Messenger by Moonlight Read Free

most of the time he kept it to himself. Annie knew that was because Frank was like Pa when it came to religion. Neither of them had any use for it.
    One thing she did remember clearly was the day after Ma’s funeral, when Emmet brought Ma’s Bible to breakfast with him, planning to read one of Ma’s favorite passages to the four of them. One she’d underlined, he said. But Emmet didn’t so much as get the Bible opened before Pa grabbed it and threw it across the room. Then he stormed out the back door, leaving his eggs and grits to grow cold. After that, Emmet did his Bible reading when Pa wasn’t around. When Annie mentioned remembering Ma reciting the Shepherd’s Psalm, Emmet helped her learn it—on the sly. Frank never showed any interest.
    Emmet had also talked about Joseph and God’s keeping track of him when he’d told his sweetheart about the Paxtons’ losing the farm. Sixteen-year-old Luvina Aiken hadpromised to wait, but Annie had witnessed that promise, and while she knew very little about love, she knew quite a lot about emotions, and it seemed to her that pale, prim Luvina’s were decidedly lukewarm. She hadn’t shed a tear. It seemed to Annie that a woman in love ought to show a little more enthusiasm.
    Annie hoped she was wrong. For all she knew, the girl was making quilts for her hope chest and counting the days until she could keep house for Emmet. In the meantime, Annie had her own dreams, and they revolved around keeping house, too—for her brothers in St. Jo. As the wagon creaked along the rutted road, Annie closed her eyes and envisioned it. Four rooms would do, one for living and cooking, and three for sleeping. They would paint the exterior white and the trim blue. She would ask Frank to build window boxes where she’d plant sweet peas to spill out and down like a blooming waterfall.
    When she really let her imagination fly, Annie envisioned a front porch where she could sit and have her morning coffee and keep an eye on everything going on just beyond a picket fence nearly hidden beneath yards of rambling rosebushes. She imagined a vegetable garden and a medium-sized dog to bark and announce company, and a cat to keep mice out of the pantry.
    Once they had jobs and a new home in St. Jo., Emmet would realize that losing the farm was for the best. He certainly deserved better than a battered cabin and a drunken father and land that grew very little besides waist-high thistles. In St. Joseph, he could work toward something better—the future he wanted with Luvina. They could all work toward something better.
    Annie hadn’t said anything about it to Frank or Emmetyet, but she’d decided that as soon as they were settled she would see about getting a job as a cook. Ma had been a cook at a big hotel when she met Pa, and while the Paxtons had never been able to afford much in the way of
cuisine
—Ma said that meant fancy cooking—still, Annie remembered her doing things like sprinkling cinnamon on grits. She remembered bunches of herbs hanging from twine strung between the rafters of the cabin. She remembered smiles around the supper table.
    She would get a job as a cook and learn new things and one day she would gather her family around the table and serve delicious food. Instead of gulping down whatever was before them for the sole purpose of staving off their ever-present hunger, they would take their time. They would smile and say things like,
Trying something new? We love your cooking, Ma. How come everything’s always so good? We love you, Ma.
There was a shadowy “Pa” somewhere in that daydream, too, and now that they were leaving the farm, Annie let herself think about the possibilities. Maybe she’d meet “him” in St. Jo. She allowed a little smile.
The Lord is my shepherd.
As far as Annie was concerned, the farther they got from the farm, the more the future shimmered with bright promise.

    The world seemed a little less “shimmery” as the day went on—mostly because of