Stephanie Mittman Read Online Free PDF

family.”
    “Oh, but not ours,” Patience said. “I mean, lately he’s so surly. I think a smile would break his face.”
    “The man has a right to grieve, don’t you think? And actually his smile is quite dazzling,” Abby said, a smile of her own turning her lips. When Patience just shook her head, she added, “And it’s all the more precious because it isn’t bestowed on just anyone.”
    “So you’ve seen it, then?” her mother asked, and Abby watched her exchange a glance with her father that all but shouted
Didn’t I tell you so?
    “Everyone’s seen Seth smile,” she said, trying to pretend it was nothing so that her mother wouldn’t start taking measurements for her wedding gown.
    “I suppose I’d better ask
Seth
his intentions,” her father said with a resigned sigh, making sure his lap was well covered with the blanket her mother hadgiven him when she’d unceremoniously demanded that he remove his pants. “Since Abby’s so sweet on him.”
    “Whose intentions?” Jedediah asked, looking up from the clock he was fiddling with. “Dr. Hendon’s? Oh, wait. I see. Abby and … No. I don’t see. Isn’t Dr. Hendon nearly old enough to be—”
    “I am not a child!” Abby cried, stomping her foot so that even she could see that she was belying her words. She calmed herself, improved her posture, and said as demurely as she could, considering that Michael, Prudence’s little boy, was crawling under her skirts as she spoke. “There is nothing to see, Jed. He has no intentions, Father. He is not surly, Patience. And Mother, I do not think he would like to join us for Sunday dinner.”
    Everyone just stared at her for a moment.
    “And Michael, you come out from there,” she added, lifting her skirts to gently boot out her nephew.
    “I’ll make ham,” her mother said. “Or turkey. I bet he’s a whiz at carving a turkey, wouldn’t you think?”
    “No,” Abby said, but no one seemed to be listening to her.
    “I suppose I could make my quince tarts. Boone always loved my quince tarts,” Prudence said.
    “No,” Abby said again.
    “Couldn’t I pick up three cigars, Papa, and we could all discuss the world situation?” Jedediah asked.
    “Make that four,” her father said, shrugging her mother’s afghan off his shoulders. “I’d like Ansel here too. He’s friends with the doctor and it’ll help put him at ease when I ask him when he’d like to—”
    “
No!
” Abby said, this time stamping for emphasis.“He has no intentions. Not yet. At least none toward me. In fact, he’s thinking of leaving Eden’s Grove altogether.”
    “Oh, but that’s awful,” her mother said, sitting down at the table with a pencil and paper. “How I would miss you! Just like when you go to Anna Lisa’s in St. Louis—only longer.”
    “Michael and Gwendolyn would hardly know their cousins,” Prudence complained.
    “Please,” Abby begged them all. “Listen to me. Dr. Hendon has just lost his sister. He’s hurting and he’s confused. A dinner here with all of you would push him out of Eden’s Grove so fast that we’d choke on his buggy dust.”
    “It’s so sweet that she’s worried about him, don’t you think?” her mother asked her father, as she got up from the table and placed the iron on the stove and her father’s pants on the pad on the kitchen table.
    “Wouldn’t it just beat the Dutch to have that new church built before they took their vows?” her father said.
    Abby looked around the kitchen of the home she’d grown up in. It had fallen into terrible disrepair during her father’s drinking days and never quite recovered. Now it bore the scars of Jed’s inventions, the latest being an attempt to make a clock that would somehow turn on the kettle so that they could wake up to the smell of fresh coffee. He had promised to repaint the kitchen wall as soon as he perfected the clock.
    He had promised to replace the window he’d broken when demonstrating how his boomerang