Read Online A Light in the Window by Jan Karon - Free Book Online

It was his favorite perfume, right up there with horse manure and new-mown hay. And where would he get wood to make his own smoke this year? Parishioners were good about supplying everything from produce for his table to bulbs for his garden, but wood was not something that often came his way. As smart as Avis was about finding a load of corn, surely he’d know where to get a load of wood.
    He was barely winded when he turned onto Church Hill Drive from Lilac Road and headed toward Fernbank.
    Louella had called and asked him to come. Was Miss Sadie sick? Something worse than sick, Louella said ominously.
    When Louella answered the door, she didn’t speak but shook her head as if words could not suffice.
    In Miss Sadie’s upstairs bedroom, he saw hats piled on the bed and hatboxes stacked in the corners and on the dresser. Miss Sadie was sitting in the wing chair where she had told him the last tragic episode of her love story. He was surprised to realize her feet did not touch the floor; she might have been a doll sitting there. Like Louella, she didn’t speak.
    She handed him a yellowed certificate, and he sat down in the wing chair across from hers.
    This certifies that Lydia Anne, child of Father (unknown) and Mother, Rachel Amelia Livingstone, was born in Arbourville, Jackson County, North Carolina, on the 14th day of March, 1901, and that the birth is recorded as Certificate No. 5417.
    He looked up slowly to meet her eyes, but she was looking out the window.
    He found he didn’t wish to speak, either. Three people in one household had been struck dumb by the appearance of a piece of paper, a piece of plain truth. Rachel Livingstone was the maiden name of Miss Sadie’s mother.
    Clearly, she had sent for him so that he might come and do something, but he could do nothing. He looked at her face in profile, in the unforgiving autumn light, and saw a strange peace. Indeed, the room seemed wrapped in a peace that he began to enter.
    They sat for a long time in a silence that he found deeply comforting. He could not remember ever sitting like this with someone, except following a death. Perhaps this hard thing was for her a type of death; the mother whom she had adored as a saint had at last revealed the secret of her illegitimate child. It had been a family of secrets, a life of secrets.
    “We went up in the attic yesterday, looking for Mama’s hats. I said, ‘Louella, let’s look in this old dresser. We never really went through Mama’s things.’ We found the birth certificate folded up in a handkerchief bag with a little pair of socks.
    “Last night when I couldn’t sleep, I remembered Mama going out with her basket for the poor. Twice a week, every week, she went and always came back so sad, so sad. Finally, I quit begging to go with her. She was going to see my older sister,” she said, looking at him in amazement. “Just think ... I had a sister.”
    He smiled, sensing an odd happiness welling up in her, even though tears began to roll down her cheeks. She did not try to stop them nor turn her face away but let them come freely.
    “All those years I might have known her! Might have skipped rope with her, or let her braid my hair, or told her my dreams! If I might just have seen her or touched her, my own flesh. There she was, all I’d ever wanted, yet God kept her from me ... and replaced her with China Mae and Louella.” She laughed through her tears.
    “Two for one,” he said gently.
    “I have to believe He knew what He was doing.”
    “You can count on it.”
    “I had a great aunt in Arbourville. Maybe that’s why Mama had the child there. A year and a half later, she married Papa ... I don’t suppose he ever knew ... In another year and a half, she had me.” Her breath caught. “Oh, I so wish I could have known my sister!”
    “I so wish she could have known you, Miss Sadie.” He stood up and went to her and drew her from the chair and put his arms around her and held her like a child.