If Onions Could Spring Leeks Read Online Free PDF

subject matter of our conversation. Gram was acting strangely. Though she loved any form of cooking and baking, there was something forced in her breakfast preparation, in her voice. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to ask her any more questions because the rest of the Trigger drivers started arriving, and it was obvious that Gram didn’t want our conversation overheard by anyone else. She disappeared toward the back of the school the second she had the food dished onto serving platters.
    Roy Acres led the meetings. They were about his Triggers, after all. After we ate and chatted about some of our adventures with the tourists, Roy got to the business at hand and wanted to know if we were having any problems, questions, or concerns. In the few weeks we’d been driving the vehicles, the problems had been few and far between and never anything serious.
    The Triggers were stored in an old, big barn right behind Bunny’s Restaurant on the edge of town. As far as I could tell, Roy never slept or ate, but drank lots of coffee and was always tinkering with the machines. We all joked with him that he’d upgrade and improve them so much by the end of the summer that there would probably be flames painted down their sides and they’d hover instead of move with wheels.
    Roy was in his mid-fifties, and along with a constant cup of coffee in his reach, he always wore plain white T-shirts, except on him they rarely remained plain or white for verylong. Grease and dirt spots decorated the shirts and I frequently tried to interpret the resulting shapes. Just the other day, I saw a monkey hanging from a tire swing. Even though it was early, there were already a couple spots showing, though I couldn’t make them into pictures yet.
    Roy also always wore tan work pants, the type you’d see on construction workers in the winter. I never understood why he wore the thick, heavy pants, particularly during our hot and humid summers.
    He kept his dark hair short and I was certain that behind his thick glasses were pretty blue eyes, but he was so far-sighted that the lenses enlarged his eyes to buglike, alarming proportions.
    He was a true gentleman and a sweetheart, and I’d always been sad that he had never married, never even really dated anyone. When he told us about his interest in cooking classes because of a potential new romance, I’d been thrilled, almost to the point of pitching him some wardrobe ideas, but I hadn’t wanted to offend him.
    â€œI just thought of something, Roy,” Lynn said. “There’s a tear on the back seat cushion on Trigger Two. Did you notice that, Derek?”
    â€œNo, but I don’t think I checked back there last time I drove her,” Derek said.
    The group of Trigger drivers/nighters was eclectic. Lynn and Derek Rowlett, the drivers of Trigger Two that operated on Thursdays and Saturdays, were family. Derek and Roy knew each other from way back. Derek was also in his mid-fifties. He was a handyman by trade and he’d been married a number of times, though I’d lost track of how many exactly. Derek was not an attractive man; in fact, Gram had said more than once,“that poor man sure got a lot of bad cards dealt to him.” Looks are easily forgotten, though, if someone is pleasant to be around, but adding to his unattractiveness, he also wasn’t all that pleasant—he was rude and petty like his mother. He could also be quiet and sullen and usually seemed to blend into the background. His wives, the Mrs. Rowletts, must have seen something in him that Gram and I didn’t because they’d all apparently become smitten enough to answer his proposal in the affirmative. I didn’t think any of the marriages had lasted long, but I’d never spent much time looking into the matter. Since he’d started taking the class, I’d shallowly wondered a time or two if the attraction had something to do with money he might have