Read Online Equal Access by A. E. Branson - Free Book Online

needed
a recipe and the right ingredients for any dish beyond “the
basics.” Dulsie could look in the pantry and the refrigerator, fix
items together and produce a meal. She would ask for Shad’s help
whenever she had multiple tasks in operation, but otherwise like a
typical Leeds woman Dulsie preferred to hone her cooking skills
without someone less inventive in her way.
    “I want to get all this stuff ready to go.”
Dulsie began setting out the squash. “Maybe after lunch we can head
over to your folks and see what the river’s doing.”
    The back side of Uncle Pax’s farm was
bordered by the Osage River. She and Shad had spent many hot
afternoons swimming there.
    “You want me to snap beans?”
    “No.” Dulsie smirked as she glanced at him.
“I’ll take it from here.”
    Shad saw his opportunity to begin taking
action on his discovery about Wally. Before he could do anything
else, he’d decided, Shad needed to collect more information on the
man. “How long are you gonna take?”
    “This won’t take long.” Dulsie’s smirk
deepened. “But I have some other things to do, so you have time to
go play on the computer.”
    Shad couldn’t figure out how it seemed Dulsie
would keep reading his mind. “How did you know...?”
    “My spider senses are tingling.” Dulsie
glanced at him. “You asked how long it would take me, not if there
was something else I wanted you to do. That means there’s something
else you want to do, and usually that’s work on the computer.”
    Shad half wondered how long it would be
before Dulsie started finishing sentences for him. “Oh.” He turned
away to leave the kitchen but glanced at her again as Shad
approached the doorway to the living room. “You didn’t have to make
it sound so obvious .”
    He heard Dulsie chuckle as Shad entered the
living room and immediately turned right to step into a small
hallway. The door in front of him led to the bathroom. On his right
was their bedroom, and to his left was the spare bedroom they used
as an office.
    After washing up in the bathroom, Shad went
into the bedroom to retrieve his laptop before strolling into the
office. He sat at the scraped up but solid wood desk he’d bought at
a garage sale nearly ten years ago and pushed back the monitor of
their desktop computer to set the laptop in its place and switch it
on.
    The laptop was newer and more powerful, a
gift from Dulsie and both their parents when he completed law
school but before he passed the bar. Dulsie had been able to learn
from Shad exactly what he would want in a personal computer and saw
to it this laptop filled the bill. It was the perfect gift. Before
he gave in to the insane idea of becoming a lawyer, Shad had
figured on going into computer programming as a career.
    Actually he had originally wanted to be a
farmer like Pap, but Pap told Shad to “get a day job” because it
was increasingly difficult for a family to survive exclusively from
the earnings on a family farm, even one as large as theirs. Pap had
managed to remain a full-time farmer because Mam held a job at the
school. The only reason Pap didn’t feel somewhat emasculated by the
fact his wife was the first one in generations to have to hold a
job was because Mam actually enjoyed her work as a secretary.
    The choice for Shad’s career had seemed
pretty obvious. He had no trouble spending long hours completely
alone, and Shad preferred to deal with facts rather than more
subjective problems. His talent surfaced only months after his
parents brought him into their home. Mam got a new computer in the
school office where she worked, and the change in programming was
giving her fits. One day after classes she asked Shad if he wanted
to look at it and see if the contraption made any sense to him.
    It made perfect sense. Computers were utterly
logical with their specific commands and predetermined responses.
By the time Shad entered high school his parents bought a used
computer which he managed to hone