Julia's Hope Read Online Free Page A

sturdy house, despite the lack of care. And I was glad to be away from the road and strangers, glad we weren’t hitchhiking through the night, trying to make it to Dewey’s before morning. I didn’t care if we ever got to Dewey’s. Illinois had been Sam’s promise. A job at the wheel plant. A place to stay. But there was nothing to that now. The plant would close just like Cooper’s back home, and Sam had even said that Dewey was thinking to go south and ask for work in the mines.
    I found myself hoping the storm would last for days on end, keeping us stranded here so we wouldn’t have to face the decision of what to do next. We could use the rest. If only we had food, nothing else would matter.
    Sam and Robert weren’t gone long. They came back with three dusty blankets they’d found in the closet of a bedroom where one of the broken windows was. Sam apologized for the blankets but said they were better than the ground and warmer than a bare wood floor.
    They’d found a pantry too, and the staircase going upstairs. That was it for the ground floor except for the kitchen and the sitting room we were in. Robert wanted to see the second floor, but Sam and I both told him no.
    I shook out the old blankets one by one, wondering why anyone would leave them behind. Especially the quilt, with its diagonal rows of alternating dark and light. Someone had pieced together this now-tattered quilt, perhaps for a child or an aging parent. Somebody had loved this house once. Where were they now? The thought was hard in my stomach. People don’t just walk away from a farm like this. They don’t up and leave a home unless they have no choice.
    I thought of our house in Harrisburg and wondered if there’d been a foreclosure at this house too, and another family, disheartened and humiliated, watching their possessions being auctioned away. But if that was the case, why was there no new owner? Why would a bank let such a house sit empty long enough for the spiders to lace webs in every doorway?
    I stretched out two blankets on the floor, one for each child. They would be warm enough with a blanket of our own on top of them. Sam and I would huddle together under the quilt tonight, I decided. We would manage with nothing under us. And I was glad the kids wouldn’t have to share a blanket like we’d done before. They would sleep warmer here. We owed a debt of gratitude to the owners of this place. Or the past owners. Whoever had left the blankets in the closet and the door wide open. Perhaps there would be a way to repay them someday.
    The storm raged outside as I prayed with Robert and Sarah and settled them down for the night. They liked my singing, so I sang a couple of hymns. Sam was just watching me again. Then we both sat quietly until we knew the children were asleep.
    “What are we gonna do, Julia?” Sam finally asked.
    I got up and reached for a candle. “I’m going to take another look at that kitchen.”
    I didn’t want him to follow me. But he did. I knew he would. I also knew it would plague him to know what I was thinking—that maybe it would still be storming tomorrow. And that I’d be glad of it, except for how it would complicate trying to find food outside. We’d have to use whatever we could now. We’d have to do whatever we could to make sure our children didn’t suffer.
    “What are you doing?” he asked me, sounding far away and bone weary.
    “Praying for something we can use.”
    I was going straight for the kitchen cupboards when I nearly stepped on something small and dark that none of us had noticed before. A dead bird. Good thing Sarah hadn’t seen it. She’d have mourned the poor thing sore. Sam picked it up off the floor and pitched it out the door for me. I stepped over the spot where it had been, pulled open a cupboard door, and held my candle inside. The cupboard held a bunch of old jars, most of them empty, but a few seemed to have something inside.
    Sam had just come up behind me.