Purling Road - the Complete Second Season: Episodes 1-10 by M L Gardner Read Free Book Online Page B

told Arianna gesturing to the coffee. “You need it a lot more than I do.
    After they had left, Arianna was alone for a moment and groaned as she rubbed her temples. She heard Maura calling out to Caleb in the yard and groaned again.
    Moments later, all the women were sitting around the table, all the children playing together in the living room.
    “How much does Caleb know?” Arianna finally asked, not looking at any of them.
    “To Mr. Caleb’s knowledge, I went with ye ladies last night. We’ve not said where, but leaving him to assume that I was with ye, he can’t be imagining anything too terrible. We only said that ye indulged a bit too much.” Maura sat back and folded her arms. “Yer lucky I don’t march out there and tell him every bit of what I saw.”
    Arianna appeared irritated but unafraid.
    Ava leaned forward. “You scared us last night. I don’t ever want to do that again.”
    “And you were a bitch,” Claire added. “We were looking out for you, and you acted like you hated us for it.”
    “I’m… sorry,” Arianna managed to say. It was no easy thing and they all knew it. “You’re right. I was completely out of hand. It won’t happen again.” She kept her eyes low, and Claire noticed the sadness in her voice. No one knew if Arianna was sad over what she’d put her friends through or for shame at her outrageous behavior. After all, the inflection of sadness in her voice was only when she said, ‘It won’t happen again.’
    Arianna found the courage to look at her friends. “Can we just keep last night between us? Can we just forget about it?”
    They all quietly agreed.
    “Is Caleb mad?” she asked glancing toward the door.
    “He isn’t happy,” Claire said. “You’ll have to ask him if he’s mad. I know he’s hoping to get the foundation in and walls of that house up today.”
    “Between the four men, I think they might be able to. If ye can handle the cooking, the girls and I will see to the babes, Ethel, and the gardens,” Maura said. Arianna considered herself lucky to be assigned cooking duty. If Maura really wanted to punish her, she could have saddled her with looking after the children. The very loud children.
    “Thank you all for coming to help,” she said, holding her roiling stomach. Arianna pushed her chair back with a scrape and went to get dressed.
     
    ***
     
    “We got a letter from the orphanage,” Jonathan said just before tearing into a sandwich. He and Aryl sat in the shade of a tree.
    “Oh? What’d they say?” Aryl asked.
    “There’s one relative they have to get in touch with before the adoption can go through. They seem to think it won’t be a problem. It’s his great aunt. She’s old and penniless.”
    “You’d think if she’d wanted him, she’d have claimed him by now,” Aryl said.
    “I don’t think it will be a problem, just a delay.”
    “Is Jean excited?”
    “A hundred times over. Not only to have a brother, but one close to his own age… I think he’s more impatient than we are to bring Eddie home.”
    “And Ava’s had time to get used to the idea?”
    “Hell, it was her idea. Initially, she thought I was crazy. When we visited the orphanage to talk to Mr. Everly, she saw him. She was the one that started the paperwork.”
    “That kid has to be the luckiest kid in Boston. Well, in a Boston orphanage anyway,” Aryl said. “I’m happy for all of you.”
    “Lucky? I don’t know about that. I’m barely making ends meet. I can only give him the basics, but—”
    “The basics are better than what he has now. What about your brother? How is he?”
    “Doing well.” Jonathan dug a letter from his back pocket. “He’s been writing to me.”
    Aryl opened the letter. It was written with an uneven hand, messy and childlike, but readable.
    “It still breaks my heart. So many times I’ve tried to imagine what he’d be like if he weren’t…” Jonathan searched for the right word. All the names they had for people