Magnolia Read Online Free PDF Page B

worn. Young boys threw rocks at her, and she frightened a horse into jumping a hedge. Afterward she parked the motorcar in the garage and locked it away.
    She had briefly considered work as a seamstress in a local fabric and notions shop, but the woman Gertie had suggested as a potential employer had just taken on a new seamstress and had no need of help. The only alternative was to sell her designs door-to-door or find a shop owner who would let her do alterations. Kenny came to mind, but she had no wish to sew men’s fashions, much less do alterations on them.
    Sewing at home was a good possibility, except that thehouse would soon be gone. The chickens were hers, and the eggs they laid, but where would she take them to live in order to keep getting her egg money from her regular customers?
    John had predicted that she’d have to come to him for help, and she was almost to that point. Only pride held her back. Pride was very expensive, though, and she was running out of money fast.
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    S HE’D ONLY JUST PUT UP HER CLOAK and hat when there was a knock on the front door. She went to open it and found John on the doorstep.
    Her heart skipped, but anger overrode attraction. “Women run brothels and boardinghouses!” she raged, shaking her finger at him. “If they can run one sort of business, certainly they can run others!”
    â€œAre you planning to open a brothel?” he asked, with faint amusement. “I shouldn’t advise it—not in Colbyville.” He leaned down. “However, if you do, I promise to be your first customer,” he whispered.
    She flushed to her neckline. “You know very well that I had no idea of doing any such thing! I was merely making a point,” she added, while the thought of being in John’s arms in bed made her knees weak. He was only joking, of course. “What do you want?”
    He smiled gently. “I wanted to see how you were,” he replied. He searched her eyes. “I’ve been keeping up with you through your neighbors. You seem less than prosperous at the moment.”
    She folded her hands over her waist. “I can find a job when I’m ready.”
    â€œThe house has to be vacated by the end of the month. Surely you were informed of this?”
    â€œYes,” she admitted reluctantly.
    He’d expected her to fold up after her uncle’s death. In fact, he’d had every reason to believe that she’d approach him for help. She hadn’t. In fact, she hadn’t approached anyone with her hand out. The extent of her pride surprised him, when very few things did anymore. Past experience had made him far too cynical about human nature. He remembered the very moment in Cuba when all his illusions vanished forever. The sight of human beings rounded up like cattle in the Spanish general’s concentration camps had sickened every man in his company. A large number of those prisoners had died before American troops invaded the island.
    But even worse than the sight of those wretched men was the horror of the USS Maine going down in Havana Harbor only two months before his unit was shipped to Cuba. His two younger brothers had been on board that ship. It was he who had influenced them to join, he with his officer’s commission and his medals. Now Rob and Andrew were dead. At the boys’ funeral, his father had cursed him until literally running out of breath. He’d had to have permission from his commanding officer to return to Savannah from Tampa, where he was temporarily stationed, to attend it. Soon after that, his unit was sent back to Cuba to fight when the war against Spain was declared.
    He could hear his mother weeping, see the pitying looks in the eyes of his young remaining brother and sister. He could feel the cold, hateful eyes of his father and hear the vicious admonition that he would never again be welcome at their Savannah home. Even later, after he was wounded and shipped to