Read Online Hopeful by Shelley Shepard Gray - Free Book Online

is that? Do you have friends there?”
    “No. I . . . I am just anxious to leave Ohio.”
    Anxious? Miriam’s interest was piqued. “Why are you so anxious? You just got here!”
    “No reason.” Her shadows returned. “Well, there is a reason, but it’s nothing that I want to talk about.”
    “Are you sure? I’m a good listener.”
    “I’m positive. Besides, I’d much rather talk about you.”
    “Me? There’s nothing to say about me.” Besides, she’d just been brushed off rather ungracefully. She wanted to know more about why Mary Kate would be so anxious to leave the area.
    “Are you sure?” Pushing the magazine to one side, Mary Kate gazed at her with concern. “You forget that I know you pretty well. There’s something going on, isn’t there? Something happened and you’re not happy.”
    Obviously, what Mary Kate said was true. She was still depressed and embarrassed about the mix-up with Junior. Plus, she was going to have to figure out how to convince Mary Kate to sit with Junior at lunch. Since getting to know her friend, she’d noticed a true hesitance to meet new people, especially men. That was strange since it was obvious every eligible man couldn’t get enough of Mary Kate!
    Of course, she wanted Mary Kate to be happy. And with time, she was sure she would be happy that Mary Kate and Junior had found happiness together. But so far, she wasn’t having too good of a time pushing aside her jealousy.
    “It’s nothing.” Noticing the time, Miriam closed her magazine, too. “I better get on home. I promised Mamm I’d help her do some baking for church.”
    Mary Kate picked up the stack of magazines. “Are you sure you don’t mind walking these magazines back to the library?”
    “Not at all. I’ll take them over to the library right after work one day next week. I’m out of books.”
    “You read more than anyone I’ve ever met.”
    Miriam smiled. It was true she loved to read. She loved to imagine she was living an exciting life, filled with invitations and scores of men wanting to catch her attention. “You make that sound like a bad thing. Which, I might add, is not a good thing for a schoolteacher.”
    “I like to read,” Mary Kate said weakly.
    “Sometimes,” Miriam teased.
    Looking a bit embarrassed, she nodded. “Sometimes is right. I like to read but I’ve always been better at math and science. If kinner only needed to learn arithmetic, my life would be much easier. But all this spelling and cursive and reading gets the best of me. I run out of patience too fast, I’m afraid.”
    “Then why did you take the job?”
    “Because I had to.” Lowering her voice, she added, “But I don’t think I’m a very good teacher. And I’m also starting to worry that coming to Sugarcreek was the wrong decision.”
    Mary Kate sighed and gazed out the window. “Plus, I’ve got one little girl who needs a lot of help.”
    “What kind of help?”
    “She needs a reading tutor. Maybe even just a reading buddy. You know, someone to help her gain confidence. To make things worse, her brother came up to school on Friday afternoon. We had a little conference about Kaylene and discussed what we should do to help her.”
    “What’s wrong with that?”
    “I don’t know. I had the feeling that he didn’t understand why I didn’t have more ideas for how to help her.” Sounding a bit defensive, she continued. “What that man doesn’t understand is that I’m responsible for all the children, from my tiny first-graders to my older students getting ready to graduate from the eighth grade. There are only so many hours in the day, you know.”
    “Yes, I suppose so.” Miriam felt sorry for the little girl. She was starting to get the feeling that Mary Kate had already given up on her. “If you get desperate, let me know. I’m sure I’d love to read with her.”
    Mary Kate’s eyes widened. “Do you mean that?”
    “Of course.”
    “Is there any way you would stop by the school