Olivia removed her work shoes and socks, rolled up her trouser legs, and
dangled her feet in the cool water. “Oh, that feels good. Why didn’t you? Take
over the business. If you’re the oldest son, shouldn’t it have gone to you?”
“Didn’t want it. Never liked being inside.” He sat beside her and pulled off his own footwear – soft, comfortable-looking leather boots. Olivia eyed them
jealously, thinking he must have gotten them from an Indian. “Anyway, my
father wasn’t all that keen on having me in the business.” Jeremy tried his luck
with another stone, managing one half-hearted skip. “He was set on me being the
first Kincaid to attend college. Get a piece of paper says I’m smart. I went for a
while – took some classes in history and literature.”
“That must have been interesting.”
“Not really. A bored professor stands at the front of a hot lecture hall, reading texts to bored students. You might as well sit somewhere more comfortable and
read them yourself. And having removed us from our parents’ care, the college
felt obligated to provide adequate supervision. So it felt more like being in prison than being educated.”
“Did you have a sweetheart?” Olivia imagined Jeremy in a frock coat,
strolling along a riverbank and holding an open book. At his side was a faceless
girl, twirling her parasol and listening in rapture as he read Emerson aloud.
“Where was I going to find a sweetheart at a college that accepted only men?
But I surely got one when I returned home for the summer. Before I knew what
was happening, I was engaged to be married. To a nice girl named Francie
Everman.”
“Did you love her very much?” she asked softly, prepared to hear a tragic end
to this story.
He took his feet out of the water and wiped them on his pant legs as he said,
“I didn’t love her at all.”
“Then why did you want to marry her?” She began drying her own feet.
He leaned back on his elbows, knees bent, face turned up to the sun, eyes
closed. “Never told you I did. Like I said, Francie was a nice girl and certain to
grow up to be an excellent woman. At my mother’s urging, we started keeping
company. You can imagine my surprise when I heard that a wedding date had
been set. By my mother and hers.”
“Surely you must have proposed.”
“Not that I recall. Those women were arranging the ceremony before I got
around to objecting.”
“So why didn’t you tell your mother that you didn’t want to get married? At
least not to Francie?”
He sat forward and shook his head. “I couldn’t think of a good enough reason
why not. It would have seemed such bad manners. After all, she was a nice girl.
Pretty. She was always baking pies and things. There was nothing wrong with
her. Nothing I could have told my mother that she would have understood and accepted. Francie was a nice-looking, well-mannered girl, and her family had
money. My mother couldn’t imagine anything else a man could ask for.”
