The Diary by Eileen Goudge Page B

suit. She found herself standing at the edge of a drainage ditch, which ran alongside the cornfield it bordered like a neatly stitched hem. It was nearly dark, and visibility was limited with the moon not yet risen, but AJ had no trouble finding his way; he bridged the ditch in a bound, extending a hand to help her over it. In the suit and high heels she’d worn to work, she wasn’t exactly dressed for such activities, so she wasted no time in slipping off her pumps, then her stockings, which she rolled into neat balls and tucked into the toes of her shoes.
    They continued deeper into the field, the only sounds now the chorus of crickets and night birds and the rustle of cornstalks bowing to let them pass. The setting sun’s showy display had faded to a glowing red line sketched along the horizon. Soon they found themselves submerged in a green-smelling sea under a purpling canopy of sky in which a handful of stars glimmered. The corn was so high she could barely see above it. There was no mistaking this for anyplace but Nebraska in August, yet she couldn’t shake the sense of having been dropped into a foreign land.
    At last they emerged from the field onto a grassy, tree-ringed knoll that bordered on a fenced pasture beyond which stood a barn and farmhouse, its lighted windows casting a soft glow over the shadowy yard, where they could hear a dog barking. The moon had risen, a great golden orb hanging low in the sky, seemingly close enough to touch. Elizabeth felt as if she’d been deposited back on known turf … none the worse for the wear but altered in some ineluctable way.
    She turned to AJ, asking in a hushed voice, “Do you think they’ll mind that we’re trespassing?”
    â€œThey won’t know. They’re probably just sitting down to supper.”
    She pictured the family inside the farmhouse gathered around the table saying grace, the farmer and his wife and their children, heads bowed and hands clasped in prayer. She felt enclosed in that circle somehow, even though she knew what she and AJ were doing was wrong.
    He took off his shirt and spread it over the grass for her to sit on.
    She lowered herself onto the ground, and AJ dropped down beside her. Despite her earlier anxiety, she felt strangely calm. It seemed perfectly natural to be sitting there in the moonlight beside the bare-chested AJ. She bent her legs to examine the soles of her feet, which were caked with dirt. “My mother would have a fit if she could see me now.” But she laughed as she said it, the threat of any reprisal from Mildred only a distant speck on her consciousness.
    â€œWhat your mother doesn’t know won’t hurt her,” he said.
    â€œShe has a way of ferreting things out.”
    â€œYou worry too much.” He turned to smile at her.
    â€œYou want to know something funny? I’m not worried. And that worries me.”
    AJ slipped an arm around her waist. They sat that way for a spell, gazing up at the moon that was like some enormous piece of fruit ripe for the picking, neither wanting to be the first to break the silence.
    At last she dropped her head onto his shoulder with a contented sigh. “When I was a little girl, I used to beg my parents to let me sleep outside on nights like this,” she reminisced. “My father would always give in. He’d help me set up the tent in the backyard so I wouldn’t get eaten by mosquitoes and let me borrow his flashlight. After he died, that was the end of that. My mother was always afraid some stranger would carry me off in the middle of the night, like the Lindbergh baby.”
    â€œAnd so he has.” AJ chuckled.
    She cast him a coy glance. “Is that so? Well, in that case, sir, what sort of ransom did you have in mind?”
    He crooked a finger under her chin, gently tipping it up to kiss her. She’d been breathlessly anticipating this moment, despite her earlier resolution to nip the affair in