Bittersweet Read Online Free PDF Page B

understand that?”
    She started to cry.
    “Don’t, please. Oh Jesus.” He squeezed her hand. “Sare, listen to me. I can’t be too long; it’s pretty near daylight.” She sucked in her upper lip, biting it, and fought down her tears. “That’s girl.” David smiled at her through the glass. “Can you get me something to eat?” She nodded and tiptoed out of the room. She was back in seconds.
    “Pa’s asleep on the kitchen table.” She thrust her hands out through the window and clung to her brother’s arm. “Please don’t go, David. Mam’ll talk to him. Please say you won’t go!” Tears coursed down her cheeks and she held on to him with all her strength.
    David gently pried her fingers loose and patted her. “I got to, Sare. You tell Mam good-bye for me. And the little girls when they wake up.” Sarah clutched at him, trying to catch his clothes and his hands, her forearms scraping splinters from the windowsill. David caught her wrists and held them still. “Good-bye. You’ll see me again, Sarah. I promise. I promise.”
    Her hands clawed at the empty air; tears blinded her. Desperately she scrubbed her eyes on her sleeve and pressed her face to the glass.
    David loped across the barnyard and disappeared into the inkyshadow of the cowshed. A moment later he reappeared, leading his father’s prize stallion. When he was out of earshot, he pulled himself into the saddle, waved once, and cantered out of sight into the trees.
    Sarah crept back to the bed. Lizbeth pushed close to her. “I’m cold, Sare.” Sarah put her arm around the little girl, tucking the covers snug.
    “Me too, Lizbeth.”

5
    THOUGH THE TREE BRANCHES WERE BARE IN NOVEMBER, THE FOREST floor was still fired with color. The dirt wagon track between the Tolstonadge place and Sam Ebbitt’s farm was bordered closely with trees and occasionally a field hacked out of the forest and put to the plow. The narrow track dipped and turned around outcroppings of rock and stands of trees that had proven too formidable for pick and ax. The road was littered with bright scraps of autumn; leaves, bitten red and gold, picked up the sunlight until each leaf seemed to glow of itself.
    Sarah held her hands out from her sides as she walked, watching their shadows flicker over the ground. Gracie, skipping beside her, scuffed her feet through the fallen leaves.
    “You’re going to wear your shoes out before they’re too little,” Sarah said mildly. The air smelled of winter; she pulled her shawl closer around her shoulders and tied it. She laughed, spinning herself forward in great leaps. “Look, Gracie, I’m a gypsy dancer!” Gracie tied her shawl at her thick middle, following her sister’s lead. They twirled until they couldn’t stand up, then threw themselves onto the bank by the roadside.
    “I wish there was more Saturdays. I hate school,” Gracie said.
    “You do not.”
    “I do so. You’re the only one doesn’t. You like it ’cause Miss Grelznik is all the time letting you draw your pictures.”
    “Only if I finish my work early. You could draw too, if you’d stop messing and finish.”
    “I don’t mess.”
    Sarah rolled her eyes.
    “You got a crush on the teacher,” Grace said spitefully.
    “I do not.”
    “Do so. I see you sneaking looks at her when you’re supposed to be at your lesson. I’ve seen you sneaking peeks at her in church. That’s a sin. You got a crush,” Gracie chanted.
    “You don’t know what’s what, maybe I’m making her likeness,” Sarah retorted. “Ever think of that, Miss Smartypants?”
    “Let me see it.”
    Sarah scrambled to her feet. “Leave it go, Gracie. It’s getting late. You’re stuck up with leaves. Come on, I’ll dust you.”
    “Show me or I’ll tell Mam you’re making pictures in church. It’s a sin.”
    Sarah grabbed her sister’s pigtail. “I’ll tell Mr. Ebbitt you like to look at his belly when he laughs.”
    “Sare! You wouldn’t dare.”
    “Quits?”
    “Badger