Picture This by Jacqueline Sheehan Read Free Book Online

could neither smell colors nor see the colors of Rocky’s name, nor experience the colors of dust and mold as yellow and blue.
    â€œHow can you stand it?” Tess demanded. It was morning, and Rocky’s deep brown hair caught a glint of sun as it poured through the living room window. Old polyester curtains, stiff with dirt, were tied primly to each side. Even from the arched doorway between the living room and dining room Tess could smell the dense scent of dust and mold.
    â€œYou cannot imagine how gorgeous my life was and how bland it all looks now,” said Tess. “I’m complaining, aren’t I? I’d be dead without the surgery. You have my permission to tell me to shut up.”
    â€œI don’t want you to shut up,” said Rocky, shining her flashlight into a closet. “I do want you to tell me that maybe, just maybe, buying this house was a good idea and that for at least an hour we won’t talk about the girl who now refuses to call me back. Why do I see this house with bright pulsating light at its core while my brother and Isaiah think it’s the worst piece of shit on the island? Isaiah said the beavers have invaded the property down the road, damming up a stream to make a pond.”
    Tess tried out the window seat and pushed open the window, letting the cool morning air rush in. It would be a lovely spot to read, to curl up with a grandchild and watch birds at the feeder on a winter afternoon.
    â€œYou’ve been hanging around me for too long. Maybe my synesthesia is circling around you like a cloud until I can get it back. But if you see something that no one else sees, I can only tell you this: Believe what you see. And if it is the unseen that speaks to you, believe that too.”
    Tess tried to loosen her neck muscles by rotating her shoulders up and down, pulling her arms behind her, then spreading her shoulder blades wide by stretching her arms in front of her.
    â€œI should do that too,” Rocky said. “I stayed awake most of the night, trying to get a feel for the house. I have a gut feeling that this house has got more life ahead of it.”
    Rocky ran her hand across the faded images of daisies in the wallpaper that lined the walls of the living room and the entry from the front door. What was stirring in her? Sitting on the window seat, Tess wiggled her toes under Cooper, who had sat on her feet. Tess hadn’t had a dog in years, but if she ever had a dog again, she wanted it to be a clone of Cooper.
    â€œYou’re going to tell me to smudge the house with dried sage, aren’t you?” asked Rocky.
    Tess tried unsuccessfully to picture Rocky gliding through the house, holding the burning incense of a tightly wadded hunk of dried sage. “Smudging” was a way to cleanse a house of old spirits.
    â€œNo, but I’m impressed that you know what smudging is.”
    Rocky cranked open another window in the kitchen, the kind that opens out like an arm welcoming the day. Moist ocean air slipped in through the screens in fishlike waves. She and Tess continued walking slowly from room to room, stopping in corners, admiring another bay window and a stair railing worn smooth by hands. As Tess let her hand run along the wainscoting and door frames, feeling the nail holes, she said, “Tell me again what happened when you slept here last night.”
    â€œI heard a shudder, or a sigh,” Rocky responded. “I don’t know what else to call it. You know how kids shudder when they’ve been crying hard? Like that. Except, it was the house.” Tess stopped walking, her attention focused entirely on Rocky. “But I must have fallen asleep. I woke up at one point, or at least I think I was awake, and it looked like there was water running down the wall, just for a few seconds. Now that I say it out loud, it sounds ridiculous.”
    â€œI have to say that I am more than a little shocked. This area of