“I love va-ca-tions! I love va-ca-tions!” Alison sang for the umpteenth time.

Feeling as crimped as the new curls in her strawberry-blonde coiffure, Eileen turned to confront her daughter. “Alison, if you yell in this car once more—”

The girl seemed to be weighing the punishment against the suspense of not knowing it.

“If you scream again, we won’t take you along the next time we travel. I can’t bear screaming.” Drumming her manicured fingernails on the armrest, Eileen knew she’d never carry out her threat. “How much further is it, Harvey?” she whispered so that Alison, now singing for her Barbies®, wouldn’t hear the question she herself had asked countless times.

“Not too far.” Her husband answered her exactly as he had their daughter.

Before Eileen could demand a proper response, Harvey gestured in a wide circle. “Look at that landscape, Eileen! The trees on the hills look like—”

“A huge box of Crayolas®,” Alison said helpfully from the station wagon’s back seat. “But just the golds and oranges and yellows and reds. No blues, except for the sky.”

“Fall colors,” Harvey agreed. “I forgot how they could glow. Just like you said, Al, rows and rows of crayons. This change of scenery is what we all needed. Nothing like fall in the country. I remember once when I climbed up a fire tower in Perkinstown—”

“How far, Harvey? In exact miles.” Agitated, Eileen twisted the top button of her tweed pantsuit.

“Miles?” Harvey laughed. “For a second I thought you were talking about the tower. Not even I’d go up that high, no matter how good the hills looked. Oh, Perkinstown’s around twenty or so miles from—”

“How far until we reach your mother’s place!” Eileen nearly snapped off her button. Releasing it, she resumed drumming.

“’Bout seven miles,” Harvey answered quietly.

No one said another word until the car drew into the outskirts of a small Wisconsin town. A railroad crossing interrupted the evergreens lining the roadway. On one side of the tracks stood a garage and truck yard. On the other side rose a handful of businesses. Young maples, planted in open dirt blocks of the sidewalks, brought the burnished autumn hues of the hills to the town’s main street.

“But you’ve gone too far, Harvey.” Eileen assessed the sight in one glance. “We’re already in Gilman.”

Her husband made a left-hand turn without using his signal. “Mom’s moved into town, Eileen. I told you she sold the farm.”

“I knew you went to help her, but I didn’t know she’d moved out completely.” Eileen looked down the residential street at the houses on unmown lawns with unbagged leaves. “Surely she’s not living in this neighborhood?”

Harvey made another left turn.

“Will you please use your signals, Harvey? I don’t relish getting into a collision just because you forget all good driving practices once you step off your job.”

“Nobody signals here. I’d probably scare some poor soul to death if I did. ‘Sides, I don’t want to act like an outsider in my own hometown.” He pulled into a curved driveway leading to a parking lot, deep black from recent resurfacing. The tar made a bleak backdrop for the many-colored leaves blowing slowly across it. For some reason, the scene lodged in Eileen’s mind as a personal portent.

“Here we are.” Harvey turned off the engine.

“When are we going to the farm?” Alison unfastened her seat belt and looked out the window.

“We’ll go there later, Al.” Harvey opened his door.

“Promise?” Alison looked skeptical, as well she might.

Eileen left the car and walked with her daughter past Harvey to the building’s entrance. “Which room is your mother—never mind, there’s a directory.” Eileen pushed Janette’s buzzer and the security door of Senior Manor beeped, unlocking.

Alison scanned the entrance. “Where’s Grama?”

“Grandmother is in her new apartment,” Eileen replied. “She doesn’t have to come to the door anymore. She’ll have a much easier time in town than she has on the farm since Grandfather died.”

“What about her animals? Her cats and dogs and—”

“I don’t believe they allow animals here, Alison.”

“Then I don’t think Grama will like it.”

They passed several rooms, stopping before a door with Janette’s name on it. The door’s entire surface, even the knob, was decorated with knitted, painted and sewn crafts and keepsakes, evidence of Janette’s penchant for pink.

