January 30
On her knees in a muddy Perrypark flowerbed and wearing her uncle’s old fishing gaiters, Jude MacNeal glanced up to see Jefferson Wrightley walking down the stone path toward her. The young engineer seemed so absorbed in his thoughts he was about to pass by her, so despite knowing she looked like a dung beetle, she called out from the vicinity of his ankles.
“Jude!” he said, startled. “I didn’t see you there.”
She stood, flustered because of the twigs and dead leaves sticking out from her stocking cap. Before she could think of something clever to say, he asked, “What are you doing?”
“Um…checking the roses. The ground heaves when it freezes and thaws, so I’m making sure the feeder roots aren’t exposed.”
She saw him looking at her intently—was compost caked on her nose? She swiped at her face with the stained cuff of her work jacket, asking “Something wrong?”
“No, no…nothing’s wrong.” He was scuffing his shoes on the slushy sidewalk like a bashful kid.
This was absurd: her embarrassment at being seen as the mud-loving plant freak she really was and his behaving like a self-conscious schoolboy. Suddenly it seemed ridiculous and Jude couldn’t stop herself from snorting out a fertile farmer’s laugh right in the rich dreamboat’s face.
He began laughing too, and they kept at it until their cheeks ached and their eyes were swimming.
“Whew!” said Jefferson, “That was crazy! Don’t know what happened there….” He shook his head, still grinning.
“Why’re you out here in the park, anyhow?” Jude asked.
“Oh…I fought with my sister yesterday and I just didn’t feel like going home.” He looked like he was going to start scuffing his shoes again, but he only pushed his hands hard into his coat pockets.
They sat down on two benches near the rose bed. “What’d you guys fight about?”
“There’s been a lot of problems with the new factory site, and Andia….you know she’s working on that project with my Dad?”
Jude nodded.
“She has no perspective about it. Nothing matters except that damn factory. She’s determined to get the thing built on schedule and under budget, no matter what it takes.”
“What do you mean, ‘no matter what it takes’?”
Jeff gazed off toward Perrypark’s distant spruces. Their peaks met the evening’s first starlight; the sky was darkening and flocks of birds hastened to shelter in the dense stand of trees. The grounds became quiet. Perrypark at twilight was a mystic place hiding creatures with eyes that shone like fire then blinked away into the gloom.
“I don’t like the things my Dad does,” Jeff said, his lips tight. “Andia is becoming just like him: single-minded and reckless. Their only motivation is money and they don’t consider the consequences of what they do. They make me feel guilty by association; I don’t think I can live with them any more.”
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