Asked For by Colleen L. Donnelly Read Free Book Online

each one beaten raw by the hot sun and icy winters. Upstairs, rags protruded from a couple of the windows, wads of faded cloth where glass should have been. She shivered and glanced at Cletus, wondering where her…their…bedroom would be. Rusty tin made up the roof of a low back porch, sloping their direction, protruding over a door in a windowless wall. “This is where you…I mean, we…live?” She pivoted in her seat when he nodded—an old barn, a smokehouse, an outhouse near a shed, and a fence that needed mending behind them, everything arching around the backside of the house and its parking area.
    She straightened in the seat and glanced Cletus’ way. He was watching her, one eyebrow hiked up as he did. Maybe he was hoping she liked her new home. “You can put in a garden over there.” Cletus nodded toward a patch of tall, dry weeds.
    She stared where he indicated. “Now?” Her voice sounded weak. “Now?” She tried again. She twisted the yellow fabric of her belt around her fingers.
    “Tomorrow’s fine.”
    She glanced at the house, then back at her new husband. “What’s your middle name?” She could tell by the look on his face she’d startled him. She twisted the yellow belt tighter around two fingers. “I mean…well, I just want to know…”
    “It’s Anthony. We should go in.” He slid out his side of the truck and slammed the door behind him. He walked to her side, opened the door, and waited for her. She slipped to the ground.
    “Mine’s Elaine. Now my name is Lana Elaine Paine. That sounds kind of nice, don’t you think? It rhymes.”
    “Glad you like it.” He turned toward the house, and she followed him.
    A long narrow rut ran the length of the back part of the house where the slanted roof shed its rain, a gouge dug in the dirt along the wall. Cletus’ long legs stepped over it as if it weren’t there. He opened the door and paused, waiting for her to enter. She edged past him into a blinding dimness, a dank smell telling her more than her eyes could about this back room. He followed and closed the door behind him. She stood there, afraid to move until her eyes adjusted. She heard water to her left. He was pouring it, sloshing it in a pan. He splashed, then it splattered into a slop bucket.
    “I eat at six on days I don’t work,” he said. He stood near her now, his expression hidden in the dim light. She nodded, hoping he could see how she agreed. She thought about touching him, curious what his arms felt like with all that hair she’d noticed earlier. He moved past her into the main house, and she followed. “When I work, sometimes it’s later. But I like to eat as soon as I get home.” He looked back at her. “That’s how I’ve always done things.”
    She nodded, doing what Grandma’d said. She smiled, too, now that he could see her better. The room they were in was a dining area with a table and three chairs in the center. Two curtain-less windows on the right let in more light. To the left was his kitchen, through another doorway; a small window exposed the corner of a center chopping table there, and the edge of a wood-burning oven. She looked back into his face. He was watching her. She twirled the end of her belt.
    “Your house is nice.”
    “Glad you like it.” He nodded toward the doorway. “Kitchen’s that way. It’s almost six. You’re probably hungry, too.”
    She looked at the kitchen through the doorway again.
    “You can go on in there and get started.”
    Work, make him happy, let him be king of his castle. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize it was so late.” She darted to the kitchen and glanced around in the window’s light. Shadows began to take shape as she peered about the room. The stove, a cabinet, and, yes, a chopping table in the center of the room.
    A chair scraped across the wood floor in the next room. She heard him sit, then scoot the chair forward. She peered around the edge of the doorway. Hurry. Cletus cleared his throat. Her