The Bridegrooms Read Online Free PDF

repetition, making the dishes rattle and the crumbs jump off the plates. “And if you mention her again, I’ll throw the whole lot of you out to the wolves!”
    That was back when the family lived in a tiny town in southern Ohio—before the ugly rumors prompted the move to the city—and their father seemed just crazed enough to toss them into the whirling snow. So the little girls fell silent and remained hungry until the next morning when Dr. Allenhouse greeted each one with a hug and a kiss and a bowl of fluffy scrambled eggs.
    They’d breakfasted in silence, and for Althea, the silence continued. No amount of threat or cajoling or outright trickery could bring her to speak again. So she was the ideal employee at the telegraph office, never betraying the triumphs and tragedies that came across the wire to be typed onto precise yellow papers.
    Still, Vada always asked about Althea’s day, more to fill the silence than to seek information, and she smiled when she looked over her shoulderto see Althea running her finger along her tightly closed lips, the final say against any further prying.
    “Just as well.” Vada turned her attention to the chore at hand. “There’s enough excitement around here to keep a mind busy.”
    She prattled on, filling Althea in on Hazel’s newest correspondence and Monday’s lunch date, pausing only when Althea’s soft intake of breath warranted a face-to-face commiseration.
    “And the widow Thomas is here again.” Vada pointed down toward their father’s office with the knife. “I don’t know why Doc can’t see through that woman. She’s no sicker than I am, but maybe he likes the attention.”
    She turned to see Althea tapping the end of her nose.
    “I just hope the woman doesn’t plan to be asked to stay for dinner. It’s a pretty pathetic spread we have tonight.” Vada dropped the potatoes into the simmering water, added a generous shake of salt, and put a lid on the pot. “It’ll be hard enough to stretch it for the five of us. Speaking of which…” She wiped her hands on a tea towel and squinted at the clock on the wall. “It’s late. Did you see Lisette outside?”
    Althea offered an indulgent smile and shrugged one shoulder.
    “Honestly, that girl.” Vada strode through the swinging kitchen door, nearly colliding with the widow Thomas in the hall.
    “My goodness, dear.” The older woman reset her hat. “A lady really mustn’t charge through a room like a rampaging bull. Why, if Dr. Allenhouse were to see such behavior—”
    “I doubt my father would have much to say on how I conduct myself in my own home, Mrs. Thomas.” She ignored Mrs. Thomas’s breathy retort and opened the door, swinging it wide enough to usher the widow out.
    The woman’s nattering decreased with each stomp down the concrete steps. Vada stood in the open doorway, arms folded against the cool springevening. She intended to stay long enough to see Mrs. Thomas round the corner but regretted her decision when she saw the look on the woman’s face as Lisette turned onto their street.
    The girl, as usual, sailed along in a sea of young suitors—half-a-dozen young men all jockeying for position to see who could walk closest to her, shielding her from the dangers lurking at the edge of the sidewalk.
    Lisette was seventeen years old, her hair a mass of caramel curls, long and loose down her back, held from her face by a burgundy velvet ribbon at her crown. Her wide pink lips were turned down in a pout, even as her eyes, dark and sparkling, danced with mischief.
    She stopped in her tracks, causing the boys who followed to nearly collide with each other in her wake, and whispered something that made the tallest of the six clutch his heart in mock agony while the others exploded in laughter.
    It was at just this moment that the little group crossed paths with Mrs. Thomas, and even from this distance, Vada could sense the woman’s disapproval.
    Lisette managed to hold a contrite expression