Sins of Summer Read Online Free PDF Page A

logging camp. You’ll either have to stay here while
     I work, or we’ll leave. Miss Callahan has invited you to stay with her and the little girl. We don’t have much choice… at
     the moment.”
    Odette placed her hand on his arm and looked back at Louis standing beside the cookstove.
    “I’ll do what you say, Papa.”
    “You’ll be all right here.”
    “You won’t go away?”
    “Of course not. The camp is only a few miles from here.”
    “Lady’s nice. But… him—” She said the words and looked again at Louis.
    “Tell her that he’s at the mill most of the time.”
    “That’s when you do your sniffin’ around, huh, Dory?” Louis sneered.
    Dory wanted the girl to stay so bad she could taste it. To have another woman in the house to talk to would be heavenly. The
     winter had been so long and so… lonely. But she didn’t dare appear too eager or Louis would find a way to keep the girl out
     of the house without losing Waller.
    “I wouldn’t blame the girl if she didn’t want to stay.” Dory turned toward her brother. “But if you want this man to help
     you best the Malones, you’d better keep your mouth shut.”
    Odette studied the woman’s face and the face of the little girl. The woman’s clear green eyes had a lonely, pleading look,
     and her little girl was so still as she waited patiently for a question she didn’t understand to be settled.
    Odette suddenly remembered sitting on the doorstep and listening to the pleading voice of her mother arguing with a man, shivering
     at his harsh replies. She had known that the dispute was about her and had waited anxiously for the outcome. Finally the man
     had walked out, slamming the door without looking back. Then had come the sound of her mother crying. Odette had crept into
     the house, wet a cloth and bathed her mother’s swollen face.
    She tugged on Ben’s arm so he would look at her. “You need the work?”
    “That’s about the size of it, honey.”
    “Then I stay.”
    Ben put his arm across the girl’s shoulders, pulled her head to his chest, then raised her chin so she could see his face.
    He spoke slowly and softly. “Maybe Miss Callahan will teach you to make bread and to sew a dress out of the goods we bought
     in Spokane.”
    Odette smiled. “You like the bread?”
    “Mmmm… very much.” Ben’s hand smoothed the girl’s hair back from her face.
    Dory was mesmerized by the tender affection Ben Waller showed his daughter and by how easy it was for him to make her understand
     what he was saying. Tenderness between her mother and father was a treasured memory. She felt a stab of envy. It had been
     so long since anyone other than Jeanmarie had embraced her.
    “I’ll go up and light a fire in Milo’s room. He can sleep in James’s room or in the bunkhouse when he’s home.” Dory picked
     up Jeanmarie and set her astraddle her hip.
    “Milo won’t like it,” Louis said in a voice so loud that Jeanmarie hid her face against her mother’s chest.
    “That’s too bad,” Dory retorted.
    “The girl can sleep with you and… her.” He jerked his head toward the child on her hip. Never had she heard him utter her
     child’s name, and anger forced a bitter response.
    “She has a name. It’s
Jeanmarie!
The bunk in my room is not even a full-size bed, as you well know. Odette will sleep in Milo’s room.”
    “I say she’ll sleep in yours—”
    “No, Louis. My bunk is too small.”
    “I’m the head of this house, goddammit!” he shouted, his bushy brows drawn together over eyes blazing with anger.
    “If you don’t have room for Odette why did you suggest she stay here?”
    “Pay no attention to him, Mr. Waller. Odette will have Milo’s bed. If I said it was raining, Louis would say the sun was shining.
     I’m used to his contrariness. He’s always been this way. I realize it’s hard for an outsider to understand the bickering that
     goes on here.” Dory looked straight at Ben, refusing to be cowed by her