Read Online Restoring Harmony by Joelle Anthony - Free Book Online Page A

mom’s descriptions. The chairs were threadbare, and the china cabinet was empty and covered in a layer of dust. They’d obviously been hard up for a lot longer than he was even willing to admit. Grandma saw me looking around and gave me a lopsided smile. Had she followed the conversation or not?
    “None of us are going to Canada,” Grandpa said. “If you don’t have any money, then you’re stuck here, too.”

11
     
     
     
     
     
    A HALF HOUR LATER, AFTER GRANDPA HAD USED THE supplies from my emergency kit to bandage up my feet, we were all sitting there absorbed in our own thoughts. I knew I should be concentrating on ways to raise some money, but honestly, all I could think about was food. I’d finished all of Poppy’s snacks the night before, and my stomach was growling.
    “Ummm, Grandpa?” I asked.
    He looked over at me.
    “Is there . . . I mean . . .” This was hard. I’d been raised to wait for someone to offer food.
    “What?” he asked.
    “Did I . . . ummm . . . did I miss breakfast?”
    “You’re hungry?” he asked.
    “Starving!”
    He stood up. “Come on. I’ll see what we have.”
    I hobbled after him to the kitchen counter and climbed up on a bar stool. I wasn’t expecting much, nothing like home, but when he took out a cutting board and knife and chose two battered tomatoes out of a ceramic bowl, I got a little worried. Tomatoes for breakfast? He sliced them nice and thick, just like my mother always did. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that if there’s one thing I hated, it was tomatoes. I figured I’d just force them down.
    “We’re out of pepper,” he said, sprinkling the slices with salt.
    He handed me three on a saucer. On another plate he placed one slice, and on the third, he put two slices, which he cut into tiny pieces and took out to Grandma. I limped behind him, back to the chair, and sat with my food balanced on my knees.
    “Three is too many,” I said to him. “Have one of mine. I’m not that hungry.”
    “You said you were starving.”
    “Figure of speech.”
    “I’m not a charity case,” he said, but he didn’t stop me when I slid a tomato onto his plate.
    The food situation was clearly worse than I thought. They both looked skinny, but because I didn’t really know them, I wasn’t sure if that was just how they normally were or not. If he was willing to accept my food, though, things must be pretty bad. I slipped a bite into my mouth and swallowed it whole.
    “Did you grow these?” I asked.
    “They come over the fence.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Most days the neighbor throws vegetables over the fence,” he explained. “Not just tomatoes, though. Sometimes there’s zucchini. We used to get a few strawberries, but not anymore. I guess strawberries are done for the year. And once we got a couple of onions and some pretty small carrots.”
    Was that all they had to eat? Grandma inhaled her tomatoes and stared ravenously at mine, so I cut them into small pieces and when Grandpa got up to take his plate to the sink I slipped them to her. She stuffed the bits into her mouth all at once with her fingers, and I hoped she wouldn’t choke. The last thing I wanted to have to do was tell Mom I’d killed her mother.
    “Show me this fence,” I said, when Grandpa returned.
    He led me out through French doors onto a huge covered deck and down some steps into an overgrown yard. “Wow. You’ve got more land than I expected,” I said.
    “Goes all the way down to the creek,” he said. “Half an acre.”
    “You’d never know it from the front.”
    He shrugged. “Hey, look.” He pointed to where half a dozen tomatoes lay on the ground along the bottom of the fence. “Lettuce too!” he shouted, grabbing up a small head of romaine with brown edges.
    I handed him a couple of bruised tomatoes. “Have you ever tried to talk to the neighbor?”
    Grandpa’s smile vanished. “Leave well enough alone, Molly.”
    “I don’t have enough money to get