Read Online A Man's Heart by Lori Copeland - Free Book Online Page A

prayers.”
    â€œYeah. And that voice could be shrill as a harridan when she and Dad were fighting.”
    â€œThat I remember all too well. Fred, I’m going to leave you!” Jules mocked.
    â€œGo ahead! Make my day!” Crystal could sound exactly like Pop. Angry, hurtful words that can never be forgotten.
    Jules couldn’t find a big enough pillow to block the angry voices, accusations and horrifying threats. Alone, Pop was mild-mannered and easy going, but with Mom he lost it. “Why do you suppose they hated each other so much?”
    Crystal sighed. “I’m not sure she hated him. She spoke of him often — and she grieved that you were caught in the middle.”
    Jules pitched a trowel of dirt into the tub. “That’s why she wrote or phoned me so often?”
    â€œShe didn’t call or write because she didn’t want to further tear you apart. She always planned to make it up to you, and she would have if it weren’t for the car accident.”
    â€œMaybe.” Jules rammed the trowel in the dirt and reached for the fertilizer. “I hear Olivia.”
    â€œShe didn’t sleep very long.” Startled, Crystal headed back toward the house.
    When her sister cleared the shed, Jules returned to tub five. With Christmas-like anticipation, she took the troweland loosened the dirt around the plant. Even at this distance, she could see a potato, a very large potato.
    Working more quickly, she turned the dirt and her eyes widened at the sight of a perfectly formed Russet Burbank. Smooth, about the size of two fists held together. Lifting the jewel out of the dirt, she held it for closer inspection. She examined for green peach aphid, a disease that doesn’t affect people but causes tubers to have brown internal markings called net necrosis. The potato in her hand showed no sign of the insect pest.
    Excitement grew as she picked up a knife and sliced into the potato and again, the white flesh was flawless. No brown spots. She took a bite and savored the extraordinary flavor, fresh, meaty. The tuber had grown in six weeks compared to the normal growing season from planting in late May until harvesting began around the Fourth of July and continued through late summer. This particular tuber had survived on neglect, little water in the beginning, and minimum fertilizers.
    Jules’s brain spun with the realm of possibilities. Fields could be used more than once during the season. The need to “kill” off the ground—stop all irrigation or spraying with special chemicals that kill the leaves and stems before the harvest, might be eliminated. Her hand came up to cover her mouth. Now all she had to do was wait a few days and see if the potato would rot, grow eyes and sprout roots. If this potato failed to do that, then she had created the perfect spud.
    Turning to her notebook, she thumbed through the pages, impatient when her notes stuck together, the result of too many nights of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches while she worked. She reached the date of planting: May 25. The page was blank.
    She flipped back a page and glanced at the date. May 24. She turned back. May 25. Blank. Where was the data for May 25? The night Pop died.
    Blood pumping, she stepped to the John Deere calendar Pop kept over his work bench. Leaning on her tiptoes, she flipped back to May and studied the date.
    Her mind reeled, going back over that evening. She’d planted the experimental tubers. The phone rang. Her heart double-timed. The awful news that Pop had been in an accident. She was brain dead from finals and lack of sleep —
    She hadn’t written down the hybrid mix.
    Impossible! She always wrote down the experimental tubers. She returned to the notebook, dumping it upside down in hopes that she’d penned a note and left it inside the book. Nothing fluttered out. Shaking the spiral pad, she willed the combination to come out, but nothing materialized but dry