mass production. Homemade wood products were too expensive then; there was always a place for a carpenter, but if a man had need to create…
    Erica had learned that Joel was an intensely creative man, that he had never been happy simply putting hammer to board. Nothing else made sense as to why the business was such a mess when they first came here. She’d had such a wonderful romantic picture of the place in her mind. History, roots, Wisconsin greenery, the gentle melancholy she’d sensed in Joel, the cottage nestled among the trees, a place where people had found peace for generations in a quiet, private way…
    Absently, Erica smoothed her palm down the finely sanded grain of a red cedar plank, and then bent down to smell the fresh tang of the new wood. Six months ago, she’d walked into this room one morning when Kyle was gone, and found rusted tools, lumber haphazardly stacked, filthy windows and the smell of neglect and waste. Her expectation of romance had evaporated in an uncharacteristic sensation of fear. This was not what she had pictured. Kyle could not conceivably have grown up here; Kyle, who had such a love of space and privacy, who hated clutter and had no tolerance at all for waste and neglect.
    Finding the little pigeonhole of an office was the next shock. Much of the paperwork was incomprehensible to her, but she understood enough. The night before she’d served crab for which she’d paid fifteen dollars a pound; Kyle had affectionately encouraged her to stay out of the shop, to spend whatever she liked to make the cottage livable. Carpet, linens, furniture…
    She was so used to a certain kind of life that she’d never thought about it, never realized how Kyle had always sheltered and even pampered her, indulging her every whim, ferreting out wishes she hadn’t even known she had. She hadn’t confronted him that day—she couldn’t. Uppermost in her mind had been her own sudden and overwhelming feeling of inadequacy. For how long had she behaved like a mistress instead of a wife? It hadn’t occurred to Kyle, apparently, to level with her about their changed circumstances. Did he think she wouldn’t see, wouldn’t understand?
    She hadn’t then and didn’t now understand his anger when he first found her washing windows, taking on projects. Obviously, he didn’t have time for the antiques, and those were less a matter of skill than time, patience and work. And in spite of all the problems they’d had lately, she had slowly and almost unconsciously built up a love affair with wood that was almost equal to her husband’s.
    With her hands stuck in her back pockets, she wandered toward Kyle’s shop, a long, narrow side room that ran the length of the building. Every chisel had its place, the power tools were protected and hung on hooks;