The Last Odd Day by Lynne Hinton Read Free Book Online Page A

were too hard for me, a teenage orphan. It’s just that once the house started growing my family’s spirits, it became unruly. They had no regard for me or my space. It was as if they thought that since I was by myself and I had made things so satisfactory for them, I wouldn’t mind the company of four unequal ghosts.
    There were little things at first, hardly noticeable—dishes falling off the shelves, windows being pushed open, fires being blown out. But after a while they just got too comfortable staying there with me. It unsettled me.
    Not that there were ghosts. Everybody in the mountains knows about ghosts. I expected ghosts; I lived on their property, hemmed in by the reality of death. It wasn’t their presence that bothered me; I had asked for that. But rather what became upsetting is that they didn’t respect me enough to believe I would mind their recklessness, their destructiveness. That they kept hanging around like they were sure I would keep taking care of them, cleaning up after them, staying awake for them.
    I mean, what did they think, that I would stay up there for the rest of my life entertaining them? Fixing them suppers and pallets of color for them to lie in? Keep pasting and gluing together the things they broke?
    It’s true that I didn’t have much and that I had longed for them to be with me. But I knew I was quickly reaching my limit and that I would have to make a choice to leave them to the place they wanted or die in resolution to join them.
    So I closed up the house without saying good-bye, left the ghosts to fend for themselves, and took off with a young man called by two letters rather than a proper name. He brought me to his home in Forsyth County, married me, then promptly left to fight in the Second World War. I lived with his family, trying hard not to miss the one I’d abandoned, trying hard to make myself at home, away from the mountain, away from everything familiar.
    I compensated for all that was missing by working hard. Since I preferred to be outside, I worked with O.T.’s brother, Jolly, and his father. I helped bring in soybeans, corn, and hay. I slaughtered cows, slopped pigs, plowed the fields, and put up tobacco.
    Even though his parents did not like it much when he brought his new bride in to live with them, by the time O.T. had left and come home, I was more of an asset to them than a son. I was there. I farmed the land and helped raise the youngest child, Dick. And even though his mother always seemed to be studying me like she thought I brought in trouble, I know I kept that family farm afloat.
    When O.T. returned, I had become grown and old like him. He was aged by the atrocity of war and by things he would never say out loud, and I by the costs of leaving home and being left alone too many times.
    I see now that it was not the best way to begin my life as an adult, as a married woman; but I played with the cards I got. I know I gave the Witherspoon family the best of who I was. I worked hard. I caused no conflict. I did as I was told. But even though I left home and was miles away from the mountains of my childhood and years away from the influence of an elementary grade teacher, I never forgot where I came from and what I had learned.
    My family was bonded together, across life and across death. We shared a past. We had a common story. Dr. Lovella Hughes made me think I was capable of greatness. And even though my sister died young and greatness never came about for me, because of them I am a stronger, better person. So I wanted my baby to have that too, the bond of family, the possibility of greatness.
    Emma Lovella. I gave her the name of more than just a sister, more than just a teacher and mentor. I gave her the name of a force. In the end it didn’t matter; but when I was big and full of plans, it meant the world.
    Emma Lovella Witherspoon, that’s the name I chose for my baby because that is a name with history and