Drought Read Online Free PDF Page A

between us. The walk is slow and careful. Our feet know the road, but one slip could jar a body that’s barely holding on.
    “I’ll get the lantern.” Ellie eases ahead and through the door.
    It’s not locked—we haven’t got locks. Mother’s told me about grand houses with so much inside, they have locks, perhaps more than one, on them. I’ve seen locks only on the fine house that the Overseers share.
    Light flares in the crack of the open door. We ease Mother inside.
    Like all the others, our cabin is a single small room, thrown up against winter winds the first year that the Congregants fled to these woods—and were followed by Darwin West. It has a small stove, a single rough window that looks onto the Lake, and bare log walls. The cracks between the walls are crammed with years of dried mud.
    Our only furniture is two beds, a sheet hanging between them. It was Mother’s Christmas gift to me this year. “You’re almost a woman now,” she said. “And you deserve your own small space.”
    Ellie smoothes the bloodstained muslin on Mother’s bed before we lay her on it.
    “Poor child,” she sighs, laying a light hand on Mother’s cheek.
    I have had only a mother for as long as I’ve lived, no father with us, but it was the opposite for Mother: she just had her father, a trapper who was gone for months at a time. And then she had Ellie, who rented them two rooms in her house.
    The shadows hide the worst of Mother’s wounds. I pretend that it’s been this bad before, that this is a normal night. “Gently,” I say, more of a prayer than an order, as we lay her down.
    “I’ll get the water,” Gabe says.
    Boone draws in his breath sharply. “What did you tell him?” he asks Hope.
    Gabe isn’t an Elder. He shouldn’t know how Mother heals so well and fast after each beating.
    Hope’s cheeks are pink, but she meets Boone’s stare. “He is my husband now.”
    “Now, but not for always, maybe,” Boone says.
    Not many of the Congregation’s couples have proven to be for always.
    Gabe slides close to Hope and puts his arm around her shoulders. “For always,” he says—simply, without anger. I see why Hope chose him, even though it meant his setting aside another.
    Jonah doesn’t understand it, I’d guess. We all knew he’d set his heart on Hope, years before he was old enough.
    He’ll be waiting a long time, maybe forever, I think.
    “Your secret is safe.” Gabe looks at me—not at any of the Elders. But he frowns.
    “I know,” I tell him. And then I give Hope a small smile. I know why she told him. Hope stopped whispering her daily secrets to me when Gabe’s eyes fell on her.
    I miss our stolen time in the shade, whispering, giggling.
    “We’re wasting time while Sula suffers,” Boone says.
    Gabe pushes out the door. He’ll be lucky to get one clear bucket. The Lake is victim to the drought too, dwindled to puddles and wet mud. I don’t remember ever seeing it like this. When we go to bathe, or find drinking water, it’s nearly impossible to find clear water.
    After Gabe’s gone, Hope speaks. “Ruby’s secret is hard for him to accept.”
    “You shouldn’t have told him—and that’s one of the reasons why,” Boone says.
    “He’ll be easier with it, in time,” Hope says to me.
    At least I understand why he’s been so strange and unfriendly lately.
    While we wait, I reach under Mother’s bed and pull out the sharp-edged stone we keep concealed beneath her mattress. It’s jagged, but it does its work well enough.
    Boone is looking at the picture of Otto that hangs on the wall. Mother has lined the walls with the few special things she brought from the village: a fur muff her father made for her, a silver mirror from the mother she never knew, and the drawing of Otto that Boone made for her, years ago.
    People had time to pack their most treasured possessions when they fled Hoosick Falls. Darwin never bothered to take any of it away. He wanted only us … and