Read Online Kentucky Sunrise by Fern Michaels - Free Book Online

it’s going to be from now on. I’d like some flowers here on the table and maybe some in the clay pots under the windowsill. You can water them when you do the ones on the front porch.”
    Emmie heard the housekeeper mumbling as she made her way out to the back porch. “Take this trash to the Dumpster, Gertie. Don’t bag it and leave it on the porch anymore. Do it now before you forget!”
    â€œI am my mother’s daughter,” Emmie said over and over as she made her way to the barn. “I don’t know if it’s something to be proud of or not.”
    Time will tell, she thought.

3
    Emmie stared down at her sleeping daughter. How sweet and innocent she looked in sleep. She lowered herself gingerly to the bed. She really had to see a doctor about her back. Hot soaks in the tub and the deep penetrating ointments she rubbed on daily weren’t helping at all. She’d swallowed bottles of aspirin, so many in fact, Gertie had asked her if she was hoarding them. Nothing seemed to be working. Her hand went out absentmindedly, to scratch Cookie behind his ears. The little fluff ball licked her hand before he settled himself more snugly in the crook of Gabby’s knees.
    Emmie continued to stare at her daughter, seeing a strong resemblance to Buddy, her ex-husband, in the sweep of her cheek and the extra-long curly lashes that fringed her bright blue eyes. Thank God she hadn’t inherited his deafness.
    Emmie had known Buddy from childhood; he was the son of a neighboring Thoroughbred horse breeder. When his parents were killed, Nealy took him into her home and cared for him. Buddy and Emmie had attended the same school for the hearing- and speech-impaired, where they learned to sign.
    Buddy had been the perfect friend, and they had looked out for one another. It was inevitable that they would marry. At least her mother had said it was inevitable. Emmie could no longer remember what she had thought.
    She leaned back against the footboard trying to ease the pain in her back as well as taking pressure off her knees. She looked at the tight stretch of the jeans over her knees and flinched. Because she didn’t want to think about what she called “my condition,” she switched her mental gears and thought about her ex-husband, Buddy.
    They had been happy enough because of familiarity, but it wasn’t the happiness or love of romance novels. It was just a comfortable way of life. She supposed she’d been happy, but what did she really have to compare that happiness to? Nothing. Then, one day, fear had allowed her to cry out. Long months of speech therapy ensued, and eventually she was able to talk normally. Buddy had been furious. Not that he ever said so in words. She could see it on his face when she spoke with people, sometimes forgetting to sign in front of him and voicing her thoughts aloud. He’d drawn away from her, little by little, and she hadn’t been able to recapture the old, easy familiarity. Maybe she hadn’t tried hard enough. And sometimes she thought it was Buddy who hadn’t tried hard enough.
    Suspecting she might be pregnant, wary of telling Buddy, she’d planned a romantic cruise, hoping the time would be right to tell him then. It hadn’t worked that way at all. Buddy had been surly and angry during the whole cruise, leaving her to fend for herself while he stayed in the stateroom and read stacks of books from the ship’s library. Then, the day they disembarked, he’d left her standing on the gangplank, saying he was filing for a divorce.
    Emmie squirmed on the bed, her body burning with shame at the scene on the gangplank. She’d clutched at him, begged him not to leave her. He’d shaken her off like she was a stray dog. Her hands went to her burning face. She’d screamed at him, promising she would stop talking if that was what he wanted.
    â€œToo late,” he’d signed back. “I don’t love