Sins of Summer Read Online Free PDF

brother’s bullying.
    “Hush your mouth! You’re lucky to have a roof over your head considerin’ what you are!”
    Dory ignored the insult. “Stay for supper, Mr. Waller. Louis will be here to make sure we’re well chaperoned.”
    “Mouthy, know-it-all bitch,” Louis sneered as soon as the kitchen door closed behind Dory. “See what I got to put up with?
     Someday… someday—” He doubled up a fist and struck the palm of his other hand. “I’d like to—” He broke off the words and yanked
     his mackinaw off the hook. “Got some things to see to. Be back in a minute. If that crippled bastard’s been sittin’ around
     on his arse all week and ain’t made them nails, I’ll kick him out even if it is twenty below. Ain’t no use havin’ the best
     iron and best forge in the territory if it ain’t used.” He screwed his wool cap down on his head and slammed out the door.
    Ben seethed. Was the man thinking he’d go upstairs and jump his sister as soon as he went out the door? Was that why he said
     he’d be back in a minute? Ben wondered if the other brothers were as disagreeable as Louis. If so, he’d pull freight regardless
     of the pay. Odette had not understood what had gone on between Miss Callahan and her brother. Had she heard their words, she
     might have been uneasy about staying here. It was hard for him to believe a man would say the things Louis Callahan had said
     to and about his sister even if they were true. But the woman had admitted she had a child and was not married. Maybe there
     was more to the story than what he’d heard so far.
    Odette looked tired. Last night she had slept on a pallet on a cold floor. Ben had told the innkeeper that she was his wife,
     afraid he would insist that she sleep in the common room with the women who had come in on the stage. They had bedded down
     in a room with another couple. Ben had rolled her in her blanket and pulled her back up against his chest in an effort to
     keep her warm. Since they had been together he had become very sensitive to her fears.
    Ben was well acquainted with fear. At nineteen he had been unjustly convicted of killing his uncle and had spent six years
     in prison. While there the warden had discovered that he was extremely handy with machinery, and because he had avoided trouble,
     he had been lent out to work with Tom Caffery. Tom, a master craftsman, was considered to be an expert in the setting up and
     operation of the steam donkey, which was having a profound effect on the economics of logging. The old man had taken a liking
     to Ben and had taught him everything he knew. When Ben had been pardoned by the territorial governor after another man had
     confessed to the crime, he had stayed and worked with Tom until the old man had died.
    Shortly after he had buried Tom, Ben had received a letter, forwarded from the prison, from a young woman in Seattle begging
     him to come to her. Years earlier, when he had been only eighteen. Ben had stayed in a rooming house in Spokane and had shared
     a bed with her. He remembered her as a decent sort of girl, lonely as he was and more than willing to have his company. He
     had been fond of her, but not fond enough to tie himself to her for life, and she had not been ready to settle down either.
     They had had a mutual parting of the ways.
    When he had reached Seattle, he had found the woman dying. To his surprise, she had introduced him to a thirteen-year-old
     girl and insisted that she was his daughter. The girl was deaf. Her deafness had been caused, her mother said, by a serious
     illness. The girl could talk but was reluctant to do so. Not certain if the girl was his or not, Ben had felt that he couldn’t
     take the chance that she wasn’t his and had taken her with him after they had buried her mother.
    Other than the money he’d make, Ben had what he considered another good reason for coming to work for the Callahans now. The
     summer that Odette was conceived, Louis and Milo