Sundry Days Read Online Free PDF Page A

handful of other girls around Rebekah’s age, just to get her out of the house. But she doesn’t like it very much.  It’s boring, she says.  The old lady mostly dozes off while the girls gossip.  She’s very, very old.  And Rebekah says she’s not really learning much.
    In a year or so she’ll be ready to undergo career evaluation—lots of testing to help her figure out what kind of work she’s best suited to do. After that, her education will become very intense.  She’ll get direct instruction from women in her chosen field, and on-the-job training.  If she chooses a particularly challenging career, like medicine, she’ll probably have to be sent to a bigger town to complete her education. It’s not unusual for girls to continue training even after they’re 18 and married.
    In the meantime, we all help as much as we can with the basics, focusing on subjects in which we’ve had the most training and experience.  The quality of at-home instruction a girl gets depends almost entirely on the level of education her mother and fathers have. Which isn’t fair.  But what can you do?
    Andy tutors her in the evening in history and science, under the watchful eye of John, who hasn’t trusted Andy since he caught him staring at the girl in an unfatherly-like manner.  Not that he would ever act upon it.  I’m sure of that.  But still.  It makes things uncomfortable. Rebekah is not allowed now to wear anything the least bit revealing at home, no matter how hot it is.
    I talked about that with Seth the other night in bed.
    “Don’t worry, Susannah,” he said as we cuddled after sex. “You worry too much. Before you know it, Rebekah will be all grown up in a home of her own.  We’re all good, reasonable people in our family.  Everything will be fine.”
    That’s Seth, the soother. He’s my oldest husband, though not the first, and almost 50 now. Very undemanding. Very easy to satisfy.  Has been all the time we’ve been married. So it’s not just because he’s getting older.
    He’s quite a large man, with deep brown skin, great strength, and the most nurturing personality of any of us. I love him very much. It’s hard to believe that the stories he produces come from such a gentle soul.
    Seth’s novels aren’t to my taste. Not at all.  But the three that have been published so far have been good sellers.  They’re adventure stories set before The Great Flood, and based solely on his imagination. Single men really eat up what he writes. It does no harm.  Just some escapism.  And The Designer knows we all need to escape sometimes, if only in our minds.
    I would have liked to escape today. Work is rarely stressful, but today I had a referral from the court system, and it was a doozy.
    A young woman finally managed to contact the authorities after her four husbands collaborated to keep her prisoner and rape her at will. 
    Yikes.
    That’s what can happen when women forgo premarital counseling, or don’t pay attention to warning signs.
    Gwyneth, the victim, was referred in the hope that she can recover enough to eventually accept new husbands.  To be honest, I doubt it.  She and her three little boys are now living with her maternal grandmother and grandfathers. And that’s where she should probably stay.
    Gwyneth’s husbands have all been sentenced to the maximum security facility in Buffalo.  Seems that one of the husbands is an alpha male in the extreme. He convinced, or maybe coerced, the other three into going along with him.  But they’re all to blame, of course.
    Gwyneth, meanwhile, has shouldered all the shame.
    “I know I never should have agreed to marry Graham,” she says between sobs. “I know I should have insisted on pre-marital counseling. But he comes from a very good family, him and Kyle.  Their mother approached me and my family directly.  She wanted me to take both of them.  She told me what an easy life I’d have. She offered a bride price.”
    The last two