CHAPTER 5
After breakfast, Harris didn't want to rest; he wanted a look at the house. The farmhouse was old and roomy and comfortable. Molly was a dynamo taking care of everything on the farm by herself, but she had let the inside of the house go--not badly, but a room where there was a library and a piano were very dusty. No one had been in there for a while. Molly's bedroom was across the hall from his and reflected her personality--utilitarian and no nonsense, no frills or frou frou.

It didn't take him long to figure out his room had been a boy's room a long time ago. Wallpaper with cowboys on it, and a yellowed airplane poster with tattered edges. From the windows, he could see part of the barn roof. A sun dappled live oak with Spanish moss draped on it grew in the side yard. Birds sang and he could hear the drone of the tractor in the pasture. It was very relaxing. He was in Bob's old room, he was sure of that. He sat on the side of the bed. "Bob, Bob," he murnmured, and lay down, and slept.

Around noon he heard the back door open, then Molly running water in the sink. He felt ashamed to be sleeping while she had been working. He got up and went to the kitchen. She turned and said "Oh I didn't mean to wake ya. I just dislocated my thumb again. Happens all the time. Got a loose ligament or something." Her thumb was red and swollen. "Gotta find that thumb splint," she said rummaging through a kitchen drawer. "Here, let me look at it; sit down at the table," Harris said.
He got a bowl of warm water and squirted some soap in it, and placed her hands in it. He got a good look at her hands. Nails a mess. "How long has it been since you had a manicure?" he asked. "Well, I've never had one!" What an idea! "Just a minute," Harris said and got his manicure kit from his luggage."Do you mind?" "Have at it," she laughed.

Her hands were small, petite, the skin brown from sun exposure, cracks and callouses on the pads of her fingers. He looked at Molly, a woman past middle age, with graying brown hair, a sturdy unremarkable looking woman. "You're getting your first manicure," he said and he trimmed her nails then used an emory board, and pushed her cuticles back and buffed the nails--being careful of the thumb. Then he had her rinse her hands and dried her hands gently on a towel. Molly looked at her hands as if they didn't belong to her. "Nice," she said. "Feels good too. Thank you." Then she slipped on her thumb splint, and said "You'll have to make the biscuits tomorrow, though!"

susil