Marry Me Read Free Page A

measures.
    But it didn’t take much to illuminate the interior. A bed, a table, a couple of chairs, a tiny corner allocated for the kitchen. But for Emily, who’d lived in a mansion but who’d never truly owned much of her own, it was like having a pile of presents handed to her. They were all around her, waiting for her to unwrap and discover some wonderful thing inside. She couldn’t wait.
    The floor was wood. Warped and dull, studded with knots and wide gaps puttied with gray. But good firm wood, she thought fondly, tapping it with her toe, ever so much better than the dirt she’d expected. She chose to ignore the rodent droppings; she’d get rid of them, both the leavings and the creature who’d left them, soon enough.
    There were two windows, the glassless openings firmly shuttered. Thin blue paper covered the walls, great sheets of it curling down from the ceiling, and it crinkled beneath her touch like wrapping paper.
    She pushed on the corner of the table. Obviously homemade, it was sturdy all the same, the top sanded so smooth that she could glide her hand over it without fear of slivers. Who made this? she wondered suddenly. Nothing fancy, not the slightest bit elegant, but done with pride, the legs even, the top level, as if intended to serve a family for years.
    A shelf laden with books was fastened to the wall over the bench next to the table. She lifted her lantern and tilted her head to make out the titles. James, Hardy, Stevenson, several by Twain. Even Thoreau. A couple of ancient copies of American Farmer magazine. She smiled when she discovered a copy of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes ; Kate had read it to her when she was eleven. Grimaced when she came across The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire . Try though she had, she’d never managed to slog past page twenty-five, and had finally managed to “lose” it somewhere in the depths of the clinic. Interesting that these books had meant enough to whomever had lived there to drag them all the way out when surely they’d needed lumber and flour more, but not enough for them to take the books when they left.
    Whoever’d built this place, they’d surely left it fast. There were dishes in the dry sink, any water long evaporated, the bottom thick with scum. An opened tin can, empty except for the black crusting its sides, lay on the floor beside the stove.
    A shadowed corner sprouted a pile of rusting tools: a hoe, a rake, a bow-handled saw. A rope bunk attached to the far wall held a pile of sheets and blankets. Clothing dangled limply on hooks. A gorgeous green silk dress trimmed with wide bands of creamy lace shimmered against the splotchy, papered walls. One good afternoon of work out there surely would have ruined it…a wedding dress, perhaps? Never worn again?
    The rest of the clothes belonged to a man. A big one, she thought, lifting a faded blue shirt and measuring its shoulders against her outstretched arm.
    What could have caused them to leave so quickly? A sudden inheritance, perhaps, that rendered these things no longer valuable. Or a family emergency, one from which they’d fully intended to return quickly but soon changed their minds.
    The air simmered with memories, tangible, out of her reach. Someone else’s memories.
    She set the lamp on the nearest chair and lowered herself to the bed. The mattress crackled. She stretched out, enveloped in the musty smell of old, dried grass, testing it out, and found it fairly comfortable.
    The activity of the past few days hit her all at once, a wave of sapping fatigue. She’d slept little on the train, too excited, afraid to miss a moment, abuzz with anticipation.
    But now she was here. Home.
    All her precious supplies were still stacked out where Murphy had left them. She probably should bring them in, but there was no one around to steal them. The afternoon’s clear skies and mild breezes promised a lovely night. And oh, this was so comfortable. The wind was low, sloughing around the