Bitter Harvest Read Online Free PDF

find out the hard way that birds or raccoons have been nesting there for decades—you don’t want to risk a chimney fire. Are you serious about this, Meg?”
    She realized belatedly that she had probably hurt his feelings. “I’m just exploring my options. It’s not that I don’t want to bunk with you, but I feel kind of proprietary about this house. Can you at least take a look, please?”
    He gave her a quizzical look. “I guess so. Got a flashlight?”
    She pulled one from a drawer and handed it to him, then followed him out of the kitchen into the front parlor. Seth knelt on the hearth and jiggled a handle she hadn’t noticed. It resisted for a time, then with a screech it shifted, and a shower of black soot fell onto the bottom of the fireplace. He backed away quickly and stumbled into Max, who had been watching with great interest. Seth looked disgusted. “Good thing I wore work clothes,” he said, sticking his head into the opening and peering up. “I can see daylight, so no nests. But the mortar’s pretty much gone, and there are some bricks missing.”
    “But will it work, for now?”
    “I think so.” He backed out of the fireplace and slapped his hands on his now-blackened jeans. “You have any wood?”
    “If I have any firewood, it’s been there for a while,” Meg said. “I do know there’s some construction rubble out in the shed.”
    “You don’t want to burn that—you don’t know what the stuff has been treated with. Let me go check.”
    He went out through the back door. Meg followed as far as the kitchen, wondering at her own reluctance to take the easy route and stay with Seth. At least his house had heat. It wasn’t like they hadn’t spent the night together before. But the idea of “roughing it” the way her ancestors had—not that they had had a choice—was kind of appealing. It could be an adventure.
    Seth came back, stomping his boots on the back steps. “It’s really coming down—I think there must be a couple more inches since I got here. The short answer is, yes, you’ve got some firewood out there, although it looks ancient, and some of the scrap wood would be okay. That covers your heating. Look, Meg, if you’re set on this idea, why don’t I stay here?”
    She smiled at him. “I like that idea. It’s not that I don’t want to spend time with you, it’s just that I don’t feel right leaving the house.”
    “Meg, the house has survived quite a few years without you in it.”
    “I know. But I haven’t spent a full winter here yet, and I want to keep an eye on things. Is that strange?”
    “Kind of, but the worst that can happen is that you’ll spend a very cold and miserable couple of days.”
    “With you.”
    “There is that.” Seth laughed. “Well, one good reason to stay, I guess, is that if it gets really cold, we should keep an eye on the water pipes. Some of them aren’t insulated, and you don’t want them to freeze and burst.”
    “Okay,” she said slowly. “How cold? How fast?”
    “Twenties, maybe? As I say, you don’t have much insulation, so the pipes aren’t protected. We could rig up some lightbulbs on extension cords—that’s usually enough to keep them from freezing.”
    “I knew there was a reason I kept you around. So, what first?”
    “Let’s get the goats into the barn, and maybe we can find some more wood out there while we’re at it. You’d better bundle up.”
    Meg pulled on most of the outerwear she owned, as well as her boots, then followed Seth out the back door, shutting it in the face of a disappointed Max, who Seth had decided should stay inside. It was like entering another universe. She could no longer see the steps outside the door because they had disappeared under snow. Gusts blew snow in every direction, including into her face. If she hadn’t known where the barn was, she would have been lost: it wasn’t until they were within a couple of feet of it that its dark bulk emerged from the swirling