Read Online Touched by Carolyn Haines - Free Book Online

my hair up and then he grinned. He told me to go back and get some decent shoes that didn’t make me look like I lived on a pig farm and had to wade through mud every day. He also told me to buy some underthings and described what he wanted. He was still grinning when he asked if I wanted him to write down a list.
    Instead of going back to Gordon’s after I washed the dishes, I slipped out the back and cut across the train yard to go to the McVays’. It was hotter than blue blazes on the hard-packed dirt road, but my mind was whirling along as fast as my feet.
    What had the doctor said about Duncan? They had come back sometime during the night to leave the gift on the swing. The more I thought about it, the more I was certain JoHanna had put Will up to doing it. He wouldn’t have thought to buy something like that on his own. No man did. It was too much what I would have picked out myself, and men never thought that way. JoHanna had done it and then put Will up to signing his name so that I’d … what? Keep it? I hadn’t been able to think anymore along those lines because I didn’t know how to pursue it. In my experience, grown-ups did things to get something they wanted. But what could JoHanna and Will want from me? I had nothing to give them.
    The homestead came into view. I stopped to look for two things—Will’s red car and that damned rooster. My hand still burned when I washed dishes, the lye soap eating at the open area. It was healing without any infection, but I didn’t want to risk another encounter with Pecos.
    The red car was gone, but JoHanna was at the clothesline, bringing in the wash before the afternoon thunderstorm could arrive. She was folding the towels and dropping them down into her laundry basket, her back to the road. Pecos strutted back and forth beside her, his quick little rooster head darting this way and that as if he were boxing someone.
    “Mrs. McVay! JoHanna!” I called, ready to run if Pecos should move in my direction.
    JoHanna turned, her hand still on the line. When she saw me, she smiled and waved me over. My hesitation was obvious. “Pecos is fine as long as I’m here.” For good measure she reached down and tucked the rooster up under her arm.
    His beady black eyes drilled into me like pencil leads, but he didn’t make a squawk or ruffle a feather as I walked into the yard.
    “How’s Duncan?” I could see that JoHanna had aged in the past few days.
    She lifted her straw sunbonnet off her head and started to answer. I didn’t hear a word she said. Someone had butchered her hair. I knew I was standing there like a mouth-breather, but I couldn’t help it. There were places on her head where the shears had come so close it looked as though her scalp were burned, then other places where the growth was half an inch or more. Her beautiful chestnut hair was completely gone.
    JoHanna dropped the hat and ran her hand over her head. “It’s that bad, huh?”
    “What happened?”
    She stooped to get her hat, put it on her head, gave the rooster a toss out into the grass, and turned back to the clothesline. “Duncan.” It was all she said.
    I could almost feel the stiff bristles of hair beneath my hand, though I had not moved in her direction. “JoHanna.” I spoke her name on a whisper.
    “My lord, Mattie, you’re acting a total fool. It’s hair. It’ll grow back.” She folded another towel, her motions fluid and mechanical.
    “It was so beautiful.”
    “It’ll grow back.” Her voice was impatient, but when she turned to me she stopped folding her towel and smiled. “I made Duncan a braid of my hair to play with. We’ll grow out together.”
    At last I was able to focus my attention on something other than her ruined head. I looked at the window where Duncan’s beautiful peach curtains undulated in a tiny breeze. “What did the doctor in Mobile say?”
    “So the gossip is out.” JoHanna turned back to the clothesline and her work. Instead of putting the