Until She Comes Home Read Online Free

Julia, will know this baby is the first on the street since Maryanne, and she’s giving Julia an excuse to escape, at least for today. In the early weeks after Maryanne died, Grace was the only one brave enough and stubborn enough to walk into Julia’s home. She came every day, even when Julia slammed doors and screamed at her to leave well enough alone. Grace kept the blood flowing, kept the house from collapsing. Even more than Julia’s own husband, Grace saved her.
    “You’ll ring Mr. Symanski again?” Julia says, holding the door open for Elizabeth and wondering if it will always be like this. Will Grace forever try to intercept the memories of Julia’s daughter, and how successful can she be once her own baby is born? “You’ll let him know Elizabeth is on her way?”
    Grace taps the tip of her thumb to her tongue, flips to the next page in the newspaper, and nods. “There has to be something in here, don’t you think?”
    And then Julia realizes. Grace is happily married. Her husband does adore her. She has no worries about James. She doesn’t wonder who that woman was or who killed her or whose husband might be the guilty party. Those discussions were for Julia’s benefit, a means to distract her from the baby in the corner, and they almost worked.
    Outside the house, Julia and Elizabeth walk together to the end of Grace’s driveway and from there, Julia watches Elizabeth make her way home. North of Alder, a round of fireworks explodes. For the past week, the air has been laced with the smell of them—sulfur, maybe charcoal. They’re another reminder, other than this heat, that July is fast approaching. The ladies’ voices and the sounds of silverware clattering against Grace’s best wedding china drift out of the living room’s open windows. Betty Lawson’s baby is crying again. A block and a half away, Elizabeth has neared her house. Reaching out with one hand, she trails her fingers along the top rail of the iron fence that hems in her front yard. She’s been taught hers is the house with the iron fence. When Elizabeth stops at her gate, Julia turns toward home.

CHAPTER THREE
    M ost of the ladies shop on Willingham Avenue every day. They stop first at Mr. Ambrozy’s deli. Their freezers frost over and ruin his hand-stuffed kielbasa, so they prefer to buy it fresh, daily. Things never keep as well at home, never taste as fresh as they do straight from Mr. Ambrozy. Every weekday morning, the ladies board the south-bound bus. They come with recipe cards tucked inside their handbags, some of them liking to share, others not. Strolling through Mr. Ambrozy’s aisles, they carry shopping baskets and pick through his sweet and mild sauerkraut and hand-stuffed sausages—among the best in all of Detroit. But they don’t come to Willingham Avenue only for the deli. At his shop on the corner of Woodward and Willingham, Mr. Wilson irons the sharpest pleats and stitches an invisible hem like none other. On the opposite side of Willingham, beyond the drugstore and a vacant fenced-in lot, Nowack’s Bakery sells the freshest bread and pierogi fine enough for the ladies to say they rolled and boiled it themselves. It’s a secret the ladies say is best kept quiet.
    At the kitchen table, her feet propped on the chair opposite her, one ankle crossed over the other and relieved for some peace after a long afternoon with the ladies, Grace studies Mother’s pierogi recipe and feels quite certain she has forgotten or possibly misplaced something. Before her passing, Ewa Symanski always made the pierogi for the bake sale. St. Alban’s has a good many widowers, and some would wait all year for Ewa’s pierogi because they no longer had wives of their own to roll and boil the pierogi. In the wake of Ewa’s death, Grace will take over and finally have a specialty like all the other ladies. First thing Monday morning, to avoid the sugar-cookie fiasco of last year, she’ll visit Mrs. Nowack at the bakery for some