Mackinnons #02 For All the Right Reasons Read Free Page B

skirt lying across her lap. There were now three lines where the hem had been. “I’m going to wear this skirt out hemming it,” she said wistfully, that far-off look in her eyes again. “I wish it would wear out completely.”
    “You should be wishing for a new skirt, or at least that you stop getting taller. You’re already half a head taller than most of the men around, and men are scarce as hen’s teeth since the war. You keep shooting up tall as a bean pole and you’ll never get a man to marry.”
    “I’m not that tall, and I’ve told you before I’m not going to marry anyway.”
    “What do you want to do? Stay here and grow as hard and unforgiving as this measly piece of land?”
    “I don’t feel the same way you do. This is our home. I love it here. I don’t find it any harder or any more unforgiving than life.”
    As much as Katherine loved the land, Karin hated it. Once, when they were thirteen or fourteen and walking home from school after a rain, Katherine said in that enraptured way she had of speaking sometimes, “Oh, how I love to smell the earth and its wetness. Don’t you?” To which Karin had fervently replied:
    “No, I don’t, and please don’t say that in front of anyone. They’ll think you’re as daft as old Mrs. Tribble. I can see it now. I’ll be the laughingstock of the countryside. Everyone will be telling stories of how you go around with your nose plowing the dirt like a pig.”
    Karin eyed her sister across the table, feeling her irritation reach new heights just remembering something like that, and the way Katherine had just looked at her in a sympathetic way and said, “Then I’m sorry you don’t. You see the roses Karin, but you never smell their lovely scent.” Her tone of pity had been something Karin didn’t understand. But then, she had never understood Katherine. And their father hadn’t understood her either. Only their mother had.
    Years ago, Katherine and Karin had hidden in the broom closet one evening, listening to their parents talk over a slice of pie at the kitchen table after supper.
    “That Katherine,” their mother had said, “she is a sight for sore eyes.” But that hadn’t bothered Karin any, because their father had said, “I suppose she is—it’s a cinch she’s nothing like Karin. Karin is the picture of perfection.” Karin had looked smugly at Katherine, but Katherine didn’t look put out in the least. Karin didn’t understand that at all. Didn’t Katherine comprehend that it was much better to be called the “picture of perfection” than “a sight for sore eyes”?
    All this remembering made her tired, so Karin gathered up her things, and dropped her sewing basket in its usual place beside the hutch in the kitchen and went outside for a walk. She was feeling left out again, just as she always did when Katherine got reflective and stirred up old memories in her own head. She couldn’t understand how her sister did it, how she managed to call up so much from the past. She walked toward the creek, hearing the bullfrogs in the distance.
    Alex Mackinnon.
    Lordy, Lordy, it had been a while since she’d thought of him. She tried to remember what he looked like, but aside from being way too thin and having a badly cropped shock of black hair and a face as handsome as the devil, she couldn’t conjure up much. And when she tried, the image of Jester Brewer’s face kept coming to the front of her mind. Jester was the banker’s son and quite the most eligible bachelor in Limestone County, and he had been paying quite a bit of attention to her lately. He wasn’t much to look at, but money did a whole lot to offset a homely face. A girl could do worse than Jester Brewer. Yes sirree, she most certainly could.
    Karin walked for quite a spell, until she saw the light go off in Katherine’s bedroom. She made her way back to the house, glad Katherine had gone to sleep. She didn’t like to talk about the past like Katherine did. And why