The House on Persimmon Road Read Online Free PDF

sure there are pantries with shelves.”
    The elder woman wasn’t to be appeased. “I don’t think I’m going to like it here, Justine.”
    “Oh, Mother Hale, not you, too? Look out there. Don’t you think that’s a setting straight out of Gone with the Wind? It’s going to be good here for the children—for all of us—I know it is.”
    “But we aren’t going to live in the yard, are we? We’re so isolated. Suppose one of us gets hurt?”
    Justine almost mentioned Tucker Highsmith, but he was a man; who could depend on one of them? “Try to think positive.”
    “The only thing I’m positive about is that our lives have turned topsy-turvy. You never laugh anymore, Justine. You used to laugh all the time.” Agnes averted her eyes and lowered her voice. “You don’t miss Philip at all, do you?”
    Justine winced. “Yes, I miss him. But he’s on the other side of the world. So missing him doesn’t do much good.” It went unsaid that Philip apparently did not miss any of them. His only communication since Easter had been but a single card posted from some forsaken little island whose name she couldn’t even pronounce. He hadn’t said, “Wish you were here.”
    Agnes looked off into the woods across the narrow dirt lane. “You blame me for his going, don’t you?”
    “Actually, I don’t. Philip did what he thought was best for him. Now I’m doing what I think is best for us. I’m sorry you don’t agree.”
    Agnes’s thin lips trembled. “Well, I’m scared. I’m old, I ache, and I’m infirm…”
    Old! exclaimed Lottie. Old! Why, you don’t know what old is. How’d you like to be a hundred and fifty-nine! As for being infirm, trade places with me. Hah! Try out my condition and see where it gets you.
    “Justine, are you whispering?”
    Lottie froze. Had she almost gotten through? She forgot to flutter and dropped down to the steps and sat there, pondering possibilities.
    Justine smiled. “Maybe you’re reading my mind. I’m scared too, Mother Hale. You don’t have a corner on fear.”
    The words spoken, Justine thought, I may be less than sure of myself, but I’m far from willing to surrender. She decided then and there the image she was going to present was one of strength, not weakness.
    She slipped her arm through Agnes’s. “C’mon, let’s go back in the house. We have more important things to do than engage in self-pity.”
    “Justine!”
    “Oh, Mother! What now?”
    “This room,” Pauline said, flailing her arms to indicate the great room when Justine stood on the threshold. “I’ll do it up. The wallpaper has gone past fading into death, but ignoring that…”
    “Let’s do ignore it for the moment. Later on we can budget some paint.”
    “Budget?”
    Until recently that was a word that had not been in Pauline’s vocabulary. Justine watched her mother struggle with its implication and give up the struggle.
    “My peach sofa can go over there, the pickled-wood pedestal table behind it. And, I think the dhurrie rugs. We can frame the fireplace with your father’s collection of Japanese Buddhist sculpture.”
    “No Buddhas, Mother. They’re too monkish.”
    For an instant Pauline looked blank. “Oh, of course, how tactless of me. The furniture in here will have to go, especially that chair and stool. It looks carved by a one-armed woodsmith.”
    Lottie swept into the room and plopped down in the chair.
    This chair stays, she said, glaring at Pauline. This is my chair. She had painstakingly created the needlepoint for the footstool. She’d spent two lifetimes in that chair. It was her anchor to the past and the present. It was made of cypress and the first thing Elmer had built for her after they were married. Lottie quivered. She’d give in on the wallpaper, but the chair stayed. That’s my final word! she huffed, watching to see if anyone heard.
    Justine was trying to see the room completed through her mother’s eyes. All she saw was dirt and dust and cobwebs.