Allie's Moon Read Online Free Page B

have anywhere to go at all.
    ~~*~*~*~~
    Althea stood at the kitchen window watching
the road. Now and then she looked over her shoulder at the clock in
the parlor. She looked again, for what must have been the fiftieth
time this morning.
    Late. Cooper Matthews was two hours late. He
had told her he would arrive at seven o’clock sharp, and now here
it was almost nine on the second clear day they’d had in a month.
Half the morning was already gone, and still there was no sign of
him.
    It had been hard enough to get him to agree
to do the work. He’d been rude and insulting, and more than a
little intimidating. When she thought about talking to him
yesterday, her stomach felt icy. All Althea wanted was to get the
kitchen garden planted and the roof patched before it rained
again.
    She paced across the kitchen floor, then
stepped out to the back porch and peered down the road. She saw no
one coming or going. As her gaze drifted over the property, she
noted again how tangled and overgrown it had become. The spring
rains had given new life to the grass that she swore grew an inch
every hour, and the weeds that threatened to choke out everything
else. On the right end of the porch the trellis, bearing the weight
of an old climbing rose, sagged alarmingly—a strong wind might send
the whole business crashing through the side window.
    Almost unwillingly, she turned her eyes to
the spot under a solitary ancient oak tree where her parents were
buried. It was surrounded by a wrought iron fence and planted with
flowers. Although she hadn’t been able to keep up the rest of the
yard, this place was as neat as a town square, and Althea tended it
zealously. Any weed with the temerity to take root within that
enclosure was promptly yanked out. Sometimes she almost feared that
Amos Ford would leap from his grave if he realized that the rest of
his land was not being properly attended. Just before her father
died, he had charged Althea with the care of Olivia and this
house.
    “ Don’t let me down again, girl,” he’d
bade with a rattling breath. Again. Of course, there had been no
need to review the time she failed. Her negligence had been
horrible, monstrous, and unforgivable. Though they never spoke of
it over the years, she had seen his chilly disapproval every time
he looked at her for the rest of his life, right up until its last
moment. And it had not been until that final moment, while she sat
by his deathbed and held his icy hand between her own, that she’d
realized how little he cared for her.
    In the parlor the clock tolled nine times,
bringing Althea back to the present. She looked down the road one
last time, then turned to go inside and fetch her shawl.
    She had a responsibility to fulfill. And if
Cooper Matthews would not come to her, she would go in search of
him.
    ~~*~*~*~~
    It was hard enough to eat with a headache
that would have felled a horse. And the gamy odor drifting up from
the stained tick, the only place to sit, didn’t help Jeff’s
stomach, either. It wasn’t a bad meal that he held on his knees—a
dish of cold, dried-up fried eggs with a biscuit, some limp bacon
and coffee. God knew he’d eaten worse. But with Will Mason watching
the fork make its shaky trip from his plate to his mouth and back
again, Jeff found it nearly impossible to swallow. In the not so
distant past, he’d had a rock-steady grip.
    For just an instant, Jeff stared at his
palsied hands and felt humiliation send a flush of heat up his
neck. Then sanity returned. That rock-steady grip he’d once prided
himself on had enabled him to become one of the fastest and most
accurate shots in the territory. That talent had ended up robbing a
boy of his life before he’d had a chance to really live. Maybe
people did look down on him now, Jeff thought. So what? At least he
wasn’t hurting anyone but himself.
    Mason didn’t say anything. He just leaned
against the brick wall beyond the cell door, his arms crossed over
his chest. His hard