Read Online Adelaide Piper by Beth Webb Hart - Free Book Online

president of the mill, though everyone knew that the Southern industry was dwindling as every sort of textile became cheaper to make overseas.
    My daddy was bound by social status, parental control, and the limitations of only one working arm, but even with all these constraints, he was the most optimistic person I knew.
    He could be happy and hopeful just sitting on our crab dock, drinking iced tea. He’d look around at one of his daughters or his petite, well-dressed wife and say, “We’ve got it good, don’t we?” And then, “Let’s go down to the Dairy Cream and get a sundae, just for the heck of it!”
    â€œYou’re the one I’m countin’ on,” he’d told me a few nights ago beneath the fluorescent light of the kitchen. I had forgone an evening of hanging out with Jif and Georgianne to finish my Catcher in the Rye novel because Penelope Russo had referred to it countless times in Governor’s School. To my disappointment, it was a fatalistic novel about the loss of innocence of a teenage boy, and I hoped that every book didn’t depress me this way. The thought dawned on me, Could Penelope Russo not know the meaning of life? But I pushed it aside to listen to Daddy.
    â€œLou has learning problems, and Dizzy is as wild as a goat, Adelaide.”
    He shook his head and squeezed the top of my hand with his good arm. “Heck, I just want to get her to adulthood in one piece.”
    He looked me square in the eye without a blink. “But you’re the one who is going to make it, sister. I can just feel it, you know?”
    â€œYes, sir,” I said, and I wanted to believe him.
    â€œNow, I know you like poems and that sort of thing, but you’ve got to promise your old man that you’ll pick a solid major and get a job that can support your dreams: lawyer, doctor, you name it. You can have it all, baby—work, family, and poems—but you’ve got to get the solid stuff first, okay?”
    â€œYes, sir,” I said, turning my hand palm up to squeeze his back.
    â€œThing about it, I never understood that when I was your age. All I did was chase your mama and run the football, and it hurt me not to pay more attention to my books.” He tugged at his paisley tie to indicate his failure. “You want to have choices.”
    â€œI understand, Daddy.”
    â€œI think you do,” he said as he walked toward the den. “Now I’m going to get your mama to help me put on my fatigues and relax.”
    (He could not unbutton his shirt without her help.) Then he turned back once as I stared at my letdown of a novel, and he said, “I love ya, sweetheart. And I’m pulling for you.”
    When I looked up, he had walked out of the room.
    Now Mama, whom Dizzy had unfairly nicknamed “Ice Lady,” handed each of us a cup of ice from the minicooler at her feet before consulting her map.
    Her nickname came a few years back when she handed out icy treats at the Williamstown children’s charity run. She stood at the corner of Main and Mill Street and gave Dixie cups of sweet crushed ice and frozen orange slices to the participants as they flew past. There was a picture of her on the front page of the state paper that was in town to cover the event.
    â€œIf it weren’t for that ice lady,” one of the runners said, “I wouldn’t have made it to the finish line.”
    And there was a letter to the editor that read, “Thank you, ice lady!” and recounted one overheated woman’s blurred vision during the race, cured only by the sweet, icy oranges that a lovely lady in a large straw hat handed to her at the busiest intersection in town.
    But while I refused to call her by the nickname, I could see the second truth in it. Greta LeVan Piper was emotionally distant somehow. I couldn’t remember her ever spontaneously hugging one of us—or Daddy, for that matter. And she didn’t shower