Pocketful of Pearls Read Online Free PDF Page B

fact that Phinehas was in the living room visiting with her mother and aunt and uncle.
    Your calling is strictly between you and me and God. Our secret.
    It was two hours in which to eat. She managed to sneak outside twice, under the guise of taking the compost out, and purge
     herself. After dinner, it took another hour to wash the pots and clean the kitchen. It was even necessary to scrub down the
     sink with cleanser and clean out the wells under the heating elements on the stove. All the while the spring of tension inside
     her wound tighter and tighter.
    Come to the secret place and let us worship together.
    She demolished most of the leftovers in the fridge, and afterward, in the upstairs bathroom, wondered how she was going to
     explain their disappearance. She’d always been able to blame it on Dad and his midnight snacks. She went down and considered
     cleaning the oven, too, but at nine o’clock her uncle came into the kitchen to get her.
    “Dinah, Phinehas is starting to call you our little Martha, you’re so busy out here. Come and be Mary for a while, and have
     a Bible study with us. It’s the Lord’s day tomorrow, you know.”
    She had no choice but to go.
    Fortunately, the Bible study lasted an hour and fifteen minutes, during which it was perfectly acceptable to keep her eyes
     on the Bible in her lap while she listened to Phinehas interpret the Scriptures. Her fingers, under her Bible’s worn leather
     covers, were rigid and cold.
    After a final prayer, she slipped into the downstairs spare room where her aunt and uncle were staying—Phinehas slept upstairs,
     in the large front bedroom that overlooked the river—and took a couple of blankets out of the closet. Then she pulled the
     last of the funeral leftovers out of the fridge. When everyone was busy getting ready for bed, she stacked the food and the
     blankets on one arm and slipped out to the barn.
    The chickens murmured when she passed them, but she didn’t stop to stroke Sheba as she normally did at night. Her feelings
     would communicate themselves to the birds and their eggs would be bumpy and stressed in the morning. She knocked on the door
     of the hired man’s apartment.
    “Mr. Nicholas?” she whispered.
    He opened the door, an indistinct dark shape. “Please, call me Matthew.”
    She’d rather not call him anything. “I brought you some blankets. And some casserole. It’s cold, but there’s a microwave in
     the kitchenette.”
    “Thanks very much.” He took them. “I’m sorry if I offended you earlier.”
    “Offended me?” There was no room in her mind for such petty things as offense. Not when the spring under her solar plexus
     was wound so tightly she’d begun to have difficulty breathing.
    “Yes. I think I said something that upset you. I’m sorry.”
    She shook her head. She couldn’t even remember what they had talked about. Silently, she went back to the house and climbed
     the stairs to her room.
    There was no point in locking the door.
    She hung up her dress and folded her underclothes neatly into their drawers, then got the embroidered white batiste nightgown
     from the bottom shelf instead of the comfortable black flannel one she usually wore in the winter.
    There was no point in getting into bed, either.
    The slow moments ticked by while people used the bathroom and brushed their teeth. The toilet flushed. Bedsprings creaked.
     The moon had moved halfway across the expanse of her window and she could hear Uncle John snoring when it came at last.
    Her door breathed open.
    The floors in the ranch house were solid and thick and did not creak. Neither did any of the hinges. She’d made sure of that.
    The lock snicked. The spring inside her uncoiled with a snap and she began to tremble.
    “‘Behold, thou art fair, my love; thou hast doves’ eyes.’” The whisper was smooth and confident. “Say it.”
    She was silent while the spring uncoiled the rest of the way and she began to float.
    “Say it,