Today's Reading

CHAPTER ONE

HERE'S WHAT I know for sure: A cast iron skillet must be seasoned with lard. Pickling and preserving are best done during a waning moon. And secrets buried deep never stay that way.

I plant myself in front of the box fan wedged into the window and lift the hem of my shirt so the air can move across my skin. The Harvest Moon was once a gristmill, and its thick old limestone walls help cool the inside. But we serve breakfast and lunch six days a week, and there's no escaping the heat once it really gets cooking.

Gran eyes me from the opposite side of the small kitchen, where she's prepping food for tomorrow night's festival. She runs the blade of her knife between the ribs of a side of pork she was given for curing the Thompson baby of colic. Breaking through the bone, dismantling it piece by piece, her hands never pause, never falter, even with her gaze on me. She tosses strips of meat into a bowl of spicy marinade, her own secret recipe, and the bones into a roasting pan for broth. Nothing ever wasted.

My sisters and I grew up in this kitchen with its stainless steel tables, white walls, and faint scent of bleach. We've been rolling out biscuit dough, scrubbing salt into cast iron, and sneaking spoonfuls of strawberry moonshine jam from the time we could barely see over the counter. So I know what Gran is thinking: Standing here next to the fan could be construed as idleness, something she cannot abide, even if it's only June and already ninety degrees in the shade.

A bead of sweat slides down the back of my neck, drawn out by the humidity that's been hunkered down around the base of the mountains for weeks now. I once read that there's a correlation between an increase in temperature and in brutality. That hotter summers are violent ones. I don't know if that's true, but with the way the air sits now, thick and heavy, everyone's temper seems set to boil.

At the back of the kitchen, Rowan, my older sister by eleven months, lifts the metal handle of the commercial dishwasher, releasing a cloud of steam that plasters her dark hair against her pretty face. All four of us sisters have long dark hair, bright blue eyes, and rosy full lips, but Rowan has the darkest and the bluest and the fullest. Yet she wears her beauty like armor to keep others from getting too close. A rose with sharpened thorns.

Her shirt lifts as she reaches up to put some glasses away on a high shelf, just enough to expose a few lines of the black ink that slithers and curls along her hip. It was Mama's discovery of the snake tattoo that relegated Rowan to dish duty all summer. And much as I'd like to avoid the dining room, I don't envy her. It's the hottest job in the kitchen.

Sorrel, our eldest sister, shoves through the swinging door, a tray piled high with dirty dishes on one shoulder. She rushes past me toward the dishwashing station as Rowan turns, likely unable to hear Sorrel's approach over the rattle of the high-pressure wash cycle. They collide with a clatter, and the entire tray tips backward. Plates and glasses clang against each other, and all I can do is watch, waiting for everything to come crashing down. Yet somehow, at the last possible second, Sorrel manages to right it.

She lets out a slow breath of relief just as a single steak knife, teetering on the edge, topples over the side. It lands on its point with a sharp thunk, quivering as it sticks straight up from the floorboards.

"Knife fell," Mama warns from her station, pausing in drawing her own serrated blade through the green skin of a tomato.

"Trouble's comin'." Gran finishes the old bit of folk wisdom with a glance toward the window. The skies have gone a sickly shade of green as storm clouds gather strength over the mountains.

It may sound like superstitious nonsense, but this is the true James family legacy. For as long as I can remember, in the evenings, long after the last customer had gone home, we'd write our wishes in white ink on bay leaves, crushing them between our fingers and releasing them to the wind over and over until all the air around us was scented with their bitter green bite. We learned special words, never to be written down, that must be said in one whispered breath. We watched as burns from hot pans disappeared clean off the skin with little more than Gran's gentle murmur of a few of those words.

"Watch yourself," Sorrel snaps at Rowan as she bends to slide the tray off her shoulder and onto the counter. Then she spins to glare at me. "And thanks for just standing there, Linden. As usual." It's snakebite quick, and by the time I feel the sting, she's already turning away.

We've always been close; four sisters born in as many years meant we had to be. But now that Sorrel is back from college, everything feels different. The first James girl ever to go, it's like she doesn't quite fit in the same space she left behind.

Mama wipes her hands on the dish towel tucked into the apron strings around her waist, then sets two final plates on a large tray. "Order's up," she tells me with a nod toward the dining room.

No amount of wishing on bay leaves will get me out of work. I glance once more at the knife in the floor before pushing past Sorrel and out of the kitchen.

When I reach my table, I set the tray on a stand, then slide each plate in front of the proper customer. Fried green tomato BLT for the man with the beard, buttermilk biscuits and sausage gravy for the younger one with a tiny hole in his collar, skillet-fried chicken drizzled with honey and a side of soup beans for the woman with the glasses, and a slaw dog with thick-cut homemade potato chips for the little boy who keeps wiping his nose on his sleeve.

"Let me know if y'all need anything else," I say, dropping an extra stack of paper napkins next to the boy as they tuck into their lunches.


...

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Today's Reading

CHAPTER ONE

HERE'S WHAT I know for sure: A cast iron skillet must be seasoned with lard. Pickling and preserving are best done during a waning moon. And secrets buried deep never stay that way.

