Lippman, Laura by What The Dead Know (V1.1)(Html) Read Free Book Online Page B

volumes, the music made everything go away—the assaults, physical and spiritual, the exhaustion brought on by the double life that was really a triple life, the sadness in his face every morning.
Make it stop
, she pleaded with him silently from across the round breakfast table, so homey and warm, so everything she had thought she wanted.
Please make it stop
. His eyes replied,
I can’t
. But they both knew that was a lie. He had started it, and he was the only person who could find an end to it. Eventually, he proved that he had the power all along to save her, but it was too late. By the time he let her go, she was more broken than Humpty Dumpty, more shattered than the heads of Irene’s precious china dolls, which she had smashed with a poker one brilliant fall afternoon. Composure finally lost, Irene had flown at her, screaming, and even he had pretended not to understand why she would do such a thing.
    “They wouldn’t stop looking at me,” she said.
    The real problem, of course, was that no one looked at her, no one saw. Every day she walked out into the world with nothing more than a name and a hair color to disguise her—and no one ever noticed. She came to the breakfast table, aching in parts of herself that she barely knew, and the only thing anyone said was, “Do you want jelly on your toast?” Or, “It’s a cold morning, so I made hot chocolate.”
See me
, Roger Daltrey sang on her little red tape recorder.
See me
. Irene called up the stairs,
Turn that noise down
. She yelled back,
It’s opera. I’m listening to an
opera.
Don’t sass me. You have chores
.
    Chores. Yes, she had a lot of
chores
, and they didn’t end at nightfall. Sometimes she made a list, called Who-I-Hate-the-Most, and Irene was never lower than three, and sometimes she made it as high as two.
    Number one, however, was hers and hers alone.
     
     

PART II
THE MAN WITH THE BLUE GUITAR (1975)
     
CHAPTER 6
     
    “Take your sister,” their father said, in both girls’ hearing, so Sunny couldn’t lie about it later. Otherwise, Heather knew, her older sister would have nodded and pretended agreement, then left her at home anyhow. Sunny was sneaky that way. Or tried to be, but Heather was forever catching her in her schemes.
    “
Why
?” Sunny protested automatically. She must have known that the argument was lost before it began. It was pointless to argue with their father, although, unlike their mother, he didn’t mind when they talked back. He was happy to have long discussions in which he debated their points. He even helped them shape their side of things, build their cases like lawyers, which he was always reminding them that they could be. They could be anything they wanted, their father told them frequently. Yet in an argument with him, they could never be right. It was not unlike playing checkers with him, when he would guide his opponent’s hand with small shakes and nods of his head, letting the girls avert disastrous moves that might result in double-or even triple-jumps. Still, he somehow claimed victory in the final play, even when he was down to just one king.
    “Heather’s only eleven,” he said in what the sisters thought of as his reasoning voice. “She can’t stay home alone. Your mother’s already left for work, and I have to be at the shop by ten.”
    Head lowered over her plate, Heather watched them through her lashes, still as a cat studying a squirrel. She was torn. Normally she pushed for greater privileges whenever possible. She wasn’t a
baby
. She would be twelve next week. She should be allowed to stay at home alone on a Saturday afternoon. Since her mother had started working last fall, Heather was alone for at least an hour every afternoon, and the only rules were that she mustn’t touch the stove or have friends over. Heather liked that hour. She got to watch what she wanted on television—
The Big Valley
, usually—and eat as many graham crackers as she wanted.
    That bit of freedom,