Sugar Creek Read Online Free PDF

in him—but he just couldn’t ever fix it all.
    Where are you, Anna? Where the hell are you?
    Despite himself, even after all this time, he never quit wondering.
     
    Rachel turned left at the quaint wooden sign that read Farris Family Apple Orchard and drove across the little stone bridge crossing Sugar Creek. Sunbeams broke through the billowing trees to dapple the ground with light and remind Rachel of time spent here as a little girl. Edna’s house had been the gathering place for the Farris clan back then—Sunday dinners, holidays, it had all taken place at the orchard. A fleeting memory of hide-and-go-seek with her cousins made her envision crouching behind tree trunks, or slipping into the cheerful red barn that had just come into view. She stopped the car far short of the barn, though, parking alongside Edna’s little Toyota pickup and the circa 1940 fruit truck that she suspected hadn’t hauled anything anywhere in at least twenty years.
    Edna’s little white house with gingerbread trim was the kind everyone entered through the back screen door more than the front one—so that’s what she did now, letting it slam behind her as she called out, “Hey Edna, I’m home!”
    No answer. But no biggie. She might be napping. Or for all Rachel knew, Edna was out picking a few ripening apples on her not-really-so-bad knees—she’d promised to bake an apple pie, since Rachel loved Edna’s pies.
    Moving through the kitchen to what Edna still called the parlor, Rachel realized the house was filled with furniture from the first half of the last century: an antique sofa and chair, small end tables with spindle legs, a huge wooden radio from the thirties, an old upright piano adorned with old photos atop a white doily. Little had changed sinceRachel had last been here almost fifteen years ago. Except that Edna had gotten older. Which made her a little sad when she looked at the framed pictures on the piano of Edna in younger days—and of all of them, all her family, in earlier times.
    For some reason, all those pictures together—Edna in her youth, then Rachel’s parents as teenagers, and then Rachel herself, with other cousins, as a small child—made her chest tighten. How swiftly fly the years. Maybe it was easier not to focus on that aspect of life in the city, where days were brisk, busy. Here, though, from Amy’s refurbished storefront to that old truck outside, from early twentieth century farmhouses to the pictures spread across Edna’s piano, it was hard not to be aware of the way time passed, of the way each person’s time was…limited. Life didn’t go on forever. For anyone.
    “Fleetin’, ain’t it?” Edna said.
    And Rachel flinched—then turned, scolding Edna with her eyes for sneaking up behind her. “What’s that?” she asked.
    “Life. It flits by faster than you’d expect.”
    Edna was like that sometimes—she could read your mind just from the look on your face. Rachel had sort of forgotten that.
    “Look at you ,” Edna went on. “All grown up and with your big city job. And it feels like just yesterday I bounced ya on my knee and wiped chocolate off your face and fed ya Coke over crushed ice when you were sick.”
    “I never really got that,” Rachel admitted thoughtfully. “The Coke-over-crushed-ice thing. What is that supposed to do for you?”
    “Settles your stomach. Everybody knows that. It’s been a family home remedy long as I can remember.”
    “Hmm,” Rachel mused. “Not to burst your bubble, Edna, but…even though Coke settles my stomach, I don’t think the crushed ice adds anything.”
    Edna shrugged. “Do you still eat a bowl of it when ya get sick?”
    With just a hint of hesitation, Rachel nodded. “Not because I think I’m getting anything extra from the crushed ice, but it’s…well, just what I do when I’m sick.”
    “There ya go. If ya do it, you must get somethin’ out of it.”
    “Comfort, I guess,” Rachel admitted. “Because you always said