The Sisters Read Online Free Page A

lemonade.”
    Bertie protested again, said she was in a hurry, but, having freed the latch, Mrs. Mitchell came out of the gate, took hold of Bertie’s shoulders and steered her onto the front walk, through the house, and into the kitchen. “You need to stay here for now,” she said. “There’s some trouble at your place. So you just wait here till it passes.”
    “What kind of trouble?”
    No amount of questions could get Mrs. Mitchell to tell her what was going on. She wouldn’t do anything but shake her head and chip off more ice to drop into Bertie’s glass, but at last the woman looked out the window at the dark clouds. “I need to get those clothes off the line. You just stay here, Bertie, and pour yourself some more lemonade.”
    This was her chance. The instant the back screen door banged behind Mrs. Mitchell, Bertie was out of her chair and pushing through the front door. It seemed like all the women on their road had been put on watch for her, calling from their porches or waving dish towels out their kitchen windows, but she ran past them. Whatever this trouble was, it must be the reason Mabel and Wallace hadn’t come to the graduation. The fear of it made Bertie’s head swim, and she felt a rush of shame for having thought they could betray her.
    She stopped short at the end of the chicken-wire fence that marked their land.
    Five or six men were gathered outside the barn. One of the doors was partly open.
    Everything was quiet—no sound from the chickens or from the songbirds that usually swooped in to feed before a storm. Nothing but the shaking of the leaves.
    Bertie recognized Mr. Mitchell and some other men who lived nearby, but a couple of them were strangers to her. They were standing in a crooked row, staring in at something they could all see through the open door, so none of them saw her until she’d walked right in amongst them.
    “Whoa, Bertie!” Mr. Mitchell grabbed her just like his wife had done and swung her away from the barn and toward the house. “You go stay up on the porch. I’ll take you on to my place in a minute.”
    “What’s happening?” Bertie asked. None of the men would answer her. They wouldn’t even look at her.
    Everything was odd.
    Somebody had tied the cow to the fence rail, right in the place where a slat was missing, so the cow could reach through to nibble at the little cornstalks, just ankle-high.
    The plow was out in the middle of the patch Butcher had said this morning he was going to plant with more beans, but the mare was unhitched, wandering around through the cucumbers.
    And every now and then, when the wind kicked up, Bertie could hear a muffled banging, as if the back screen door had been left unhooked.
    Another man Bertie didn’t know stepped out of the barn. Even from her place on the porch, she could make out the shape of his badge. The sheriff. He took off his hat and stopped in the yard to talk to Mr. Mitchell, looking up once or twice to glance over at her. Mr. Mitchell shook his head and walked slowly back toward the barn.
    The other man came toward Bertie and sat down on the top step beside her. “Bertie Fischer? That short for Alberta?”
    She nodded. The sheriff reached out to take her hand. She started to pull it away, then thought better of it.
    “I asked the men there to keep you out of the barn,” he said. His hand was warm. Strong and sad. “Your stepdaddy’s hanged hisself. They’re just cutting him down now.”
    “Where’s my sister?”
    The rain started in small spatters, and the sheriff looked up for a moment, as if he might read the answer in the clouds. “Looks like she’s run off,” he said. He reached in his pocket and held out a bit of crumpled paper to Bertie. “There’s a couple of empty whiskey bottles up in the loft. Neighbors said Butcher was a drinker?” He looked at her for confirmation he obviously didn’t need. “Found this right near him,” he said, nodding toward the note. “I figure he had it in