The Sweetest Thing Read Online Free

left of the stables.
    Then she shaded her eyes with her hand, squinted, pointed, and said, “Down the hill to the right by the little lake is the summerhouse. It’s such a lovely spot. The orchestra plays there when we have lawn parties.”
    She said this without a hint of pretension, so I nodded as if I were used to staying at a mansion with property that spilled out everywhere and attending parties with a live orchestra playing.
    I had arrived in Atlanta at the pinnacle of spring. The dogwoods and azaleas were beginning to declare the joy of rebirth, the air was mild, the daffodils were swinging their happy yellow heads back and forth, the sky was a soft pastel blue, and the scent of hyacinths tickled my nose. I twirled around with my hands outstretched and soaked it in. Fresh air and rebirth! I twirled around one more time. Aunt Josie’s face once again wore a regard of disapproval, so I stopped and followed her back to the porte cochere, and we walked inside.
    The best word for Aunt Josie was buxom. Or well-endowed. Or sturdy. She had the same Dillard nose as Father, straight and pointed down, and eyes like Father’s too—dark brown—but they weren’t nearly as flashing and passionate as his. Her hair was a pretty cherry-brown color, like Father’s had been before he lost half of his and the rest turned gray.
    Overall, Aunt Josie was a large, striking woman, dressed in tailored silk and pearls. She seemed to me the kind of woman you’d like to have around if you were inviting a hundred people to your house for a fancy affair, but not so much the person you’d want to confide in about a boy. Which I did. I was fairly exploding to tell someone about Hank. But I kept my mouth shut.
    I’d seen Aunt Josie for the first time in years when she’d come to Chicago to visit us—her baby brother and his family—back in October. It turned into a disastrous visit, to say the least. She saw where we lived, that there was no food in the icebox, and the state of our clothes, and she was livid at Father.
    â€œYou’re preaching to others and not taking care of your own family. Haven’t you read the Scriptures? Saint Paul calls you an infidel!”
    Father was all torn up about her saying that, but Mother stuck by him and said that they weren’t called to speak to the people who had means, but to those who had nothing, and he wasn’t going to pass around the offering plate to people fallen on such bad times. God would provide.
    The day after Aunt Josie left for Atlanta, a man came to the apartment and handed Father an envelope with twenty dollars in it. We whooped and hollered. Just like every time, God had provided for us; money came out of nowhere. And besides that, before she returned to Atlanta, Aunt Josie left a bag of clothes for Coobie and Frances and me, and she bought us enough groceries for two whole weeks. I wondered if she realized that God was providing through her too.
    The front hall in my aunt’s mansion was paneled from floor to ceiling in some kind of dark, gleaming wood, and the ceiling was sculpted like something I’d seen in a history book of the European Renaissance, and there was an enormous stone mantelpiece above the fireplace. I wanted to stop and take it all in, but Aunt Josie had already turned to the right and started upstairs. The staircase was split in two sides that wound around above the porte-cochere entrance, and the dark walls leading to the second floor were decorated with big oil paintings of what must have been family members. Most were portraits of somber-looking people, but I recognized one of Father as a child with a little dog in his lap.
    â€œWell, here’s your bedroom, Mary Dobbs. I hope you’ll find everything to your liking. You’ve got the bathroom right there to yourself, and there are fresh towels and sheets in the linen closet. Parthenia, the servant girl, changes everything twice a week. You