Every Day After Read Online Free

from her book at the exact right time, no longer racing me down to the pond to fish with Daddy. Those parts of her had disappeared with Daddy. She didn’t laugh anymore or cry anymore. She simply was .
    I held the glass up to her. “Are you thirsty, Mama? I brought you some water.”
    She took the teeniest sip. I set the glass on the wooden table beside her rocker, then reached down and took her hand. It was bony and frail, yet warm and comforting at the same time. She rocked in steady rhythm. Loose strands of graying hair wisped across her sunken cheeks, escapees from the tight bun I’d made earlier at the base of her neck. Mama’s looks had always been soft and ladylike, but lately they’d developed an aged hardness that shook me down deep.
    I helped her up, still grasping her hand. “Want to walk a little?”
    She gripped my hand with one of hers, still tightly clutching her book with the other. We strolled back and forth across the porch, my arm hooked into hers. After a few minutes, she began to pull at me. She needed to rest.
    I eased her back into the rocker and glanced at the pond. Ben was already down there. I pointed him out toMama. “Me and Ben are going fishing down at the pond. You can watch us if you want.”
    Nothing.
    “Wish us luck,” I said. “I’ll be back in a bit to fix supper.”
    I went out through the front door to grab my shoes, then headed around back into the field. Fishing after school had become more than a habit; it was a need. At least, it was for me. Before Daddy left, I’d fished with him almost daily, except during winter, when fishing wasn’t good anyway. To me, fishing was the best thing in the world, and I didn’t understand girls who spent their time on pointless activities like primping or gabbing on and on about boys.
    I spotted Ben’s boots lying in the grass and smiled at my own bare feet. We always fished barefooted. It’s an unspoken rule in Bittersweet—if you ain’t barefooted, you ain’t fishing. The cool grass tickled my toes, and the still-damp ground sank with each step.
    I glanced back at Mama rocking away on the porch. I waved. She didn’t. I squatted down in the grass beside Ben and began to rinse my shoes in the warm, shallow water. Orangey mud swirled into the pond. “You think she’ll ever wave back again?”
    Ben stopped digging and dropped another worm into his carton. “One day. Just that nobody knows when.”
    I sat my shoes beside my pole, plopped down beside them, and hugged my knees to my chest. Though Ben wastrying his best, he couldn’t hide his true thoughts from me. We both knew that as long as Daddy stayed gone, so would she. Erin hadn’t seen Mama since Daddy left, and I had to keep it that way. The minute she saw her would be the minute I was hauled off to the nearest orphanage and Mama to the nearest mental ward.
    “What if she never does? What if I can’t get her back? The biggest things I’ve done up till now are making As and catching old One-Eye. That’s it. And I had Daddy here on both counts. Now, not only do I have to make sure we don’t get booted from our house, I have to take care of Mama too. I’d give anything for Daddy to come home. This must be what it feels like at Wits’ End Corner.”
    “Where?” Ben rumpled his brows. “I ain’t heard of that before.”
    I lay back on the soft ground. “It’s a poem Mama’s had for a while. I forgot where she found it, and I don’t remember all of it, but I like it.”
    “What part do you remember?”
    “Only the first lines, but I can say them if you want to hear.”
    Ben scooted closer to me.
    I cleared my throat and tried to make the words as flowing and beautiful as Mama did:
           “Are you standing at ‘Wits’ End Corner,’
           Christian, with a troubled brow?
           Are you thinking of what is before you ,
           And all you are bearing now?
           Does all the world seem against you ,
           And you in the