Juliet in August by Dianne Warren Read Free Book Online Page B

realized she’d been taken in by a confidence man with colored brochures and a promise of siding longevity. As the siding began to lift and snap in the wind and her calls to the sales company remained unanswered and finally wouldn’t go through at all because the phone had been disconnected, Mrs. Dolson’s disappointment at her own gullibility caused her at last to agree to her husband’s retirement plan, and the old couple moved to the West Coast a dozen years ago and left the farming operation to their son, Blaine, and his wife, Vicki. And no sooner had the senior Dolsons settled in a condominium complex in Nanaimo than Mr. Dolson died, and now Mrs. Dolson lives near Blaine’s sister in Vancouver and shows no interest in returning to her former home, even for a visit, because she
just can’t bear
to see what has become of it in Vicki’s care. It’s convenient to blame Vicki for the siding mistake.
    The Dolsons’ three-bedroom bungalow was built about the same time as Willard’s to replace the original farmhouse that was old and small and did not reflect the prosperity of the times. The new house (not so new anymore) sits three hundred yards off the grid road, surrounded on three sides by trees lovingly planted by Blaine’s mother: poplars, Manitoba maples, even a weeping birch that has somehow survived the arid conditions of this part of the country. The house faces the road, and from the living room window you can see the barn that is now pretty much unused, a rail corral, and a half-acre pen that is home to Blaine’s horse, the only one he has left. In front of the house is a miraculous plum tree, of which Blaine’s mother was exceedingly proud. South of the house is the vegetable garden, enclosed by chicken wire to protect it from the deer. The fact that it is still bountiful is perhaps more miraculous than the plum tree, since the gardens throughout the district are sparse, even nonexistent, thanks to drought and grasshoppers. Vicki’s garden is rich with produce. No one can figure it out. She plants in the spring and then forgets to water and never has time to weed. And the grasshoppers seem to have passed Vicki’s garden by as they devoured everyone else’s. Her own theory is that grasshoppers don’t like weeds. They’ve cruised the country looking for the weed-free gardens, she tells Blaine, which is why it’s a good idea not to weed a garden. “Ha ha,” she says. “It’s a joke.” Blaine—who remembers the neat garden his mother was famous for—doesn’t laugh.
    Blaine’s parents had three children and the house was the perfect size for their family, but it’s a tight fit for Blaine and Vicki, who have six kids. Until today, the boys shared one bedroom and the girls the other. What’s different about today (or technically, yesterday) is that Shiloh, the oldest and almost a teenager, has been allowed to “build” his own bedroom downstairs. Blaine didn’t see the need for it, but Vicki tried to be more understanding of Shiloh’s growing desire for privacy. She and Shiloh decided on the southwest corner as the driest and brightest spot in a mostly dark, unfinished basement. Although she didn’t really have time (the garden’s bounty was waiting for her attention), Vicki helped Shiloh build a low wooden platform out of scrap lumber to keep the bed up off the cement floor. They carried a worn area rug down the basement steps and laid it on the platform, and they hung two old bedspreads from the ceiling to create walls, or at least the illusion of walls. Then they took Shiloh’s bed apart and reassembled it in the new room, and Vicki found a floor lamp and a couple of plastic storage tubs for Shiloh to use for his clothes, and she made him some shelves out of boards and bricks for his CD player and other personal things.
    Vicki noticed that Shiloh was sullen the whole time they