The Summer Kitchen Read Online Free PDF

those belly dancers in the Ten Commandments movie that’s on TV at Easter.
    She turned a little more, her look scampering around the room like a rabbit hunting a place to hide. She had a big fat black eye and a cut on the side of her nose that was swelled up.
    The waffle lady in the oil patch town looked like that once. When I asked her what happened, she said she slipped in the bathtub and hit the faucet.
    Yeah, right.
    Rusty leaned out the door and checked the parking lot like he was watching out for someone, then he came in, did the lock, and walked right past me like I wasn’t there. He stopped beside the girl and pointed across to my bedroom. “Just put him back there in Cass’s room. That door, on the left,” he said. She hesitated, shifted something under a jacket in her arms, and Rusty put his hand on her back and sort of pushed her along until she got to the opening.
    She went in my room and shut the door, like she owned the place.
    “What the . . . heck?” I said. “Who’s she?”
    Rusty shrugged, watched the door a minute, then tossed his tool belt on the table in the kitchen. After the first one got stolen and he had to pay for it, he never left his work stuff in the truck anymore.
    “She’s gonna stay here,” he said, like that counted for an explanation. “They can sleep in your room.”
    “They who?” Rusty was such a butthead sometimes. Leave it to him to give my room away to some girl he picked up at the bar.
    “She’s got a little kid.” He moved to the sink and poured himself a glass of water. He swayed a little on his feet when he tipped his head back to drink it. “I can’t remember what she said its name is.”
    I stood looking at Rusty with my mouth open. “She just put her kid in my room? Where the heck am I supposed to sleep?”
    “You can sleep in with me.”
    “I’m not sleepin’ in with you. Yuck.” Actually, I figured Rusty would want to leave that spot open for the girl. “I’m not a little kid anymore, stupid.”
    Rusty let his head fall forward and rubbed his eyes. “Sleep on the couch, then, Cass,” he said, like he didn’t care if I hung from the light fixture so long as I wasn’t in his way.
    I got a sick feeling in my stomach, and it seemed like I was shrinking. What if Rusty got himself a little family all of a sudden, and decided I could go jump in a lake? Crossing my arms over my middle, I squeezed hard to make the hurt go away. I felt empty down deep, but it didn’t have anything to do with the tortillas and crackers wearing off. “She’s way too old for you, you know. What’s she, like, thirty or something?”
    Rusty set the glass down hard, so that it smacked the counter. “Knock it off, Cass,” he said, and started for the bathroom. “Tomorrow we’ll get one of those blow-up mats, maybe.”
    Tomorrow? I thought. She’s gonna be here tomorrow?
    But there wasn’t any point saying it. Rusty was already in the bathroom, shutting the door and then turning on the water.
    I went to the kitchen, and washed the glass, and put it away where it belonged.

Chapter 3
    SandraKaye
    Our home in Plano sat silent and dark, as was usual lately. The days when it had hummed with life seemed both a short time ago and a long time—something I’d dreamed before suddenly awakening in this place where no one came home until they had to. I had stopped at Target and the grocery store after making the trip across town from Poppy’s. I’d bought groceries we probably wouldn’t use, just to occupy time I didn’t want.
    Maybe Maryanne and Mother were right about selling Poppy’s house. Maybe without the utility bills, estate sale, keeping the lawn mowed, and sorting through family photos and other mementos Aunt Ruth had carefully placed in boxes in the hall closet, we could all move on and accept the fact that what had happened to Poppy had just . . . happened. As horrible as it was, as hard as it was to accept, as much as each of us wanted to change the decisions