South of Shiloh by Chuck Logan Read Free Book Online

sharpness.
    Lois put up her hands in a mollifying gesture. “You’re right. ’Nuff said.” She stood up. “It’s starting to get chilly. Molly should get a coat on.”
    Jenny warned her with a direct look. Back off, Ma. Lois smiled and pulled on her own light jacket. “Got to run. I have a class in town.” After Dad died, Lois sold the St. Paul house and moved into a tidy condo behind the Menard’s on Highway 36. She had lost weight and dressed more stylishly as a widow; now she filled her nights with cooking classes and yoga.
    “Say good-bye to Molly,” Lois said as she took out her car keys, leaned over, and kissed her daughter on the forehead. Then she opened the patio door, went through the kitchen, and left Jenny alone on the deck with the setting sun and a nip of goose bumps on her arms.
    Mom was right, of course. And Paul, in his reasonable, calm way, agreed. Sooner rather than later, they’d have to tell Molly about her biological father.
    After homework, Paul called from a truck stop. They had driven the width of Wisconsin and made their turn south. He sounded tired but excited, off with the boys. After he said good-night to Molly, they exchanged their own brief good-night. A standard “Love you, Jenny.” As he ended the call, she heard the foreign clatter of country-western on a jukebox in the background.
    As Jenny loaded the dishwasher, Molly practiced the piano, a Chopin piece she was preparing for a school recital. Music defeated Jenny. Paul had never played an instrument. They were indifferent dancers. The piano teacher came once a week. “Oh well,” Paul quipped, “it’s a gift that skips a generation.”
    Jenny paused and caught a distorted flash of her face reflected up from a plate she’d just wiped off and was holding in both hands. The tingle was back in her arms, almost an ache.
    Paul had always known, of course.
    She thrust the plate between the plastic uprights of the washer rack. One of the main reasons she loved him was the poised, tolerant way he took things in stride. Never stored them up. Never obsessed.
    They had tried for two years to have another child. Then he had the tests done. Sperm counts didn’t skip. They just were. It had been like having another piano in the middle of the living room.
    They’d been dating steady for two years when Jenny swerved into her fling with John Rane.
    Methodically, she removed the heavy grates from the stove, stacked them aside, and worried dots of grease off the circular plates around the burners with a 3M scrub.
    She’d got as far as the first call to Planned Parenthood and knew she couldn’t go through with it. “It’s okay,” Paul had said without a tremor of jealousy or censure, stepping in. Their marriage evolved into an intricate gravitational field revolving around an unspoken core.
    She replaced the grates, wiping each one in turn.
    After the Indian Ocean tsunami hit Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Indonesia, Paul had helped Molly build a water model for a science project. They selected a huge transparent storage tub from Target and Paul spent a week in the garage, converting it into a likeness of the ocean floor. He layered Styrofoam and odd bits of insulation, built it up with glue into the shoreline of a continent, and sprinkled it with sand, gravel, and limestone shards. Then he spray-painted it and used Liquid Nails to fasten it to the bottom of the tub. Molly tucked little palm trees in the Styrofoam beach. Tiny houses and plastic people they found at Michaels. Then he created a movable piece of ocean floor with a handle attached: so you could raise and lower it, like a plunger. Then they filled the tub with water. When the plate was lifted, it shoved the displaced water onto the model shoreline. As a teacher, Jenny pointed out there was too much Dad in the project, but Paul would not be deterred. They took the tub to the science fair at school, and a gang of exuberant fourth-grade boys demolished the ambitious project in two