Read Online The Sweetgum Knit Lit Society by Beth Pattillo - Free Book Online Page B

to roll her eyes. Her mother was always grounding her, but she never enforced it. “I was just hanging out with Kristen and those guys. We lost track of the time.”
    Her mother snorted. “Yeah, right.” She paused. “What’s that under your arm?”
    The hairs on the back of Hannah’s neck stood up. “Nothing. Just a book for school.”
    “Let me see.” Her mother stuck out a bony hand. The men and the drinking and the cigarette smoke made her look twenty years older than the other moms. Hannah was always relieved, at least partly, when her mother didn’t show up for school music programs or the class picnic at the end of the year.
    Her mother read the title of the book and snorted. “Baby stuff,” she said, flipping the book back towards Hannah, who caught it in self-defense.
    “It was assigned,” Hannah said in the dead tones she’d learned to use with her mother. No hint of emotion whatsoever. Her mom would jump on any whiff of pleasure or pain and stamp it out. Her mother wanted her to be as numb as she was.
    “You’re still grounded.”
    “Okay.”
    She could feel her mom’s eyes on her, but she didn’t meet them. These kinds of nights were the worst of all, when her mom was spoiling for a fight. Finally, she sighed and waved her hand, cigarette trailing smoke, toward the back of the trailer.
    “Go on. Get the hell out of here. Gentry might be here soon, and the sight of you just pisses him off.”
    “Yes ma’am.” She walked away, not too slow and not toofast, swallowing the words she wanted to say. That if Gentry wasn’t here by nine, he wasn’t coming. That her mother was a fool to take up with a man like that. That someday Hannah would leave this trailer and never, ever come back.
    She closed her bedroom door carefully behind her. No use trying to slip into the bathroom to brush her teeth and wash her face. If her mom heard her, it would only give her another excuse to yell at her. Or worse.
    Hannah laid the book on the scarred dresser next to the bottle of hand lotion she’d gotten her mother for Christmas. She’d fished it out of the trash can the next day and kept it. She’d saved the money herself to buy it, and she wasn’t about to let it go to waste just because her mother thought it wasn’t expensive enough, said it smelled like crap.
    Hannah pulled on the old T-shirt she slept in and turned out the light. Her bed was a mattress, no box spring, tucked into a corner of the room. She could get up at five, when her mother would be out like a light, and take a shower. Maybe even read some of the new book once the sun came up.
    A Little Princess
. What could a girl like the one on the cover of the book, a girl in a pink dress with long golden curls, possibly know about her life?
    She drifted off to sleep thinking of Courtney McGavin’s mom and what it would’ve been like to ride home in that minivan, glad that no one could see the tears sliding down her cheeks.

    “You’re going to Nashville with who?” Jeff sat on the edge of their king-size bed clipping his toenails. Merry hated it when he did that. He never picked up the results of his effort, just left them there on the expensive hardwood for her to sweep up. When they’d first been married, she hadn’t minded picking up after him. Now she minded a lot.
    “I’m going with that teenager Eugenie’s brought into the Knit Lit Society. I really didn’t have much choice in the matter once Eugenie got the idea in her head.”
    “And so I have to give up my golf day tomorrow for some random girl we don’t even know?”
    “Just this one Saturday. I’ll be back by dinnertime. Maybe before.”
    He tossed the nail clippers onto his nightstand and rose up off the bed just enough to pull back the covers and climb in. “Some other week, Merry. I know you think golf is for fun, but I’m entertaining some potential clients.”
    “Jeff—”
    “Next Saturday. Or maybe the one after that.” He smiled.
    “I can help out. I just