Porcelain Keys by Sarah Beard Read Free Book Online

easy banter with my typically tense conversations with Dad. And the way Elsie smiled affectionatelyat the two of them tugged something loose inside me. I tried not to grieve over Mom, especially when others were around. I didn’t want them to know how much losing her still hurt, because after five years, people expected me to be over it.
    Elsie must have mistaken my discomfort for hunger because she put a slice of pizza on a paper plate. She had no sooner placed it in front of me than an enormous black cat bounded up on the table and nabbed a piece of my sausage.
    “Tank!” Thomas slid his arm under the fat cat and dropped it to the floor.
    “Sorry,” Elsie said. “Pizza’s his favorite.”
    Tank’s paws lunged over the side of the table again, but this time the rest of his body didn’t make it. His claws sunk into the tablecloth and took everything—Powerpuff Girls cake included—to the floor.
    Tank shot out of the room like a black torpedo, and we all sat there a moment, still and silent as Dad’s taxidermy projects. I glanced at Hal, expecting him to be livid, but his mouth turned up into an amused smile. “Sorry, Thomas. I know how much you liked that cake.”
    Thomas picked up a plate of cake from the windowsill and ate a forkful. “S’okay. I saved a piece.”
    “Well, it’s a good thing Aria made us a pie,” Elsie said, and my cheeks suddenly felt warm. She stood and licked her thumb, then wiped a dab of white frosting from Thomas’s cheek.
    “Come on, Mom!” He cringed. “I’m eighteen, remember? I can wipe my own face.”
    “You don’t have to be so embarrassed just because there’s a beautiful girl in the house.” She grabbed a broom andstarted sweeping the pizza from the floor. “He doesn’t have any sisters,” she whispered to me, “and he’s not used to being around girls.”
    “And just because there’s a beautiful girl in the house,” he echoed, “doesn’t mean you have to roast me.” He set his plate down and scooped the bulk of the massacred cake into the pizza box.
    “No daughters?” I asked Elsie.
    “No, just two troublesome boys,” Thomas answered for her. I glanced at him, expecting to see a playful smile, but his face was strangely somber.
    “Maybe you’ll have a granddaughter someday,” I said.
    Elsie nodded and smiled, but it was fleeting and didn’t touch her eyes. A tangible tension settled over the room, and she swept in silence, like her thoughts were suddenly elsewhere.
    Hal dropped his head and pursed his lips. Thomas turned away and quietly dumped the cake in the trash. The mood had shifted from jovial to serious in a matter of seconds, and I wondered if I’d said something wrong.
    Hal rose and took the broom from Elsie. “I’ll get this.” She nodded, but she didn’t make eye contact with anyone as she quietly excused herself from the room. Hal patted Thomas on the shoulder and gave him a consoling smile, then began sweeping. “Do you have brothers and sisters, Aria?”
    I wasn’t sure if he was really interested in knowing, or if he was just trying to distract me from the gloom hovering over the room.
    “No,” I said, watching Thomas slowly compose his face. I stood and picked the tablecloth off the floor. “It’s just me.”
    “Here,” Thomas said with an outstretched arm, “I’ll putthat in the laundry.” I handed it to him, and he disappeared down the hall where his mom had gone.
    “So,” Hal said with forced enthusiasm, “you ever heard of iridology?”
    Another distraction , I thought. “No,” I said, sitting down and playing along. “What’s that?”
    “I hadn’t either, until I was commissioned to write an article about it. Would you believe that the iris of the eye can reveal a person’s state of health?”
    I gave him a skeptical look.
    “Here, I’ll show you what I mean.” He put the broom aside and sat across from me, pointing to his left eye. “Now, see the little dark spot here under my pupil?”
    I leaned