Alison reached for the knob. “This must be Grama’s.”

“Wait—” Eileen cautioned, but the door opened, pulling Alison into the waiting hug of a woman who didn’t appear nearly old enough to reside in a place called “Senior Manor.” Gray hardly touched her brown hair, and age hadn’t dimmed her hazel eyes. She wore a pink shift more stylish than practical.

“Blessed child! You’re nearly grown up!” Janette kissed Alison, drawing her near again after a quick appraisal. “Harvey, Eileen,” she said as Alison moved aside to give them room to enter. “Come in, come in.”

Janette dispensed lavish hugs and kisses, then ushered everyone past a small kitchenette and into a living area, decorated in pink. Underneath three large windows sat several of Janette’s beloved plants on a narrow table.

“How I’ve waited for this day!” Janette exclaimed after seeing everyone seated on her pink couch. “I only wish you had acted in time to get the farm, but maybe it will be nicer having your very own place to fix up just as you wish. Let me know if you find yourselves in any need. I know farming has many unforeseeable expenses, particularly when you’re just starting out.” Janette reached for Eileen’s hand, beaming. “We haven’t had much opportunity to come to know each other well before this, Eileen. Now at last we’ll have that chance.”

Eileen flashed Harvey a troubled look, wondering if her mother-in-law had lost her mind. Little wonder Harvey had been so taciturn about his mother’s moving. His face gave Eileen no direction, so she hazarded a smile as she extricated her hand. “Yes, of course. Just as you say, Janette.” She nudged her husband.

“Yeah, Mom.” Harvey stood. “No more of that for now, though. How are you coming along here?” He walked a tight circle around the room, his hands thrust deep in his pockets. “Meeting any new friends?”

“One rarely meets new friends.” Janette laughed. “One generally earns them. Most of the ladies are much older than I, of course, but that doesn’t seem to bother anyone….”

Janette chatted while Alison explored the room. Eileen’s mind strayed from the conversation as she watched her daughter handle plants, knickknacks, picture albums. Little escaped Alison’s tactile inspection.

As the scent of roasted chicken became stronger, Janette moved to the kitchen. Eileen rose despite her mother-in-law’s protests and with Alison’s help began setting the table, asking Harvey to pull it away from the living room wall.

Eileen didn’t think it strange that Harvey hardly spoke to his mother as the meal progressed. He answered her questions, but in the brief way so like him. She didn’t begin suspecting, until after the dishes were done and everyone had promised to return in time for supper, that he was up to his worst scheme to date.

Midway down a gravel road, while enduring Alison’s chants of “We’re going to the farm, the farm, the farm,” it occurred to Eileen that both Harvey and Janette had referred several times to the farm as sold. Why, then, were they going to visit it? Wouldn’t the new owners object? And why hadn’t Janette gone with them? “Harvey, how long ago was your mother’s place purchased?”

He quit humming. “Few weeks back. Little more, maybe.”

“So when you went to help her, you moved her into her apartment? Her farm was already sold then?”

“Yep.” He took up his faint tune again.

“I imagine the new owners were eager to settle in.”

Harvey nodded, his volume further decreasing as he slowed the car and turned down a dirt lane.

“Then why on earth are we going to barge in on them? I know how Alison enjoys seeing farm animals, but we simply can’t—”

“We’re not going to Mom’s farm. We’re going to another farm.”

Eileen raised a brow but continued her questioning as the car climbed a hill and leveled out, revealing the most ramshackle farm she could ever recall having seen, not that she possessed an extensive knowledge of farms. “So that’s why you took this roundabout route? Just so Alison could risk being kicked by some cow or horse?” Eileen shook her head as Harvey slowed for the curved driveway and parked outside an old farmhouse. “She’ll be a positive mess if she ventures out there. It’s a good thing you didn’t tell me about this beforehand, or we might not be visiting your mother at all.”

“Yep, it’s a good thing I didn’t, Eileen.” Without looking at her, he shut off the engine and climbed out of the car.