Read Town in a Blueberrry Jam for Free Online

she purchased the “girls,” as she called them. She’d opted for bantam hens—mostly because she had been so taken with the small, squat black and white birds as she walked past them in the poultry shed at the Common Ground Country Fair up in Unity. She’d bought six hens on impulse that very day. Doc had grumbled a bit as he loaded the cage into the back of the truck, but he soon warmed to the idea.
    Back home, Candy had been surprised to find that in short order she developed a strange affection for her little flock. She discovered that each hen had a distinctive personality and a little routine, and they seemed to listen to her when she talked to them, which amused her to no end. They were also surprisingly good egg producers. She had quickly increased her flock to a baker’s dozen and since then added two more—perhaps because having thirteen hens seemed to be tempting fate. Now they had more than enough eggs, which Candy gave away to friends or dropped off at a local bakery where she worked part-time. Lord knew Herr Georg, the baker, went through plenty of eggs, and he clucked over them almost as much as the chickens did.
    The girls chattered and gathered curiously about her as she fed and watered them and collected their eggs in a wire basket—seven today so far.
    Before she headed back to the barn to check on Ray, she walked out past the chicken coop and looked out over the blueberry fields that rolled like a choppy blue green sea back to a ridge of trees in the distance. A few years ago she would have been greatly amused to see herself standing here on a farm holding a basketful of eggs. She had been an urban girl, an up-and-comer working for a busy marketing firm that served the top high-tech companies in Boston. She’d had a killer wardrobe, a tight group of friends, a solid, happy marriage with a smart, handsome guy. . . . And then it unraveled so fast she’d barely had time to come to grips with it all. Clark, her husband, lost his lucrative job as a software engineer when the company he worked for lost its financing and had to make cutbacks. When he had trouble finding another job, he invested a big chunk of their savings in a start-up venture, which went under in six months, making household finances even tighter. After that he became despondent, which seemed natural to Candy, who assumed it was because of his work situation. But she had the whole thing all wrong. He left her shortly after that, telling her he had fallen in love with someone else. He was out in California now, remarried with a child and a second one on the way. Even the thought of that still gave Candy pain; she and Clark tried for years to have children but had never been successful.
    But that was not the worst of it. A few weeks after Clark left her, she had gone out to dinner with her best friend Zoe. They’d met in college, dated some of the same boys, and stayed friends after Candy and Clark married. Zoe married also, but it hadn’t lasted long; she’d been divorced for years. The dinner had been a time for them to commiserate with each other, and they even shared a tiramisu. They parted on what Candy thought was a positive note. But not more than a few hours later Zoe committed suicide, alone in her apartment. According to police reports, she had taken an overdose of pills.
    Candy was devastated, not only because she’d lost her best friend but also because she, Candy, hadn’t even been aware of Zoe’s depression and had done nothing to save her friend.
    After that the bottom fell out of her life. She became physically ill, took to bed for weeks, neglected her work, and stopped eating. She turned away from her other friends, unable to face them. She started drinking heavily. She wound up in the hospital and eventually lost her job. Officially she’d been fired, but in her heart she never had any intention of going back. She simply gave up on her old life.
    That’s when Doc called, one dreary morning when she was feeling