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Aan ax casually over one shoulder As he stepped into the glow of the headlights, Elsa saw that he wore the fararees and a shirt with the sleeves rolled up

A woman walked out of the house and joined the man She was petite, with black hair woven into a coronet She wore a green plaid dress and a crisp white apron She was as beautiful as Rafe was handsoh cheekbones, and full lips, the same olive complexion

Papa got out of the car, then walked around to the passenger door, opened it, and yanked Elsa to her feet

“Eugene,” the farmer said “I’m up-to-date on my thresher payments, aren’t I?”

Papa ignored him, yelled: “Rafe Martinelli!”

Elsa wished the earth would open up and s her She knehat the farmer and his wife sahen they looked at her: a spinster, skinny as a length of twine, tall as most men, hair cut unevenly, her narrow, sharp-chinned face as plain as a dirt field Her thin lips were chapped, torn, and bloody She’d been chewing on theht hand was small, a testa

Rafe appeared on the porch

“What can we do for yah, Eugene?” Mr Martinelli said

“Your boy has ruined ”

Elsa saw the way Mrs Martinelli’s face changed at that, how the look in her eyes went fro look in which Elsa was condemned as either a liar or a loose woman or both

This was how people in toould see Elsa now: the old maid who’d seduced a boy and been ruined Elsa held herse

lf together with sheer willpower, refusing to give voice to the scream that filled her head

Shame

She thought she’d known shame before, would have said it was even the ordinary course of things, but now she saw the difference In her faeable She’d let that shah her body and ether But in that shame, there had been hope that one day they would see past all of that to the real her, the sister/daughter she was in her ht to fall on furled petals, desperate to bloom

This shaht it on herself and, worse, she had destroyed this poor young man’s life