Drought by Pam Bachorz Read Free Book Online

thanks to my blood.
    I have helped, even if nobody wanted it.

Chapter 4
    We wake even earlier on Sundays. It’s our day to gather and pray to Otto.
    But our Services will end before sunrise—Darwin will make sure of that. The daylight belongs to him.
    We gather at the only place big enough to hold all of us: the Common House, across from the cisterns. It is where we eat all our meals too. The Common House is a low, simple building made of wood frame covered by grayed boards. The windows look too small for the wide walls. But at least some look over the Lake, bringing a little light to the gloom inside.
    Mother and I walk to Services in silence. She was angry when she woke to find her scars were gone.
    “You went too far,” she told me.
    “As did you. Let others take their licks, for once,” I told her.
    After that we had nothing to say to each other.
    Darwin is waiting at the door, lips pressed tight in the shadow of his hat as he watches us approach. Nothing escapes his stare—and as his eyes flit over Mother’s body, I hear Ellie’s voice echoing in my head.
    She’ll only be hurt worse, now .
    “You look well,” he says. No part of him moves except his eyes and his mouth. The rest of him stays leaning against the door of the Common House.
    “As well as any day.” Mother tries to push past him, but he grabs her arm.
    “Too well,” he says.
    Congregants move past us, quiet, nearly creeping. They don’t want Mother hurt, I know it—but they don’t want Darwin to notice them either. Now is the time to slip past and find a seat as far from an Overseer, and Darwin’s eyes, as possible. They only want Communion and maybe some of Mother’s Word.
    “I slept well,” Mother says. “That is all.”
    “You slept alone. That is not well.” Now Darwin moves, his body pushing toward her. Mother does not back away, even when he stands just inches from her.
    “The sun is nearly up,” she says. “Let me inside.”
    He’s taller than her, towering, a wall of muscle against her narrow bravery. I imagine his fist circling her entire waist, crushing, stealing her breath away. He could nearly do it, if he wanted to. And who would stop him?
    “Are you stealing from me?” He asks it in an even, low tone, but there’s danger in his eyes.
    “Never.” Her answer is not scared, or too fast. It is a perfect mix of hesitation and assurance. She keeps her eyes on him.
    “I don’t know how you would.” But he doesn’t seem satisfied. He slides his look to me, even as he grips Mother’s wrist in his iron hand. “Little Toad, does your mother lie?”
    “No. No, never.” My answer is too fast, too eager, no matter how hard I try to be like Mother.
    Darwin’s eyes narrow, and he turns his stare back to Mother. “Her father was a liar too.”
    “Let me go,” she says.
    He steps back to let her pass, but he keeps talking as we walk by. “There’s only one way those cuts went away so fast,” he says.
    We’re nearly to the front when he shouts the rest. “You’re stealing!”
    They all turn to look, Overseers and Congregants alike. But Mother just raises her chin and walks to the front.
    I sit in the chair next to Ellie, and we listen to Services, same as any other Sunday. But today my heart pounds, and Mother’s words are a stream running over pebbles—too fast for me to catch, only sound, nothing of meaning.
    Ellie squeezes my pinky finger with hers, then covers my hand with her own. Her skin feels like paper next to mine, her heart’s beat pushing too hard through it. How much longer does she have?
    “I should have been more careful,” I whisper to her.
    “You did it for love,” she answers. “Just like Otto.”
    Services never last too long. Mother starts with a reading from the small Bible in her skirt pocket—Old Testament, always, since it’s what she read in the woods with Otto—and then we follow her in a psalm.
    Mother stands in front of the windows that face the Lake. A small altar—a