Dunaway's Crossing Read Online Free PDF

gingerly in her rocking chair so as not to irritate the heat rash and picked up the knitting from the basket on the floor. The back screen door slammed, and Netta lifted her shoulders in aggravation, certain Lola had banged the door deliberately. She shook her head. The best way to fight Lola’s petulance was to ignore it.
    After knitting a few minutes, she noticed she’d dropped a stitch. Swearing silently, she pulled on the yarn and watched her last few minutes’ work disappear. And she still had a cap and booties to make. Maybe Bea Dot could help her prepare the layette.
    Netta looked at the ceiling and sighed. Stop pressuring yourself , she thought, remembering Ralph’s repeated advice. True, she should have started this work sooner. But Will Dunaway needed her help more. For three weeks he convalesced in the extra bedroom while she tended to that dreadful wound. She still shuddered at the thought of being impaled. During that time, she also listened with sympathetic agony to his cries in the night. If Will’s nightmares came close to the realities of war, then the battlefront must be worse than she could ever imagine.
    Now Will was healed, though, physically at least, and Netta tried not to panic with just a few weeks to prepare for her baby’s arrival. She shook her fist as she realized she’d forgotten about the paint job. She must remember to ask Lola whether her husband, Jim Henry, could paint the nursery on Friday.
    The front door opened, and Ralph entered, his face red and wet from perspiration, his shirt soaked with a wet V in the back. “Hello, dear,” he said as he leaned to kiss the top of her head.
    At the whiff of the sour smell of perspiration, Netta felt a pang of sympathy for her husband. He must be more miserable in the heat than she. She wrapped the loose yarn back into its ball. “Busy morning?”
    “Not especially,” he replied, putting his black leather satchel on the table near the door. “I had to drive out the lower river road to the Mashburns’ place. That’s always a long trip.”
    “Who’s sick?”
    “No one. The boy fell out of the loft, thought he’d broken his leg. But he’s all right. Just sore.” Ralph looked around the corner into the kitchen. “I’m starved. Where’s that chicken salad? I’ve been thinking about it all morning.” He wandered into the kitchen in search of lunch.
    Netta smiled slightly at the way Ralph could shift his thoughts so easily from an injured boy to a cold chicken. When she first married him, his matter-of-fact talk about injury and illness could shock her. Now, after seeing him at work for several years, she better understood his perspective. Setting a broken bone to him was like trying to repair a rip in her favorite dress. They both hated the damage, but mending it was all in a day’s work.
    “Lola will make it as soon as she gets back.” Netta slipped her knitting needle carefully back into the working stitches.
    “Where’s she off to in this heat?” Ralph asked, walking back into the parlor.
    “To mail my letter to Bea Dot. The mailman came before I finished it.”
    “Couldn’t she have waited until the sun went down some?”
    Netta put the knitting in her lap and eyed her husband with a raised brow. “Well, I suppose she could’ve, but then again, why make her walk? I should have asked her to wait until you could drive her there in the car.”
    Ralph chuckled and sat on the footstool near the fireplace. His knees jutted up to his shoulders, making him look like a big spider. “I just meant that the mail doesn’t go out until five o’clock.”
    Netta silently blessed Ralph, who was one of few people who appreciated her caustic sense of humor. She picked up her knitting again. “I know, but Lola might have gotten busy and forgot about it.”
    “Oh, has she been forgetful?”
    Feeling sheepish, Netta paused her knitting needles. “No,” she said slowly. “I suppose not.”
    Ralph slid off the stool and knelt in front