The Storm Read Online Free

Then she’d grab the tidy white bags that hung over her head and scatter seeds all around her—cotton, squash, okra, cucumbers, peas, and beans.
    Did Mr. James and Mother Russell even care if she overheard them? Did they think she was deaf and totally insensitive? How much longer can I endure her hateful remarks and his refusal to defend me?
    Mother Russell grumbled about how salty the ham was as she sliced it. When she dropped each piece into her black skillet, it hissed. “Downright finicky, that’s what she is.”
    Molly felt like crying. They obviously believed she was worthless. She had to get away.

    *

    The bile started rising in Mrs. Russell’s throat as soon as Molly confessed she’d lost that dad-blasted diamond. What business did a farm wife have wearing a one-carat ring, especially while she milked the cow?
    She ate a biscuit and gravy, two pieces of ham, and two fried eggs but still felt a mite nauseous. Cooking the ham hadn’t taken any of the salt out of it. Better kill another hog pretty soon, before it got too hot.
    That diamond kept worrying her. Nothing but trouble, just like Molly.
    James had been bound and determined to own that ring. Cost him a good bit of money too. But they’d had a bumper cotton crop that year, and he’d felt flush.
    The first gal he offered it to lived just down the road. He musta had her in mind when he bought it. He’d been partial to the sweet little thing for quite a spell. Might have made him a pretty fair wife, and she was always batting her eyelashes at him after church. Why, at the New Hope picnic she sat beside him at dinner and let him buy her lemonade and ice cream. She couldn’t figure what he saw in the girl though. She always acted like a scared rabbit.
    But when he popped the question, she hemmed and hawed, said she was honored and all sorts of nonsense but wanted to move to town and try city life.
    He moped around then started sparking a flashy, hard-looking woman in the next county over. Her folks were kinda trashy, and she looked like she’d had plenty of hard knocks. But James took a shine to her and courted her awhile.
    She coulda told him right off the bat that’d never pan out. The woman was most likely meaner than a snake when you got to know her. Good thing she turned him down flat after he brought her over for Sunday dinner.
    Now Molly sat there cutting her eggs into little bites and eating ’em like nothing had happened. Acted like she’d forgotten she’d been careless enough to lose a diamond in that filthy barn. But it wouldn’t do a lick of good to ask her how she coulda done it. She’d have some smart-aleck excuse.
    Her mind seemed stuck on James and that diamond, like the day he charged in real excited, saying Molly had consented to be his wife.
    She glared at Molly—leaving all that good ham sitting on her plate—and felt like wringing her neck. What a wastrel.
    Back then she’d told herself that Molly was just funning him and, sure enough, after a couple of days there came a letter. She’d had second thoughts and was sending his ring back.
    She buttered a biscuit and filled it with fig preserves.
    James’s heart near ’bout broke. Looked like one of the mules had kicked him in the face. Then he musta decided he just wasn’t gonna take no for an answer, because he started paying her all kinds of attention. Courted her for quite a spell, then brought her home on a Saturday afternoon and said they’d tied the knot. Coulda knocked her over with a cotton boll.
    Hmm. These preserves sure had turned out good.
    Molly’d been all dressed up in a frilly white outfit, with matching kid-leather shoes cut to show her ankles. And wearing real silk stockings! Great Scott. She didn’t look fit for anything but sitting around all day drinking tea and playing the piano. And that’s exactly what she’d do if she had her way.
    She sopped her third