Heart and Home Read Online Free PDF Page A

faces were long with concern while others seemed round with shock
and curiosity. I thought I heard someone whisper, “People just don’t faint,”
while another replied, “Give her a break, she’s probably devastated.”
    Dad still held my hand in
his, and Lottie parked her wheelchair on my other side, her grey eyes filled
with concern. “Troy, why don’t you go and fetch that bottle of water from the
truck?”
    “I’ll be right back,” he
told me. He lowered my head slowly to the ground, which he’d covered with his
bundled suit jacket. “Just keep still. Don’t try to move.”
    I nodded and was grateful as
the crowd gathered around me began to recede into curious groups. Some of them
started to leave, while others called out to let Dad know they would catch up
with him at the fire hall. Those that lingered stared on, and as their eyes
bored into me, I felt a strange rage burning in my belly.
    God. How humiliating. How
many people fainted at funerals? Did people really even faint at all anymore?
It was like some old fashioned attention grabber I remembered from black and
white movies, or the Victorian Era, when women were fragile and breathless from
tightly tied corsets.
    Dad was in constant
conversation with Lottie Kepner. Mrs. Williams stood nearby with Amber, who
sent her children off with a thin man I didn’t recognize. The once willowy,
dark-haired beauty was still beautiful, but she now possessed a hometown,
mother of three look that I’d never imagined on her. Miss Rogers was there too,
fussing at my side, but whatever it was she said to me seemed to go in one ear
and out the other.
    “Here, drink this.” Troy
hunkered down beside me again, sinking a knee into the earth as he leaned
around to look at me. “It’s still cold.”
    “What if I catch cooties?”
Had I hit my head?
    There was a twitch at the
corner of Troy’s mouth, but no one else in the ring around me seemed even the
least bit amused. “You might want to spray it down.” He tilted his head and the
flicker of a grin spread a little deeper against his features. “I had a few
sips on the way over so it’s probably infested.”
    “I hear they aren’t so bad
after you hit twenty,” I reasoned.
    “Here,” a soft chuckle
followed, “let me help you sit up.” Before I could protest he slipped his hand
between my back and the ground, and with a gentle motion swept me forward. For
a moment my spinning head protested with hints of black just around the edges of
my blurred vision. “How’s your head now?”
    “Mm,” I could barely even
shake it without feeling dizzy. “I feel really strange. I’m sorry.”
    “It’s all right.” He still
had one knee in the mud as he leaned in toward me. “It might be a while before
you get your bearings back. Just relax, and try to focus on your breathing, get
the blood flow regulated.”
    My father moved away from
the scene to say goodbye to someone, and Troy’s mother was caught up in
friendly conversation with Miss Rogers behind us.
    “So are you the town doctor
now,” I questioned.
    “Doctor?” he guffawed. “No
ma’am.”
    “Oh.” Each new thing that
came out of my mouth made me feel stupider than the last. “How do you know so
much about fainting?”
    “My cousin Ernie’s a
diabetic.”
    I searched my memory for any
cousins of his I might remember, but then Dad returned and leaned in over me.
    “You feeling all right now,
Jannie?”
    “Much better, Dad.”
    “Thanks for looking after
her, Troy.”
    “No trouble at all, Mr.
McCarty,” he nodded respectfully toward my father. “If you think you’ll be all
right, I should help Mom into the truck.”
    “I’ll be fine, really.”
    “Sure?” His soft eyes shone
with worry.
    I nodded, “I’m sure. Thanks
for the cooties.”
    His grin was incredible,
stretching the muscles in his jaw in a way that you rarely saw in smiles. “I
hear they’re not so bad after you turn twenty,” and then he winked.
    He started to stand