Miracle in a Dry Season Read Online Free PDF Page A

paper with him. This bread will be out in ten minutes.”
    Casewell stuck his head in the living room and saw that his father was snoring softly with the paper open across his chest. Casewell stepped back into the kitchen.
    “He’s napping. Don’t worry about the bread. I’ll get some next time.”
    “Napping?” Casewell thought he heard a note of alarm in his mother’s voice, but she quickly smoothed it over. “Well, then, I’m sure he just had a restless night.” She nodded emphatically and Casewell wondered which of them she hoped to convince.

    Perla was grateful Sadie was such an easy child. The little girl rarely fussed and fit in with adults better than most children. She had an easygoing, cheerful way about her that somehow put grown-ups at ease. Perla noticed that people talked to Sadie without resorting to a high-pitched voice or silly questions. Sometimes Perla caught herself talking to Sadie about things the child had no business knowing—things about her father and their situation. Perla tried to remember that Sadie wasfive and needed protecting, but she had no one else to talk to. Sadie was a comfort, and Perla hoped that coming to Wise and removing them both from everything they knew hadn’t been a mistake.
    Robert and Delilah were lovely. They hadn’t asked a lot of questions when Perla wrote to ask if she and Sadie could come stay for a while. Delilah just called and said of course they should come and stay as long as they liked. Perla had offered to pay a little rent or help out in some way, but the Thorntons refused adamantly. Perla missed her mother, but the looks and the whispers had gotten to the point that Perla knew the only thing to do was to go where no one, except Robert and Delilah, knew her story. Perla’s mother, Charlotte, had protested but not very much. She came around much too quickly to the idea of her daughter and granddaughter leaving, and Perla thought maybe she sensed a certain level of relief.
    The sisters had always been close. Just thirteen months apart in age, they had been mistaken for twins a time or two, and it was a comfort for Perla to have someone so like her mother fussing over her and Sadie. And then again, there were times Aunt Delilah reminded her so much of her mother that Perla would have to find a quiet corner to cry over missing her mother and regretting what she had done to shame her. Mother always said the shame wasn’t on Perla, but the way the folks in Comstock acted, there was no doubt where they laid the blame.
    The one thing the Thorntons had allowed Perla to do was to take over almost all of the cooking. With Robert and Delilah at the store most days, it helped to have Perla bringing them lunch around noon and having supper ready when they came home in the evening. Delilah used to come home an hour early to start dinner, but now she could take her time and help Robertclose up each evening. Perla hoped that she was truly a help to her aunt and uncle. And she did have a knack with food.
    Sometimes Perla’s way with food unnerved her a little. She would take a chicken or some potatoes into her hands, and it seemed as if she didn’t decide what to do with them—they decided for her. Almost before she knew what she planned, she’d have enough chicken and dumplings to feed half the county, or so many potatoes au gratin she couldn’t find a pan big enough. And the food was good. People often told Perla she should write her recipes down, but she wasn’t sure she could even remember what she put in them half the time. When she cooked, it was almost like she went into a trance and the rest of the world didn’t matter; just transforming raw ingredients into something delicious and life sustaining was the closest Perla got to being happy.
    No, Perla realized, not happy. She was happy when Sadie laughed or cuddled close. What she felt when she cooked was a deep, abiding peace. She might have preferred to cook all the time just to retain that feeling, but