40Madame Barbeau had taken to her bed, her knees on fire. She asked Josette to bring her just a bowl of soup for lunch and spent the afternoon napping, her room pungent with the smell of the ointment she had made to soothe her joints.
After making and delivering the soup, Josette was enjoying the sunny day by wandering around the farm doing nothing. She remembered the goat she had as a child and considered spending her stash on another one. She crossed the meadow to the small pond and stood looking into it, seeing the fish rise, her mind blank.
Oh, Josie, Julien said to himself, seeing her standing there. She was so beautiful—beautiful, with an alarming deficit of common sense, he thought, walking across the meadow to join her.
“Listen, I’ve been thinking,” he said. “We’ve talked about
