The Truth About Love and Lightning Read Online Free Page B

together,” she called out as she walked toward the kitchen, Matilda nearly tripping her as the cat howled and ran past her, heading for the back door.
    “I hope the shutters stayed on,” Trudy said, fingers reaching into cupboards that held the china cups that had once been their mother’s, while Bennie filled the kettle at the sink. “If anything’s broken, we’ll have to call Walter.”
    She said it so eagerly that Bennie teased, “You’re sweet on the handyman, are you, Trude?”
    “Go on, you!” Trudy said, giggling.
    “Well, I don’t figure we’ll need Walter for the shutters anyway,” Bennie announced as she shut off the faucet and moved the kettle to a burner. “I didn’t hear them do anything but bang, and Gretchen wouldn’t have let us up if any windows were broken, would you, sweet?”
    “Not a chance,” she told her sister, “but I haven’t checked the upstairs so you girls stay down here until I do.”
    “You won’t find anything wrong with the house but bumps and bruises,” Bennie said matter-of-factly as she fingered the knobs on the gas stove and got the proper burner lit with a pop and a hiss. “I believe we’ve survived intact despite Mother Nature’s reminder of who’s in charge.”
    “Strange,” Trudy said and stopped setting cups on saucers to lean toward the half-opened window above the sink, her nose wrinkling like a bunny’s. “I caught a strong whiff of lemongrass just now. I haven’t breathed that scent since . . . well, a long time ago. You know who that reminds me of, Gretch—”
    “Yes, I know,” she said, cutting Trudy off, because her sister had often remarked that Sam Winston smelled of “truth and lemongrass.” The funny thing was, Gretchen had been thinking of Sam, too. She couldn’t help it, not with the way the storm had kicked up and blown through.
    “Perhaps it’s an omen,” Trudy added.
    “I hope it’s a good one,” Gretchen replied, her mouth dry.
    “Me, too.”
    But as Gretchen walked toward the window that faced the front drive, she didn’t feel very hopeful. Though the house appeared to have withstood the twister’s winds without damage, the rest of the property had not. Branches littered the lawn and the gravel drive; leaves had been stripped from standing trees. Farther off in the distance, she discerned black power lines and telephone cables that should have crisscrossed the sky but no longer stretched from pole to pole. Instead, they sagged like old clothesline. Despite the sun’s attempt to peek between scudding gray clouds, the aftermath was hardly heartwarming. It looked an awful lot like a battlefield.
    Gretchen set aside the flashlight and went straight to the old Bakelite phone. Picking up the receiver, she put it to her ear and listened for a dial tone. “Hello?” she said, tapping on the reset buttons. “Hello?” she tried again, putting a finger in the rotary dial and giving it a spin.
    She heard nothing.
    “The phone’s dead,” she announced.
    “Nuts.” Bennie sighed and felt her way along the counter, pausing at the stove and waiting for the teakettle to whistle. “Though I don’t feel much compelled to call into town at the moment, it’s not very reassuring that I couldn’t reach anyone beyond the fence if I wanted to.”
    “You never did get that cell phone Abby gave you working, Gretch, did you?” Trudy asked.
    “I couldn’t get a signal.” Gretchen sighed. Nothing wireless seemed to function on the farm, and they’d tried plenty of times to get connected. But they’d given up the idea of laptops or cells once they realized it was futile. One frustrated wireless technician had suggested there was something magnetic in the air interfering with the signals, and Gretchen could only imagine what that was, maybe the spirits that Abby had always blamed for anything odd that happened on the farm while she was growing up. Like when the doorbell rang but there was no one there, or when the lights