Read Online All for a Song by Allison Pittman - Free Book Online Page A

Church. She kept singing, without missing a note, but turned her head to where her sister’s unmistakable form had entered the darkening room.
    “Beautiful as ever,” Darlene said.
    “Sounds better when you’re singing with me.” She played on.
    “Oh, I don’t know about that.” Darlene walked in, carrying a plate covered with a linen napkin. She was wearing an apron over her dress. “Don’t worry—no beet soup.” She cleared away an army of tiny tin soldiers on the desk between the beds.
    “I think I killed a deserter,” Dorothy Lynn said. “Or he killed me.”
    “Sorry. With children you have to learn to look down when you walk—not that I can see my feet.” She spoke with lightness, but when she turned around, Dorothy Lynn noticed for the first time a hint of pure exhaustion on her sister’s face. She might have been quick to blame the light for the cast of her complexion,but the way she brought her hands around to brace her back announced fatigue beyond measure. She plopped herself on the opposite bed and kicked the shoes off her swollen feet before taking a large gulp of what was left of the water the boys had brought up earlier. “You know, when you play, you sound just like Donny.”
    Dorothy Lynn played a few more chords, bringing the song to a conclusion. “I can barely remember.”
    “You were young, always out in the woods, scribblin’ in that notebook.”
    Dorothy Lynn smiled at the laziness that had returned to her sister’s speech. “I’ll bet Pa would’ve let him play in church. And lead the singin’, too.”
    “He never let you? Play, I mean. Of course you couldn’t lead.”
    “Just for the children—spring and summer Sunday school, outside in the yard. Brent’s the same, but he says once we’re married and he can have proper say, he’ll let me sing on Sunday mornings. I wish Pa could’ve heard me.” She truly hadn’t intended the last statement to carry so much resentment.
    “It’s a woman’s place, Dot. Where her father says, then her husband.”
    “Our father told you to stay put in Heron’s Nest.”
    “But then I fell in love with a traveling salesman from St. Louis.”
    “Were you scared?”
    Darlene moved over to sit beside her. Dorothy Lynn set the guitar on the floor and leaned into her sister’s comforting embrace.
    “Is that what happened earlier?” Darlene asked. “You felt scared? There’s nothing to be frightened of, Dot. Mother says Brent is a wonderful man, and I know he’ll take good care of you.”
    “That’s not it.” Everything Dorothy Lynn longed to say sat in a jumbled pile in the pit of her stomach.
    “Is it . . .” Darlene hesitated. “Is it the wedding night? Because—”
    “No!” Dorothy Lynn interrupted, sparing her sister the embarrassment. She and Brent had shared enough kisses and passionate embraces to leave her more eager than anxious to experience more.
    Darlene pulled away. “Then what is it? You do love him, don’t you?”
    “Yes.” It was the first time anybody had asked her that question. “It just seems, sometimes, like it’s happening too fast.”
    “Seven weeks is plenty of time—”
    “All of it. Pa gets sick, and one night Ma brings the new pastor to dinner, and it seems the next we’re engaged. And now . . . it’s all decided for me. Where I’m going to live and who I’m going to be, without ever having a minute to live a life of my own.”
    “Pre-wedding jitters, that’s all.”
    Of course. Hadn’t she come to the same conclusion just moments ago? And here she was again, not knowing whether her fears or her faith would win out.
    “I know just the thing to cheer you up. Why don’t we leave Roy to take care of the boys, and you and I can go to the pictures?”
    “You know Ma don’t like us goin’ to the movies.”
    “And we might not go if she was here. But she’s not. And if she ever asks what we’ve done to entertain ourselves, we’ll say we went for a walk. Which we will—to