Sins of a Shaker Summer Read Online Free

retiring rooms for a rest. We’d had one fainting already, and I didn’t want to risk more.”
    In the summer, laundry was done as simply as possible, without benefit of the upstairs ironing room, where clothes were hung on steam-pipe drying racks and exposed to pumped-in heat from the downstairs boiler. On sultry days such as this one, temperatures in the ironing room soared to levels neither God nor Wilhelm would expect Believers to endure.
    â€œLet me help you with that,” Rose offered.
    â€œI won’t object,” Gretchen said. “This is the last load for today, and the sooner we get these hung up, the sooner I can splash some cold water on my face.”
    Together they carried the heavy basket through the back door to the rows of clotheslines.
    â€œI suppose you want to ask about Nora and Betsy?” Gretchen asked.
    Rose nodded as she accepted a handful of clothespins and pulled a damp brown work shirt from the basket.
    â€œI found them right between the Center Family house and the Trustees’ Office. They were both lying in the grass, and Nora was babbling something about angels and monsters and tea.”
    â€œCould you tell where they’d come from?”
    â€œNay, but I wondered if they’d been in the Center Family house. With no one there, except in the kitchen, they could have sneaked into the root cellar to play. I’m sure it’s lovely and cool down there.” Her clothespin hovered above a blue sleeve, her eyes faraway as if imagining the coolness.
    â€œWhen we’ve finished here, go straight to your retiring room and rest with a cool cloth on your forehead,” Rose ordered.
    â€œOn any other day, I’d argue with you,” Gretchen said, “but today I’ll just say a fervent thank-you.”
    â€œNot too fervent,” Rose said, “or you’ll melt.”
    The Society’s root cellar was a large room under the Center Family Dwelling House. Two stairways led down to it—one from the kitchen and another from a storage area at the north end of the building. Since the kitchen garden surrounded the north and east sides, Rose thought it possible that the children might have picked some herbs and taken them down to the root cellar to play. She couldn’t imagine what culinary herb could have made them so ill. Perhaps they had risked sneaking into the nearby medic garden, but surely someone would have seen them.
    Rose walked all the way around the large limestone building, looking for telltale bits of discarded plants, but she saw nothing. Of course, anything out of place would be cleared away by passing Believers. She returned to the front of the dwelling house and entered by the sisters’ doorway.Her gaze on the floor, she walked between the separate staircases for sisters and brethren, past the kitchen entrance, all the way to the back of the building. No leaf or clump of dirt marred the neatness of the floor or the stairs down to the root cellar.
    The cellar itself would need a more thorough cleaning before the fall, when potatoes and squash would be brought in for storage and winter use. By this time of the year, most of their stores had been used up. Much of what remained had withered or rotted and been tossed out. Despite the earthy air, the coolness tempted Rose to tidy up for a while. But she resisted. She saw no sign that children had used the room as a play area, and Nora’s and Betsy’s lives might depend on identifying, as quickly as possible, what they might have ingested.
    On her way to the stairs, Rose peeked into a side room lined with shelves. Two areas held canning jars. One section contained dwindling rows of string beans, beets, and pickles in dusty glass jars. The other area, on the opposite side of the room, was beginning to fill with jellies in pale hues. Rose went closer to read the labels: rose-petal, violet, and peppermint jellies. Just reading the names made her tongue tingle. Was this