Yesterday's Embers Read Online Free PDF

home to check on his sick girls. Pushing open the door between the kitchen and the garage…the odd silencethat met him. Then entering the living room and seeing them curled together on the couch, cuddling, the way he’d left them a few hours earlier.
    His relief at the poignant sight turned to a horror he would spend the rest of his life trying to erase. When he’d come closer, spoken Kaye’s name, he’d recognized the angry, unnatural color the poison of carbon monoxide had painted their skin….
    He threw his legs over the edge of the mattress and sat there, struggling to catch his breath. He stayed that way for a while, trying to wipe the haunting images from the slate of his mind.
    In the dim glow of the night-light, he watched Harley pull herself up on the crib mattress and stand there in her flannel nightie, whimpering.
    He rose and stumbled to the end of the bed, where she stood gripping the rails of her crib, her pudgy face shiny with tears. “What’s the matter, punkin?”
    She raised her arms, begging to be picked up. He scooped her into his arms, relishing her warmth, relishing the life in her. “You want a drink, sweetie?”
    “Mama?” Harley looked over his shoulder to the empty bed, a question in her sleepy eyes.
    Doug’s knees went weak. He slumped into the rocking chair beside the crib. “You wanna rock with Daddy?” he murmured, trying to ease her head onto his shoulder, praying she would go back to sleep.
    She pulled back and smiled at him, reaching again for the bed. “Mama?”
    Kaye was always the one who got up with the kids when one of them had a tummy ache or needed a drink. But he worked two jobs, getting up at the crack of dawn to work for Trevor in the pressroom—earlier on the days the Courier came out, or if they had a contract job to fulfill—then home and to the fields till dark. And if that wasn’t enough, he’d been a volunteer firefighter and EMT for the fire department.
    I’m sorry, Kaye . He whispered into the dark, “Oh, God, I am so sorry.” If he could only have her back, he would spend a lifetime making up to her what he’d not been able to provide in the thirteen years she’d been his. She’d deserved so much more than this little rundown farm. He’d hung on to it out of pride. It was where he’d grown up. The only inheritance his parents had left him.
    And though it took a second job and Kaye going to work to do so, he’d managed to hang on to the 240 acres his father had left him. Dad had always believed times would get better. Doug chose to believe the same.
    But for most of their marriage, what the crops brought in barely paid the bills, and he’d had to work “a real job,” as Kaye’s mother called it, to make ends meet. For a long time now, it had been his day job and Kaye’s that supported them, with an occasional dip into the small trust fund Kaye’s father had left.
    Harley squirmed in his lap and tried to get down. He carried her back to the crib. “It’s time to go night-night, Harley.”
    The second her feet touched the crib mattress, she let out a wail. “Mama!”
    “Harley. Stop it. Lay down, and Daddy will pat your back.” It was a trick he’d heard Kaye use, but the baby was having none of it tonight.
    She toddled across the mattress to the far corner of the crib, turning up the volume. “No! Mama. Want Mommy.”
    “Mommy’s not here, Harley.” He scooped her out of the crib again and started down the hall. “Let’s go get a drink.”
    In the kitchen he got her sippy cup from the refrigerator, but she knocked it out of his hand and shook her head like a rag doll.
    He took her back to the bedroom and eased into the rocker with her again. “Come on, Harley. Shhh…”
    Any other night the whole routine would have merely frustrated him. Tonight her cries broke his heart. How many nights would thisgo on before Harley got used to her mommy being gone? Before he got used to it?
    He blanched at the thought. Trevor had been right. He