Redemption by Carolyn Davidson Read Free Book Online Page A

when they’d attempted to open the windows and doors.
    Jake looked now out of the single window that bore no covering to soften the glare of sunlight through fly-speckled panes. Rena would be aghast at the sight.
    His chair rolled across the bare, wooden floor to the second window and he grasped the draperies in his fist, and tugged them from their moorings until they landed with a muffled thud on the floor. Somehow the act was satisfying, as if he rebelled against the darkness that had gripped him for so long.
    “What’cha doin’, Pa?” Jason stood in the doorway, wide-eyed and pale, as if the disturbance in the parlor had frightened him.
    “Your uncle Cord told me we needed to open the windows in here,” Jake told him. “Do you think you can push them up? Let some fresh air in?”
    “I can try.” And wasn’t that the crux of the matter? Jake thought. If the boy was willing to try to change things, how could his father do any less?
    “Let me know when the water’s hot and I’ll come out to the kitchen and help you,” he told Jason. “In the meantime I’m going to write a note to Miss Merriweather, and once you get cleaned up, you can deliver it.”
    “I’m gonna get new clothes?”
    Jake looked at the shaggy locks that covered Jason’s head and hung against his collar. “And a haircut,” he said firmly.
    C AN YOU COME BY to talk with me?
    The note was brief and to the point, Alicia thought, and looked into Jason’s face, aware that his eyes shone with a hopeful light. The man hadn’t even had the courtesy to sign his name, she thought, exasperation making her cross. It would do no good, though, to take it out on the boy.
    “Tell your father I’ll come by tomorrow at suppertime.”A sudden urge prodded her to action. “Tell him I’ll bring a picnic with me. We can eat in the parlor.”
    “A picnic?” Jason’s mouth curved into a smile. “I can’t remember havin’ a picnic since my mama died, ma’am. We used to go to the celebration on the Fourth of July when I was real little. Mama got someone to help and my Pa would go, too.”
    Real little? The boy was far from grown now, she thought sadly. And living on memories of a better time in his young life.
    “Do you like fried chicken?” she asked, and at his enthusiastic nod, she determined to borrow the kitchen of the house where she resided and make the most mouthwatering meal she could put together. There was no time to waste.
    Friday was Alicia’s favorite day of the week. Two whole days, in which she could please herself, loomed ahead. She’d sometimes found herself walking beyond the town and exploring the countryside during the nice weather. She had a lonely life, but had learned to enjoy her own company. A light quilt tucked under her arm, she frequently took her current volume of history or novel of adventure, finding a tree under which to sit, the book on her lap. Pure heaven, she thought. The whole of an afternoon in which to enter another world, where her imagination could run riot and her mind be refreshed.
    Today was Friday, and for another reason she felt the swell of anticipation. A stop at the butcher shop gained her a plucked chicken, one the butcher was happy to cut into pieces. The general store yielded a supply of small new potatoes, fresh from some industrious soul’s garden. Early carrots and a large crimson tomato for slicing filled her basket and she set off for the house where the parents of one of her students had offered a room for her use.
    Her landlady, Mrs. Simpson, was willing for her kitchen to be used for Alicia’s project. By the time the chicken was fried and the potatoes made into a salad, Alicia was ready to walk out the door.
    Her meal was packed into the market basket and covered with a clean towel. She set off at a determined pace down the street toward the big house where Jake McPherson lived with his son. The front gate sat permanently ajar and the yard was still weed-infested, but the front parlor