The Book of Lost Friends: A Novel by Lisa Wingate Read Free Book Online Page A

no time to open the little hatch to the ladder, so I just crawl in the cabinet on my hands and knees and pull the doors and huddle there like a rabbit in the grass. Somebody’s bound to root me out before long. By now, Missy Lavinia has spotted that open library window and maybe the wax on the carpet, too. They won’t stop looking till they find out who’s in here.
    But after the noise dies down a bit, it’s Missy Lavinia I hear say, “Mother, for the sake of all, may we return to bed now? And please leave old Seddie to her rest. Don’t punish her for not waking. I troubled her already with my late arrival last evening. I’d left a book on the night table, and it’s fallen, that’s all. The noise only sounded to be coming from downstairs.”
    Can’t guess how Missy don’t see, or smell, or feel the air from that window left open. Can’t guess how Seddie’s slept through all this, but I count it as a blessing and close my eyes, rest my head on the backs of my hands and say my thanks. I might live awhile longer yet, if they’d just all go back to bed.
    But Old Missus is boiling hot, still. Can’t make out all the words that’re said after, just that there’s heavy discussing and carrying on awhile. Time it’s over, my body is cramped and aching so bad, I’m chewing on my knuckles to keep from moving and pushing on the doors. A manservant gets left up to keep watch, so it’s a long time before I gather together the courage to slip from my place, open the hatch under me, and go down the ladder to the basement. With the man still prowling the yard and the galleries, I don’t dare try to get out till day breaks and Seddie unlocks the doors out to the lawn. I just hunker down, knowing Tati’s probably in a fit of worry, and come morning, she’ll wake Jason and John and tell them what we done. Jason will be bad troubled over it. He don’t like anything out of place from one day to the next. All things the same, day after day, is his comfort.
    Curled up in the dark, I wonder about the book Juneau Jane stole. That book got Old Mister’s papers in it? No way to know, so finally I rest my head on the soft cloak and let myself sleep and wake. I dream of climbing up the bookshelves myself, and taking one of them books from up top and getting my hands on our land contract. All our troubles will be no more.
    The door’s getting opened when I come to. A slice of feathery light lays itself over the floor and the smell of morning seeps in. Seddie tells a yard boy, “Don’ you touch nothin’ but the shovel and the yard broom and the hoe. Every apple in the barrel been counted and every drop a’ molasses, and Irish ’tater, and rice grain, too. Las’ boy that try to dip in, he gone. Nobody ever see him no more.”
    “Yes’m.” The boy sounds young. Old Missus’s got such a reputation, she’s running slim on choices. Has to take on babies nobody else will hire yet.
    I lay up awhile before I stuff Juneau Jane’s cloak back down the front of my borrowed shirt and pull John’s field hat so low it bends my ears, and I work my way toward fresh air and freedom. Nobody’s near when I poke my head out, and so off I go. Takes a heap of won’t-not to walk calm ’cross the yard, just in case somebody’s looking out from the house. They won’t think a thing about a little colored boy moving about, slow and easy. But what I really want to do is run, go from cropper cabin to cropper cabin with the word that Missy Lavinia’s showed up from school. Must be a ill wind to bring her home, news of Old Mister. Bad news.
    We croppers got to coop up together, have a meeting off in the woods, and figure our next move. All us got contracts and all us been depending on Old Mister to keep the promises that’s been given.
    Time to put our heads to the problem.
    No sooner does my mind start on it, than I make my way round the garden hedges, and hear voices. Two of them, down under the old brick bridge that was a fine thing long