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19,”
she said. “Accents get diluted after 40 years.”
    “ How about more ribs, Marian?”
Harley asked.
    “ No thank you, Harley,” Marian
said. “Aren’t you a sweetheart. I’m glad Roni snagged
you.”
    “ Yeah, there was a huge line of
women trying to snatch Harley,” I said as Marian glared at me and
Harley laughed.
    Marian miscalculated when she glared at me. I’m sure
the desired result was my silence but that look only spurred me on.
After all, I wasn’t really part of the family so I didn’t have to
play nice in this sandbox.
    “ So, Marian, have you ever been
married?” I asked as sudden silence descended in the
room.
    “ I’m a widow,” Marian said sadly.
“Like Billy, I lost my spouse.”
    “ So, you were only married once?”
I asked.
    “ How about some more potato salad,
Kitty?” Billy asked as he stared at me and handed me the bowl. I
took that as an unspoken message to stop.
    I was considering my next move
when the sound of mooing interrupted the conversation. We all
strained to hear and were rewarded with more mooing that seemed
ominously close. Everyone left the table and headed for the porch.
A small herd of cows had taken up residence in the front yard. They
seemed to be as curious about us as we were about them. The great
cow stare down had begun.
    “ I smell a rat,” Harley said.
“Kitty, did you have something to do with this?”
    “ You’re just being paranoid,
Harley,” I said. “You know how I feel about cows.”
    “ You didn’t answer my question,”
Harley said.
    “ They’re staring at us,” Roni
said.
    “ Where did they come from?” I
asked.
    “ They probably belong to the
Cowens,” Harley said. “I’ll go call them.”
    “ I don’t like the way they’re
staring at me,” I said. “It really creeps me out.”
    “ They keep mooing,” Marian said.
“It’s like they’re talking to each other.”
    “ I don’t like the way that one
over there is looking at me,” I said. “I think that one is telling
the rest of them my butt looks big.”
    “ Moooo,” the cow closest to the
house intoned as the others joined in.
    “ Shoo,” Roni said as she waved her
arms and came down the stairs in an attempt to get the interlopers
to leave.
    This only resulted in another loud chorus of mooing
as none of the beasts seemed inclined to move even an inch.
Previously, my cow viewing had all been from a distance. I found
this up close and personal contact unsettling. I kept getting the
sense that just as we were standing there talking about them, they
were also sharing an opinion about us. Saturday night in the
country; wahoo, gotta love it.
     

Chapter Seven
    What a glorious early morning sight, Roni Edelin
thought as she sipped coffee from a huge mug while standing on her
porch the next morning. The leaves on the trees had almost achieved
their fullest potential and everything was in bloom; daffodils
waving back and forth, dogwoods and redbuds the most dominant
feature of every copse in sight. Spring had always been her
favorite season.
    Roni loved the country. There were times when she
tired of the way everyone always seemed to be prying into her
business, but Roni couldn’t imagine living in St. Louis like Kitty.
She understood Kitty’s feelings; Kitty had moved here in high
school and, as such, had never really been accepted. She was still
considered an outsider.
    That wasn’t the case for Roni. The land she was
standing on had been in her mother’s family for a hundred years.
With the exception of Billy, all her relatives either lived or were
buried nearby. And now that she was about to become a grandmother,
the cycle would continue.
    “ Hey, breakfast is ready,
Grandma,” Harley said as he stuck his head out of the
slider.
    Roni joined him in the small breakfast room, grabbed
the coffee pot, and poured them both another cup of coffee. “I
can’t believe we’re going to be grandparents,” she said, recalling
their daughter Emma’s phone call