Read Online Come Rain or Come Shine by Jan Karon - Free Book Online Page B

Chickens ruffling their feathers and dusting themselves, old dogs sleeping, quail mothers followed by their obedient broods—in times past, any sort of farm life would have had her up and running to the drawing board. Her contentment was a turn of events completely foreign to him and he loved it. Now he was the only child, as it were, enjoying the best of her daily affections. She had absolutely adored creating all those books, she said, yet nothing charmed or drove or inspired her to do it again.
    She had been known to channel leftover energy into all manner of unexpected things, once laying waste with a hammer to the plaster of their kitchen walls, then finishing them after the manner of ‘ancient Italian villas.’
    â€˜So what do you want to do?’ he said. Maybe more readings at bookstores—she liked that sort of thing.
    â€˜I want to . . .’ She was pensive, choosing her words. ‘. . .
live
. Just that. Helping the kids get ready for the wedding, sitting here on the glider, making bow ties for the dogs—I’m finding all that enough.
    â€˜Then there’s sleeping with my husband and listening to rain on a tin roof. Greatly enough!’
    â€˜Anything else mulling around in there? Some deep, ungratified desire?’
    â€˜The RV trip, remember? I’d love to do that. See the Oregon Trail, the national parks, I don’t know. Wear a ball cap and jeans, sit in the passenger seat and knit . . .’
    â€˜You don’t know how to knit.’
    She laughed; he took her hand and kissed it.
    Their moderately old marriage burned with a steady flame, and that too was greatly enough.

    Having sent a link to Olivia and Beth, she took her iPad around to everyone she could locate.
    â€˜What do you think?’ she said, showing them afull-screen image. As for her own thinking, this dress was only sort-of-maybe-kind-of, but she could be wrong. She was getting the desperate feeling that a lot of her bride friends had experienced in their search for the perfect dress. Of course they had started earlier and hadn’t refused the help of their mothers, who were deeply invested in getting it right.
    Father Tim moved his glasses down his nose and peered at the subject of interest. She figured he had seen a few brides in his time, he had good taste, he would know.
    â€˜More than a hundred, I wager.’
    â€˜Less!’
    Cynthia was grating cheddar for her famous pimiento cheese.
    â€˜What do you think?’
    â€˜I’ll be darned. Smocking! We never see smocking anymore.’
    â€˜Vintage,’ she said, defending it somehow.
    Lily weighed in. ‘Looks big through th’ waist. If it don’t fit, my sister Violet can fix it. And if she can’t, Arbutus can. Arbutus is married to Junior Bentley.’
    â€˜I know.’
    â€˜And lives in a brick house,’ bragged Lily for the hundredth time, ‘with two screen porches.’
    Beth’s review was totally brief.
    No!
    Olivia’s e-mail was diplomatic.
You will look beautiful no matter what you wear.
    Nobody liked this dress, herself included.
    Bummer.

    Willie had bushhogged the north strip today and would mow it with a lawn tractor on the fourteenth. As for himself, he and Harley had finished getting the floor timbers in, shop-vacc’d the loft and old grain room, and weed-whacked around the barn—a job to be done again prior to the fourteenth. Then he and Lace had cleaned bird and guinea poop off a vast target site beneath the rafters.
    â€˜Look,’ she said, beaming, ‘I have calluses.’
    â€˜Do you like having calluses?’
    â€˜I do! I’m going to be a farmwife, you know.’
    The Harley/Amber issue seemed to be fading from the collective household mind. Willie reported seeing the Toyota parked at the mailbox yesterday. Harley had gone out and stuck his head in at the passenger side but not for long, end of report.
    â€˜So