Rainwater by Sandra Brown Read Free Book Online

air just above his cheek and slipped silently from the room, leaving him peacefully sleeping. Nevertheless, she listened for any signs of him stirring as she sat at the kitchen table, shelling black-eyed peas for tomorrow’s dinner. It was well after ten o’clock when she made her last inspection of the kitchen and turned out the light.
    Her neck and shoulders burned with fatigue as she moved down the darkened hallway. The front porch light was off. Mr. Rainwater hadn’t forgotten. But she went to see that he’d also locked the screened door. He hadn’t. She reached for the latch.
    “If you hook that, I won’t be able to get back in.”
    She jumped at the sound of his voice.
    “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
    She pushed open the door and stepped out onto the porch. He was sitting in the darkness in one of the wicker chairs. “I’m the one who’s sorry,” Ella said. “The light was out, so I thought you had come inside. I hate that I disturbed your solitude.”
    “You didn’t. I turned out the light because the bugs attracted to it were becoming a nuisance.” He stood up and indicated one of the other chairs. “Join me.”
    She hesitated for several moments, then moved along the porch and sat down in one of the other chairs.
    “The air feels so good I couldn’t bring myself to go to my room.” He smiled at her. “Even as comfortable as it is.”
    “I’m glad you like it.”
    “Cabbage rose wallpaper and all.”
    They lapsed into a silence broken by the night song of cicadas, a barking dog in the distance, and the faint squeak of the wicker as he repositioned himself in the chair. He stretched his long legs far out in front of him, loosely clasped his hands over the book lying in his lap, and leaned his head back, seeming to be perfectly relaxed.
    Ella wasn’t sure that such a loose-limbed posture was appropriate when a man and woman, strangers, were alone in the darkness. In fact, she was quite certain it wasn’t. It suggested a familiarity that felt vaguely improper, although the chairs in which they were sitting were several yards apart.
    “Where was the food going?”
    She looked over at him.
    “The food that Margaret was packing up when I came into the kitchen,” he said. “Where did you send it?”
    “To the shantytown. It’s on the far east side of town, across the railroad tracks.”
    He continued to look at her, his eyebrow arched with interest.
    “It started out with just a few hoboes who got off the freight trains to camp by the creek. The law ran them off, but more came, and they kept coming, until finally the sheriff gave up trying to keep them away. For the most part they’re left alone now. The number fluctuates, but I understand a few hundred are over there at any given time. Whole families. So every few days, I send leftovers, stale bread, overripe fruit. Like that.”
    “That’s very benevolent of you.”
    She lowered her head, smoothed her hands over her skirt. “It’s food I’d have to throw out otherwise.”
    “I doubt the people in shantytown mind if an apple is bruised.”
    “In exchange for these scraps, I ask them not to come begging here at the house. Word gets around to newcomers and drifters. Don’t go to Barron’s Boarding House for a handout. You won’t get one.”
    “Still, you’re charitable.”
    She didn’t want him giving her more credit than she deserved. “I don’t take it to those poor people myself, Mr. Rainwater. That would be charitable. I send it by Margaret.”
    “Some people, a lot of people, wouldn’t send it at all,” he countered in a quiet voice.
    She was about to protest further but changed her mind, feeling it would be better to let the subject drop. Another silence fell between them. She sensed that he was more comfortable with it than she was. To her it seemed to stretch out interminably, to the point that she was about to excuse herself and return indoors when he said, “Have you lived here all