A Stranger's Wish Read Online Free PDF

against its side. Canvas bags of art supplies sat along the wall, lumpy with the promise of joy. I set my African violets on the broad windowsill where they’d get just the right amount of sun.
    My parakeet, Big Bird, sat in his cage in the middle of the room, where I’d left him before Hawk reordered my day.
    “You, my loudmouth friend, can go here.” I put him beside the chair nearest the window. He squawked his approval.
    In my bedroom a patchwork quilt of royal blue, navy, and crimson calico squares covered the great sleigh bed, and a small hand-braided rug in the same shades lay on the floor beside it. The nightstand held a small lamp, and on the dresser by the window sat a vase filled with great magenta and white dahlias Mary grew in the garden off to the side of the front yard. My clothes, at least some of them, hung neatly on the wall pegs to the right of the door.
    “Where do I put these?” Todd had asked earlier as he stood in the doorway with an armful of my clothes still on their hangers. He scanned the room for a closet.
    “Right here,” Mary said with surprise as she pointed to the very obvious pegs along the wall.
    “Oh.” Todd began putting the hangers on the little wooden dowels. It soon became more than apparent that the pegs weren’t installed with the amount of clothes I owned in mind.
    Oh, boy. The cultural chasm. Their austerity and my abundance .
    “Himmel,” Mary said. “I’ll get Elam to put up some more pegs. Maybe he can do it after dinner.”
    “Don’t rush him,” I said as I laid Todd’s second armload over the back of one of the chairs.
    “No, no. He’ll do it as soon as he can. It’s important you be happy here.”
    She had smiled and I had smiled, and I was still smiling, warmed by the care Mary had taken with my rooms. They were on the second floor of the grossdawdy haus , or granddaddy house. When John Zook’s father had given up the main responsibilities for the farm and passed it on to John, a wing had been added to the house with its own separate entrance and privacy for the senior Zooks. John and his family had taken over the main house.
    Mr. and Mrs. Zook senior had lived in the addition for several years until they were killed two years ago in a buggy-automobile accident just off Route 340 near Smoketown. Their vacant wing had been the perfect place for Jake to come home to after his accident, though he only used the first floor.
    The interior door that had been cut in the wall between the main house and the grossdawdy haus provided ready access to both Jake’s wing and my stairway to the second floor.
    I looked at the suitcases and boxes of things to be unpacked. Their clutter was ruining the perfection of my cozy new home. I eyed the bureau against the wall and wondered if it was big enough to hold everything, or would I have to get a piece of my furniture out of storage?
    Get to it, girl , I ordered. Finish cleaning up this chaotic mess. Then you can lie down.
    Instead I wandered over to the window of my living room and stood looking out over the patchwork countryside. Mary’s garden was directly below my window, and on this August Saturday it was filled with cucumbers, celery, squash, tomatoes, peppers, onions, and beans of all kinds—string, lima, and wax. Along the garden’s edge grew a profusion of cyclamen petunias whose purpose was to discourage the rabbits by their smell. At one end bloomed an elegant collection of varied dahlias, some with blooms the size of saucers.
    In the field beyond the house, two of the mighty farm horses pulled a flatbed wagon beside rows of ripening cattle corn. A man in a dark shirt and black trousers, a full dark beard, and a wide-brimmed straw hat stood balanced on the wagon as he directed his team. I knew it was John Zook, and I itched to grab my digital Nikon and freeze the scene for painting some day.
    Later, girl. Right now you need to get to work!
    I turned and surveyed the mess. I slid my hands into my pockets as I