Susannah Morrow Read Online Free PDF

just like me.

Chapter 3

    I T WAS LATE THAT EVENING BEFORE MY FATHER RETURNED, LOOKING worn and tired.
    Together Jude and I watched him as he hung his cloak and came across the room to sit heavily at the scarred tableboard. There
     was still some pottage in the kettle, and I quickly ladled some into a wooden trencher and sliced some bread, but when I set
     it before him, he shook his head and pushed it away.
    “Where’s your aunt?” he asked.
    “Here.” Susannah stood in the doorway between the two rooms, a folded bed rug in her arms. “You look tired, Brother. You should
     rest.”
    I thought how kind she was to him, how like Mama, to be concerned for his health. Father only shrugged and looked away. “Time
     enough for that later. I’ve talked to the pastor and put up the notices. We’ll bury Judith on Saturday.”
    He seemed so alone sitting there at that table, as if there were a wall around him that no one could see—it was a gift of
     my father’s, that he could seem alone in a room of people without it being pride that kept him that way. Now it only made
     him look lonely, and I wished I could go up to him and wrap my arms around his shoulders. I had a vision of the four of us
     sitting on that bench together, taking comfort from one another, but when I blinked my eyes, it was gone, and we were as we
     were—a room full of people with distance between us, and my father keeping it that way.
    “Faith will be baptized on Sunday,” he said.
    Susannah frowned. “So soon?”
    “’Tis the first Sunday after her birth,” he explained.
    “A funeral one day, a baptism the next? ’Twould hardly be a crime to wait another week.”
    “Satan finds his way into children too easily as it is. Shall we give him so much opportunity?”
    “She’s a babe. She hardly seems bait for the Devil.”
    My father scowled. “Children have no will to resist him. An infant particularly. Why, she’s still wet from Adam’s sin—”
    “Wet from nursing, more like,” Susannah said. “I can’t think that my sister—”
    “Your sister was a good wife,” Father said shortly. “A wife who knew to obey her husband.”
    I knew to bow to that voice, and I waited for Susannah to hear it too—my mother would have nodded and gone silent.
    Susannah said, “Unfortunately, I was given too little time with my sister to know if that is indeed true. But I will tell
     you that the woman I knew—”
    “Is gone,” Father finished. “It has been many years since you shared that little house in Lancashire; and to hear Judith tell
     it, you were too…occupied…then to know her well. Where have you been since?”
    My aunt stiffened. “I loved my sister, sir.”
    “No doubt you did.” Father took a deep breath. He looked down at the table. “And she loved you. But this is not England, and
     my wife is dead. I will have deference from those in my protection.”
    “Which includes me?”
    “Unless you prefer the woods, madam.”
    My aunt stood straight for a moment, and then she nodded and turned back to the parlor where my mother lay. There was silence
     in the hall, except for the crackling of the fire. I felt Jude creep up behind me and slip her fingers into my waistband.
    I stared at the doorway. I could not bear for him to be angry at my aunt now, not after what she’d done for me. That feeling,
     along with my nervousness, conspired against me, so I blurted, “You should see Mama, Father. She looks so peaceful…” I trailed
     off when I heard how loud my voice was, how silly.
    But Father only sighed and rose. “Let me see her, then.” He went to the parlor, and I followed, anxious to see what he thought,
     to hear the praise I knew must come. I’d done a good job with Mama—Susannah had said it, and I knew it was true.
    The parlor smelled of tallow smoke and the faint sweetness of bodily corruption. When we came in, my aunt was bending over
     Mama, straightening a fold of skirt. She did not see us right away, and I