Read Online Sarah's Promise by Leisha Kelly - Free Book Online

just to leave more for her babies.
    I couldn’t help feeling riled inside. Somebody should have seen to things better than this, if there was any possible way. Somebody at least should have had most of this woodpile split long before this.
    I knew plain enough that they didn’t have no telephone, but I was aching to get myself to one. Why couldn’t the lady have given me the name of somebody in town so I could go, relay the word, and know someone would be heading out here to help? I couldn’t leave them like this. But it pained me awful to stay, knowing I was worrying my loved ones if I didn’t get word to them.
    I whacked at that wood like it was gonna help matters for me to let myself get angry. Didn’t look like I had much choice in the matter. I at least had to do this much. At least get ’em a decent woodpile to last through the day and night. My conscience wouldn’t allow any less. Just thinking of that miserable little girl with her lips blue from cold made my gut squeeze.
    But what about food? There was a chicken house off to one side of the barn, but I hadn’t heard a squawk to know whether they even had chickens. I prayed so. That biggest kid could gather in what eggs there might be, if that was the case. And they had the rest of the milk. Not much else to last ’em very long. One meal, from what I’d seen. I prayed there was a pantry shelf someplace with plenty more on it, but the house was small, and the kitchen was tiny. I hadn’t seen anyplace but the cupboard for food.
    Lord God, what are you doing? First you take me past a wreck on the road and now this! It’s not exactly what I had in mind when I prayed you’d use me and use this trip. Lord, help. I don’t know what more to do here. And I want to get back on the road. But can I? In the face of this?
    There had to be some assurance somehow. Some way I could know I wouldn’t be leaving these people to freeze or starve if Mr. Platten didn’t get home and they were alone again tomorrow. Truth be told, it wouldn’t seem right for them to be alone even an hour, with the only able-bodied among them no more than eight years old. Three sick little ones. And a mother pretty near at the end of her rope. It wasn’t right. It made me sick inside it was so all-fired wrong.
    Sometimes this world stinks , I complained to God. There’s good people, children, that are blind, or deaf, or hurting. And people like these that are dirt poor and don’t know what to do about it. God, what are you gonna do? What do you want me to do?
    I prayed that God would send Mr. Platten, wherever he was. Or their kin. Or somebody. I filled my arms with split wood again and carried it to the house, thinking to ask Mrs. Platten again if there wasn’t somebody I could fetch for her or get word to. Surely even a neighbor would care enough to be neighborly and help them manage until Mr. Platten got home.
    But she said they hadn’t lived here all that long and she didn’t know anybody they could call on.
    “I gotta try,” I told her.
    She looked so sick. She couldn’t hardly answer me except to take to crying again. “You’ve already . . . already answered our prayers. We thank you so much. We . . . we can make it now . . .”
    One of the little girls took to crying too, and Bennie went to bring his sister to their mother’s lap.
    “Maybe she’s hungry,” he suggested with his sad eyes staring up at his mother’s face.
    “It’s not lunchtime yet,” she said real quiet, even though it had to be getting close to that time by now. The little girl buried her face in her mother’s blouse and kept right on fussing.
    “If she’s hungry, it’d prob’ly do her good to go ahead an’ have something to eat,” I told the woman. “I can get it if you want. So’s you stay off your ankle.”
    She turned her eyes to me, and the fear was in them again. But she didn’t answer.
    “Don’t have much food, do you?”
    She shook her head.
    “How long’s your husband been