Finding Home by Jackie Weger Read Free Book Online

house. I can’t promise nothin’. I’m just sayin’.”
    “ If it was our house, would you promise?”
    “ If it was our house, I’d let Ma answer your ever-lastin’ questions.”
    “ I wish Ma was here. She loves me. I’m her best boy.” His eyes got wet, his mouth began to quiver.
    Homesick, Phoebe surmised. “I got an idea. While you’re restin’ you be thinkin’ of somethin’ to say to Ma. I’ll write it in a letter. Now, I got things to do.” Weighted with the tray and problems needing solving, Phoebe hurried back to the kitchen. Gage Morgan was standing at the stove, peering into the soup pot.
    Lor! The good cooking smells worked faster than she ’d anticipated. “You set to the table,” she said, “I’ll fix you a plate.”
    Gage lifted his eyes to her, his expression bland. “This made out of my rotten potatoes?”
    Phoebe cleared her throat. “I cut the bad spots out. They weren’t so bad as I first supposed.”
    “ I do my eating in town,” he informed her, seeming to peer beyond Phoebe as if she didn’t exist.
    Plans goin ’ awry! Phoebe knew no way a woman could get a man if he wouldn’t sit still. “Seems to me it’d be a fair waste of good money to pay for ready-cooked food in a restaurant when you got home fixin’s in your own clean kitchen.” She began setting the table with the dishes she’d washed. “Your daughter, Dorie, commented she liked doughnuts. I’m fryin’ some up soon’s the batter rises. It’s the least I can do for her, you lettin’ us stay here and all.” Moving around the table, Phoebe kept him in a corner of her vision. “Which is your chair?” She went to the stove, dipped up a bowl of soup. “Where you want it? There’s corn bread, too. In the oven, stayin’ warm.”
    Gage stared at her with a catlike stillness about his lean, hard frame. Grudgingly, he admitted to himself that Phoebe was right. He ’d waste both time and money going out to eat. Even so, the girl’s insouciance was insupportable...on the other hand, he hadn’t had a home-cooked meal in months.
    Phoebe watched his mouth alter shape, losing its hard stern line as if to smile. She opened her mouth to speak, but Gage walked on through and out of the kitchen into the house proper. She put the bowl on the table. Dipping up another cup of soup, she stood at the sink sipping on it. The best she ’d ever made, she thought, staring out the window. This time no mindscape of visions came to her. No pictures of Ma or Pa or Erlene. The best-tasting soup she’d ever made sank like lead into her stomach.
    Chair legs scraping the linoleum intruded upon her thoughts, grated on her nerves. She turned to chastise Maydean who had the bad habit of yanking chairs about and had to bite her tongue to keep the words from flying out.
    Gage Morgan had taken his place at the table and was pulling the brimming bowl of soup toward him. His cap of dark curly hair had been wetted and combed, his hands washed. Phoebe approved. It showed he had respect for the cook. A body on the alert for such could do a lot with respect, reckoning her alertness to be greater than if she’d been anticipating the effects of a double dose of castor oil.
    “ You like corn bread?” she asked, speaking up to cover the sudden quaking of nerve endings that were stimulating excitement in parts of her best ignored.
    “ Sure do.”
    Phoebe sliced two generous pieces and put great dollops of butter on each. “Didn’t know about tea,” she said. “There’s ice water or milk.” He chose water. Once he was eating steadily, she left him alone. Most men didn’t like to be bothered when eating. Pa was like that. He hated having to swallow fast so as to make room for words.
    She checked the plumpness of the sweet dough and set grease to heating in an iron skillet, moving from sink to pantry to stove as if being in his kitchen was the most ordinary of things. She fried a test batch of doughnuts. When they were nicely browned she