Extensions by Myrna Dey Read Free Book Online Page B

fresh as if they had just appeared on my e-mail screen, though much prettier in their careful, elegant script. The clear circles and swirls made me think of penmanship exercises when we first switched from printing to writing in Grade Three.
    â€œDid you read these?” I asked Dad.
    â€œA thrill, isn’t it? A hundred-plus-year-old letter from the mysterious Jane Owens. Judging from her handwriting, her spelling and grammar, she seems to be, shall we say, a refined woman. Call me a snob, but I’m relieved about that. She must have had her own standards, because she could not have had much of an education. Sounds as if she was a teenager here, quitting school reluctantly to do laundry.”
    â€œDo you know these other people? Catherine, Tommy, Gomer, Evan?”
    â€œCatherine and Margaret were her sisters, but I don’t know the name of the brother in Wales. Tommy and Gomer are her brothers in Canada. Evan and Gwynyth are Margaret’s children, I gather. Uncle Thomas and his wife took Sara to live with them when Jane died.” Dad said Sara for my benefit — in case I wouldn’t understand if he said Mother. “She wasn’t happy there, mainly because of Aunt Lizzie. She was a discontented, jealous woman; Sara was prettier and worked harder than her own two lazy daughters did when they were at home.”
    Yes, I remembered that account from Sara, especially when she called herself pretty. It was the truth, but at my early teenage stage you always put yourself down, so her honesty surprised me. “Where did Janet go?”
    â€œTo Gomer, I think, Jane’s younger brother. But she died a year later, also from the flu. Sara told Janetta and me that the day Lizzie informed her Janet was gone was worse than her mother’s death. At least she had her sister to share that with. And for a year she’d had hope of finding her again. What saved her after that was Laura, a baby born late in life to Thomas and Lizzie. Mother was able to swallow her tears when she took care of Laura. She came to think of her as a baby sister until Lizzie’s jealousy got in the way. She would wait to have Laura to herself to play games and tell stories.”
    â€œWhat about Uncle Thomas?”
    â€œHe was always kind to Sara, but didn’t stand a chance against Lizzie, from what I understand. I wish I had paid more attention.”
    I was thinking the same thing, because I spent a lot of time with Sara growing up. Grandpa died two years after I was born, and I remember her saying that as much as she missed him, nothing would equal the grief she felt from losing her mother and sister. Her words were: “It was so deep it served as an inoculation against all future suffering.” Weird how you remember certain phrases.
    Sara stayed on in their apartment, not far from our house and even closer to my school. A convenient halfway house when I was a teenager. Mom told her friends that Lew’s mother had turned into an eccentric as a widow, but to me she was just the way a grandmother should be. She let me call her Sara because Grandma and Nana were too stodgy for the new age into which I was born and she was reborn. She began consulting psychics, teacup readers, and Ouija boards, much to Mom’s alarm. Retha thought her mother-in-law should be beyond searching for the beyond. Sara also started smoking in her sixties, which really bugged Mom. She was afraid it might have the wrong influence on me, but little did Mom know I needed no help. Gail and I and most of our friends were smoking every chance we could get. It was Sara who called me on it, when I stopped in one day reeking of nicotine. “It’s a nasty habit, Arabella. Not one thing going for it — health, cost, smell. You’ve been blessed with a beautiful smile, so why ruin it with yellow teeth? Set yourself a goal: hold off until you’re my age and then you can smoke all you want.” She got through to