I plant myself in front of the box fan wedged into the window and lift the hem of my shirt so the air can move across my skin. The Harvest Moon was once a gristmill, and its thick old limestone walls help cool the inside. But we serve breakfast and lunch six days a week, and there's no escaping the heat once it really gets cooking.

Gran eyes me from the opposite side of the small kitchen, where she's prepping food for tomorrow night's festival. She runs the blade of her knife between the ribs of a side of pork she was given for curing the Thompson baby of colic. Breaking through the bone, dismantling it piece by piece, her hands never pause, never falter, even with her gaze on me. She tosses strips of meat into a bowl of spicy marinade, her own secret recipe, and the bones into a roasting pan for broth. Nothing ever wasted.

My sisters and I grew up in this kitchen with its stainless steel tables, white walls, and faint scent of bleach. We've been rolling out biscuit dough, scrubbing salt into cast iron, and sneaking spoonfuls of strawberry moonshine jam from the time we could barely see over the counter. So I know what Gran is thinking: Standing here next to the fan could be construed as idleness, something she cannot abide, even if it's only June and already ninety degrees in the shade.

A bead of sweat slides down the back of my neck, drawn out by the humidity that's been hunkered down around the base of the mountains for weeks now. I once read that there's a correlation between an increase in temperature and in brutality. That hotter summers are violent ones. I don't know if that's true, but with the way the air sits now, thick and heavy, everyone's temper seems set to boil.

At the back of the kitchen, Rowan, my older sister by eleven months, lifts the metal handle of the commercial dishwasher, releasing a cloud of steam that plasters her dark hair against her pretty face. All four of us sisters have long dark hair, bright blue eyes, and rosy full lips, but Rowan has the darkest and the bluest and the fullest. Yet she wears her beauty like armor to keep others from getting too close. A rose with sharpened thorns.

Her shirt lifts as she reaches up to put some glasses away on a high shelf, just enough to expose a few lines of the black ink that slithers and curls along her hip. It was Mama's discovery of the snake tattoo that relegated Rowan to dish duty all summer. And much as I'd like to avoid the dining room, I don't envy her. It's the hottest job in the kitchen.

Sorrel, our eldest sister, shoves through the swinging door, a tray piled high with dirty dishes on one shoulder. She rushes past me toward the dishwashing station as Rowan turns, likely unable to hear Sorrel's approach over the rattle of the high-pressure wash cycle. They collide with a clatter, and the entire tray tips backward. Plates and glasses clang against each other, and all I can do is watch, waiting for everything to come crashing down. Yet somehow, at the last possible second, Sorrel manages to right it.

She lets out a slow breath of relief just as a single steak knife, teetering on the edge, topples over the side. It lands on its point with a sharp thunk, quivering as it sticks straight up from the floorboards.

"Knife fell," Mama warns from her station, pausing in drawing her own serrated blade through the green skin of a tomato.

"Trouble's comin'." Gran finishes the old bit of folk wisdom with a glance toward the window. The skies have gone a sickly shade of green as storm clouds gather strength over the mountains.

It may sound like superstitious nonsense, but this is the true James family legacy. For as long as I can remember, in the evenings, long after the last customer had gone home, we'd write our wishes in white ink on bay leaves, crushing them between our fingers and releasing them to the wind over and over until all the air around us was scented with their bitter green bite. We learned special words, never to be written down, that must be said in one whispered breath. We watched as burns from hot pans disappeared clean off the skin with little more than Gran's gentle murmur of a few of those words.

"Watch yourself," Sorrel snaps at Rowan as she bends to slide the tray off her shoulder and onto the counter. Then she spins to glare at me. "And thanks for just standing there, Linden. As usual." It's snakebite quick, and by the time I feel the sting, she's already turning away.

We've always been close; four sisters born in as many years meant we had to be. But now that Sorrel is back from college, everything feels different. The first James girl ever to go, it's like she doesn't quite fit in the same space she left behind.

Mama wipes her hands on the dish towel tucked into the apron strings around her waist, then sets two final plates on a large tray. "Order's up," she tells me with a nod toward the dining room.

No amount of wishing on bay leaves will get me out of work. I glance once more at the knife in the floor before pushing past Sorrel and out of the kitchen.

When I reach my table, I set the tray on a stand, then slide each plate in front of the proper customer. Fried green tomato BLT for the man with the beard, buttermilk biscuits and sausage gravy for the younger one with a tiny hole in his collar, skillet-fried chicken drizzled with honey and a side of soup beans for the woman with the glasses, and a slaw dog with thick-cut homemade potato chips for the little boy who keeps wiping his nose on his sleeve.

"Let me know if y'all need anything else," I say, dropping an extra stack of paper napkins next to the boy as they tuck into their lunches.


...

Join the Library's Online Book Clubs and start receiving chapters from popular books in your daily email. Every day, Monday through Friday, we'll send you a portion of a book that takes only five minutes to read. Each Monday we begin a new book and by Friday you will have the chance to read 2 or 3 chapters, enough to know if it's a book you want to finish. You can read a wide variety of books including fiction, nonfiction, romance, business, teen and mystery books. Just give us your email address and five minutes a day, and we'll give you an exciting world of reading.

What our readers think...