Gingham Mountain by Mary Connealy Read Free Book Online Page A

set out to join Grace in Mosqueros, Texas, she’d found more children.
    Trevor, who tried to rob Hannah and ended up sharing what he’d already stolen. Nolan, who crept into the shed she and Trevor lived in and defiantly slipped up to their tiny bit of heat, expecting to be thrown out but willing to face danger to escape the killing cold of another winter night. Other children had come and gone and Hannah had found them homes, all but Libby with her broken body, silent lips, and heartbreaking, beseeching eyes.
    Now Libby was gone. Grace was gone. Hannah, alone, shouted into the teeth of the blizzard, “God, they’re all gone.”
    The horse jerked forward, startled by Hannah’s screams.
    Hannah broke down and wept into the bitter, driving, merciless wind. Shuddering with sobs, holding her arm up to shield her face, Hannah blinked and, as if God himself had pulled back the veil of driven snow, she saw a blurred object. She clung to her horse’s reins with one hand and dropped her shielding arm to clutch the collar of her coat. Peering into the storm, trying to make out the shape, a strange peace settled over her.
    As she calmed, she realized it was a building she’d passed just moments ago on the edge of town. She could find her way back. She could save herself.
    But what about Libby? Who would save her?
    Hannah knew she could do nothing tonight. Wiping the already freezing tears from her face, she headed quickly back toward Sour Springs, leaving Libby to her fate for one night. But Hannah promised it would be one night only!
    She left the horse with the smug hostler, who kindly returned her two bits, only saying, “I told you so,” six or seven times. Then Hannah trudged through drifts to her room.
    As she battled the storm, she saw that all the businesses were closed and shuttered. It was late enough in the afternoon that the sun had set and there’d be no customers in this weather.
    Then as she passed a building near the mercantile, she saw one lone light flickering in a window. Through thin curtains, Hannah saw a tall, reed-thin shape pass the light. Prudence, maybe, the seamstress she’d met in the general store. Hannah paused, drawn by the light and life of that building, even as she knew she didn’t dare pause on the way to her own dark room.
    As she watched, a second shape moved in the same direction as Prudence. A man, a giant of a man, bigger even than Harold, was in Prudence’s room with her. They’d offered Prudence the job as schoolmarm, hadn’t they? Only a single woman would be offered that job. And Mabel had definitely said Prudence was new in town. So what man was with her on this bitter cold evening?
    True, it wasn’t very late, just after suppertime most likely. But people would want to get home and tuck themselves in safe for the night. The aching of Hannah’s feet prodded her onward. She had almost no feeling in them as she hurried home.
    The diner was closed but the back door was unlocked, and Hannah got to her room without trouble. She spent the rest of the bitter night clutching her worn coat and the single thin blanket she’d pulled off the narrow cot around her. Leaning into the stovepipe with its meager warmth, she trembled with cold in the wretched room and thought of the glowing letters she’d gotten from Grace about her comfortable situation in Mosqueros. Hannah, with no food and no dry clothes, shivered and her stomach growled.
    Hannah wrapped her arms around herself, missing all of her sisters. If Libby were here, the two of them would snuggle in bed, share theirwarmth, and survive the night by being strong for each other. They’d done it many times in Chicago and Omaha and other places.
    Hannah vowed to God, as she stared into the ceiling of her black room, that she’d save Libby. She’d save all those children Grant had taken. Then she’d show this town there was such a thing as a teacher who stuck, no matter the provocation.
    Barely twenty, she felt like she’d been old