Frost on My Window Read Online Free Page B

tales.
    “Don’t know about you, but I’ve been taking notes for some time. How you think I kept your Momma from leaving me?” Pop replied.
    “By eating?” I joked.
    We both burst into laughter. When I looked up with tears in my eyes, Mom and Rena had the two of us in their sights.
    I watched Mom raise her eyebrows. “Anything the two of you’d like to share?” she asked.
    “Nah,” I responded.
    “Are you sure?” She looked from Pop’s smiling face back to mine.
    “Uh-huh.”
    “Positive,” Pop answered, giving my hand a little squeeze.
    I couldn’t get the smile off my face. Later that night, as I was getting ready for bed, Rena walked into the bathroom and sat down on the cushioned toilet seat. I automatically handed her the toothpaste. Taking the facial soap and rubbing it on the washcloth, I began to scrub my face.
    “So what were you and Pop laughing about?” Rena asked in between brushing her teeth. My eyes were closed but I could imagine her sitting there with her legs crossed holding the toothbrush like a scepter.
    “Food,” I replied before bending over the sink and cupping my hands underneath the lukewarm water. I took a breath and dunked my face in my hands, rinsing twice before reaching for the towel.
    “Food?” Rena parroted.
    I nodded my head and smiled. “Mom’s cooking. That’s the only reason Pop thinks she stays married to him. To fatten him up.”
    Rena let out a peal of laugher that bounced off the tiles of the bathroom and gladdened my heart. My father’s weight was a mystery. The man I saw today looked exactly like the man in the old black and white photos. Maybe some extra lines about his mouth from laughing too hard, a little less hair on the top of his head and reading glasses, but no heavier.
    “She asked me again,” Rena said before spitting.
    I paused from spreading the moisturizer over my face. “What?”
    “She asked why you left after graduation.”
    “What did you tell her?” I asked.
    “Same thing. More money, better opportunity, and all that jazz.”
    “She buy it?” I rubbed the night cream in. Rena shook her head and resumed brushing her teeth.
    “Thought so,” I muttered.
    “Sooner or later, you’re going to have to tell her.”
    “What am I going to say, Rena? I couldn’t stand the cold? I grew up making snowmen in the middle of January.”
    “Gotta do better than that.”
    “How about I needed to keep your wild behind out of trouble?” I moved back, letting her rinse her toothbrush and mouth.
    “That might work,” Rena smiled.
    “This shouldn’t matter. We’re back. Just two hours away.”
    “Close, but not too close. Ain’t that right, cuz?”
    I grinned. “Exactly.”

Chapter 4
    Accidentally waking up before the alarm went off, I lay motionless underneath the ivory-colored canopy of my bed. As a little girl, I’d never want to leave it on Saturday mornings. As an adult, I rolled over, wiped the crust out of my eyes, and gazed out the window to see the pale glow of sunrise reach through branches of an old oak tree.
    Pulling away the light quilt, I sat up and put my feet on the cool hardwood floor. I stood and opened the closet door, then fit my feet into gray bunny slippers and went downstairs. The smell of chicory-laced coffee met me on the bottom stair.
    I paused, wiping the cobwebs of sleep from my eyes as I entered the kitchen. Morning sunlight had begun to spread over the linoleum floor. Pop’s aloe plants lined the windowsill. The automatic coffeemaker stood filled and Mom’s yellow elephant clock still sat ticking away in the corner.
    “What’s got you up so early, pumpkin?” came Pop’s voice.
    I turned to see my father seated at the table with one hand gripping a coffee cup and the other paused in the act of turning the newspaper page. My heart contracted and I felt the threat of tears behind my eyes.
    “Nothing. Just woke up early.”
    Warmth suffused every cell of my body as happiness I hadn’t felt in a long time