Abram's Daughters 01 The Covenant by Unknown Read Free Book Online Page B

the defiled clothing and shoes back into Sadie's hope chest, she sighed, breathing a prayer, knowing it would take more than a few whispers sent heavenward to save her
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    sister from sinful pleasures. Sadly, she hadn't the slightest idea how to rescue someone from the swift undercurrent of I he world, especially when there was no sign of flailing arms or calling for help. Surely Sadie wouldn't just let herself go under without a struggle.
    Leah shuddered to think that by keeping her sister's secret, she just might be helping Sadie drown. Dear Lord, am I making a terrible mistake?
    Henry Schwartz had absolutely no success talking to his youngest son. First of all, Derek had made himself unavailable lor the longest time, upstairs shaving. Then when Derek telephoned his friend Melvin Warner, he was interrupted several limes by Mrs. Ferguson, who wanted to gab to her newly married daughter. But Derek put her off, tying up the party line they shared with twelve other families. Once his son did hnish the phone call, Lorraine was signaling them to the dining room for breakfast.
    Finally Derek had come dragging to the table, where Lorraine and Robert were engaged in a lengthy conversation, discussing such heartrending topics as "friendly fire," which had killed so many Allied soldiers, two hundred at sea alone. Robert had been only eighteen at the time of his enlistment, promptly being taken off to basic training in early 1944, just as the war was heating up, during the increasing attacks on Berlin.
    Sitting quietly, watching his family down their breakfast, Henry wondered if it was such a good idea to confront Derek
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    today regarding his most recent woodland excursion. His son was in a hurry, obvious by the way he wiped his mouth on his napkin and crumpled it onto the plate, then muttered "excuse me" and exited the room with little eye contact. His footsteps on the stairs were swift, as well, and Henry assumed he was rushing off to work at the Mast farm.
    Recalling that his attempts to rein in this son had always failed in the past, he realized anew that Derek was a boy whom he had never been able to truly influence or oversee. Not at all like conscientious and honorable Robert, but to a certain extent similar to Henry himself, who had been rather reckless in his youth. No one, not even his father, the Reverend Schwartz, could manage him in those days.
    Subsequently, like father like son. For Henry to acknowledge the fact was one thing; living with it on a daily basis was quite another. So he would wait for a more opportune time to sit down with Derek. If that moment presented itself at all.
    It was the custom of the People to gather for Preaching at nine o'clock sharp on a Sunday morning. The day before, the menfolk removed the partitions that divided the front room from the big kitchen, creating an enormous space, enough for as many as one hundred fifty, give or take a few. Throw rugs were removed, decorative china washed and spotless. Furniture downstairs was rearranged and stoves polished and blackened. In the barn the manure had been cleared out and, in general, the stables cleaned up. Preaching service usually lasted three hours, ending in the common meal at noon and a time of visiting afterward. A day of great anticipation, to be sure.
    Ida sat on the backless bench between Lizzie on her left
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    iind Leah on her right. Sadie and the twins sat squarely in liont of them, and Ida was taken yet again by the striking beauty of the girls' hair color, so similar to her own growing up. Hannah and Mary Ruth could scarcely be told apart when viewing them from this angle; the curve of their slender necks was nearly identical. Sadie, just a bit taller, was similar in build lo her twin sisters, still mighty thin for being this close to the end of her teen years. Even so, Ida admired her girls lined up nil in a row, when she should've been entering into an attiHide of prayer in preparation for being