Read Stones for Bread for Free Online

smoke. Like flour dust. The first three Sundays of the month are not much more difficult. I usually set my alarm with every intention of making it to church. Sometimes I do, but mostly I toss restlessly between sleep and excuses until noon. I get up, eat, run errands, and catch a sermon or two on the radio while I prep the next day’s dough. It’s not enough. I know it’s not enough. But I can’t seem to do differently. And during Sanctus dies Solis , that still-undernourished part of me cries out, unable to be ignored. I promise myself I’ll get to services or open my Bible. The conviction never lasts past Monday morning, though, once the hustle becomes bustle and I can feed that emptiness with tasks galore.
    For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do .
    Thirsty, I drink a glass of cool water in long, loud gulps, counting how many it takes to finish. Six swallows, or seven, if I count the residual moisture my throat instinctively pulls from my mouth at theend. Then I nab one of Tee’s tomatoes and eat it like an apple. I’ll have to replace it before tomorrow, and even then, she’ll somehow know it’s not the same one she bought, even if I bury it under the nineteen other ones in the bag. Seeds drip over my fingers; as I rinse them, I hear Ryan’s voice. I stand by the door, shoulder propping it open enough for me to understand his words. He speaks on community, on the inherent need humans have because we are created in the image of the Godhead to be in close fellowship with one another. Without it, we shrivel. Without it, we deny who He made us to be. “And even if you think you don’t need it,” he says, “you do. Sorry, folks. No one can go it alone and experience the fullness He has for them.”
    I wriggle quietly through the door as the message ends. Several weekday customers gesture, so I weave through the tables and make small talk with them and others. “Liesl. Liesl,” a small voice calls, and I look around until I see a bobbing blond girl at the back, waving her arm in the air.
    Cecelia.
    She sits next to her father, that sloppy lug of a truck driver. What was his name? Something odd and Irish, I think. Ryan stands behind them; he motions to me too.
    “Liesl, I take it you’ve already met Seamus Tate and his daughter, Cecelia?”
    “I have, yes.”
    “The Tates moved here not too long ago and have been attending Green Mountain Community for the past month,” Ryan says. He notices a young family making their way to the front door. “Excuse me, would you?”
    Seamus takes a quiet bite from the corner of his sandwich. Cecelia plucks a purple grape from the fruit salad and begins tearing the skin from it. “Do you like green grapes or purple ones better, Liesl?”
    “Green, I think. Are you peeling that?”
    “I don’t like the skin. And once it’s off, it feels like an eyeball.”
    “Oh. Have you felt many eyeballs?”
    “No, but once in preschool there was a Halloween party and we had to stick our hands into boxes but we couldn’t see what we were touching. One box was s’posed to be eyeballs, but they were just grapes without the skin on. I peeked.”
    “Oh.”
    Cecelia stood up on the chair then, tall enough to whisper loudly at the side of my face, “Daddy doesn’t like Halloween and we don’t go trick-or-treating, but he let me go to the party anyway.”
    “Honey, sit. And stop talking Liesl’s ear off,” Seamus says. He looks at her, not me.
    “Sorry.” She jumps to the floor. “What are you doing today? Do you have to bake more bread?”
    “Not today,” I tell the girl. “But later I’ll prepare some dough.”
    “How much later?”
    I shrug. “Probably close to your bedtime.”
    “Oh, good,” she says, clapping twice. “Then you can come with us.”
    Seamus glances up now. A crumb clings to his beard. Not my bread. The packaged kind used by whoever made the sandwiches. “Cecelia, don’t bother Liesl. I’m sure she’s plenty busy today.”
    “Oh,