Silver Rain by Lois Peterson Read Free Book Online Page B

home.
    â€œAren’t you just dying to know if she’s dead or alive? Her friend, I mean?” asked Scoop.
    â€œDo you think maybe Mother’s never coming home? Like Father?” asked Elsie. “He never wrote either.”
    â€œNah.” Scoop didn’t sound very sure of himself. “Maybe you just haven’t exhausted all avenues. Trying to find your dad, I mean.”
    â€œWhich avenues? We looked everywhere.”
    â€œNot those kind of avenues. It’s reporter lingo for trying everything.”
    â€œWhen Nan went to the police, they said if they had to track down every man who left home without a word, they’d never catch the real criminals,” Elsie told Scoop. “It’s something to do with the times. Lots of men leave home without a word to anyone. He’s not in the hospitals. Mother checked. And Uncle Dannell did too.” Elsie bit hard on the inside of her lip to stop herself crying. She had discovered this helped at night when she felt Nan’s bulgy backside against her in the old iron bed, and only cold sheets and drafts on the other side, where Mother should have been.
    â€œIf you’re going to cry, I’m going home,” Scoop said. “One of the Noises’ gentlemen friends has let her down — don’t know how, no one will give me the details — but I get enough tears at my house. Don’t you blubber on me, hear?” He nudged her hard with his bony elbow.
    Scoop must have more bones than anyone she’d ever met, thought Elsie. They seemed to stick out long past where his body should have ended. At his shoulders. His knees.
    Elsie hugged her knees. She could feel the rough gravel poking through the seat of her pants. “Nan pretends she’s not bothered about Mother,” she told him, “but each time the mailman’s due, she finds something to do out by the Tipson’s mailbox. Do you think Father wrote us a letter and they never passed it on? That Jimmy is so mean, I bet he’d do it. Do you think he’s been hiding Mother’s letter?” Elsie rested her chin on her knees and watched Scoop poke a stick in circles along the sidewalk. She looked at him sideways when he didn’t answer. “Well? Do you?”
    â€œDo I what?”
    â€œYou’re not listening.”
    â€œWhat I was thinking was…we need to explore all avenues, like I said. So tomorrow? There’s no school, so we can head out to that shantytown. Put the word about.”
    â€œWhat word? The Reverend said those places are dangerous. He said they’re desperate, some of those hoboes. Though they looked okay to me the other day. Just rough maybe.”
    â€œI’ll go then, if you’re chicken,” said Scoop. “I can do the investigating myself. If we find your father, maybe you won’t mind so much about your mother.”
    Elsie stared at Scoop. Could he really think that as long as she had one parent at home, it wouldn’t matter where the other was? Maybe it was easier for him — his father couldn’t come home no matter how much anyone else wanted him to. Dead is dead and done for, as Nan would say.
    Elsie felt a chill as soon as she thought the words. Surely she’d know. She’d feel it somehow, if Father was dead. Wouldn’t she?

C HAPTER T WELVE
    â€œI’ ll need a description.” Scoop rooted around in his pocket for his pencil.
    â€œYou know what Father looks like.” Elsie didn’t want to admit that sometimes she could hardly remember her father’s face. She took out a photograph from her back pocket and smoothed it against her knee. “I pinched this from Mother’s suitcase. She’d packed it to take on her trip to New Westminster.”
    Scoop grabbed it. He peered at it and nodded. “This will do. Better than a description.” He took his notebook from his overalls, opened it up and carefully laid the photograph between