Out of Darkness Read Online Free Page B

which was the same as all the others.
    He took his hat off in church and rested it on his knee. He did not know if he was hoping for the kids to come or hoping for them to stay away.
    A letter arrived in July. The grandfather wrote that the twins could come, but only if Henry took in the older girl as well. She was nearly grown and would help look after them.
    For years Henry had worked not to think of her. When he did, he remembered a skinny brown girl with sad eyes, sharp teeth, and a mouth full of Spanish. He remembered her dark face in the rearview mirror just after he’d married Estella and moved them to Houston, a face as long as the braid down her back. Serious, suspicious, watchful. In the beginning, she’d been a bit of baggage from Estella’s first marriage, a shadow at the edges of his happiness. Later, she’d been a brief, disastrous solution. When it was all done and Estella was dead, he wished he could bury her with her mother and so be free of the shame of it.
    Now she would be a reminder of all the mistakes he had made. No, not him; the fallen man from before. The man who had died so that the Henry he was now could be born. The Henry that was putting a family back together. The Henry bound to make his Savior and Redeemer proud.
    The week before he went to get his children, Henry mopped the floors of the house with vinegar and water and laid out the sheets and blankets he’d bought. On the drive down to San Antonio, he ate sunflower seeds until his belly ached, spitting their woody husks into an old paper cup. He tried to pray but stalled out a few words in each time.
    He held a handkerchief over his nose as he drove down a dusty, crowded San Antonio street. He thought he was going the right direction, but there were no house numbers. The place was packed with lopsided row houses patched with tin sheets and scrap wood and cardboard. Boxes of garbage and piles of junk were heaped around wrecked porches. Dark faces looked out at him from dirty windows.
    A skinny spotted dog ran out in front of the truck. He braked and veered, barely missing it. When he looked up, he saw her, plain as day.
    Estella.
    He recognized her first by her braid, then by the easy music of her walk. She was headed away from him on the plank sidewalk, a basket in one hand. Then she turned around, and he saw that it wasn’t Estella. The girl was far too young and shades darker. And of course there was the obvious: it couldn’t be Estella because Estella had been dead for nearly eight years.
    It was the girl. She recognized him, he knew. Her dark eyes widened; her lips parted. A shadow crossed her face, and she took a step toward the truck.
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    NAOMI Naomi looked up from the shirt she was patching to see the twins hovering in the doorway from the hall.
    â€œNow what?” she asked. It was raining out, and the twins had been moping around all afternoon.
    Cari blew air into her bangs. Beto wandered to the stove and lifted the lid from a casserole dish. “What is this?” he asked.
    â€œChicken and rice,” Naomi said. “Daddy brought home some nice bright green beans, too.”
    â€œBut what’s for dessert?” Cari asked.
    Naomi frowned. “Some sweet oranges a neighbor sent over yesterday,” she said. “A treat.”
    â€œSome treat,” Cari grumbled.
    â€œHow about cake? Cake is nice,” Beto said.
    Naomi stabbed her needle deep into the pincushion and stared at the twins. A week ago they would have been grateful there was supper .
    Their grandparents’ store had the best fruit on the West Side of San Antonio. Bright limes and lemons and speckled oranges for juicing. Grapefruits you could smell across the room. Mangoes so firm and sweet they made pregnant women weep. Strawberries like fleshy hearts, mounded in little baskets. Peaches and nectarines dusted with a careful hand. But all this was reserved for customers.
    â€œWhat we eat, we can’t