The Cake House by Latifah Salom Read Free Book Online

blood. Behind him, the freshly painted white wall was a blank canvas.
    Then there was a loud bang. Dark red sprayed across the white wall. I screamed. My father’s ghost staggered but did not fall. Instead, he turned toward me; a fresh, gaping bullet hole blossomed on the side of his face, and he said, “I was here.”
    I screamed again. Stampeding feet. A sudden bright light, and then there was no blood, no ghost, nothing except the stricken face of my mother, grabbing my shoulders. She wore her silk kimono, and that was familiar, that was calming, until I saw Claude behind her, with his hair as wild as my father’s ghost’s had been, looking comical in his hastily wrapped robe. Claude reached for my mother and for me; he stood where the ghost had been.
    My father was dead, and the man responsible held my mother in his arms.
    “Get her out of here,” I heard Claude say, preoccupied with my mother, who was very pale, her face ragged in the unforgiving lamplight. He was going to take me away from my mother, and I cried again, protesting, holding on to her until someone hauled me from the room.
    Alex. He brought me up the stairs and into my bedroom. I fell silent, concentrating on the hard plane of his chest against my back, the beating of his heart. He had held me like this before, but this time his legs and feet were bare against mine. This time, he started singing the French lullaby I had taught him. His voice was a low rumble, warm against my back, and every molecule in my body relaxed, my head resting against his collarbone. His singing was a release, and I let it drag me down into semiconsciousness.

CHAPTER THREE
    When I woke, Claude’s and my mother’s voices penetrated through the walls. They were wondering what they should do with me. Send me away. Put me in an institution for crazy people. Stick me in the attic; keep me quiet. Did this Cake House have an attic? I stared at the ceiling of my bedroom, listening to my mother’s high-toned confusion followed by Claude’s assurances.
    We were all figurines on the different tiers of the Cake House, with painted-on expressions and fixed, plastic smiles: my mother and Claude standing with their arms linked, a gross parody of a happily married bride and groom. Alex and I on the middle tier, his pale yellow likeness next to my dark figure. My father would have the bottom tier to himself, to hold all the blood he’d shed.
    The shadows in my bedroom pushed and pulled. They collected together, into arms and legs, but it was too dark and I couldn’t see. A cold bath of fear woke me up, and I wished Alex had left the light on before leaving me alone.Light might not stop the ghost, but it would make me feel better to see into the corners. I strained my eyes and could make out a smudge on the wall opposite. It might be the light switch, or it might be the ghost’s face. If I stared at it long enough, maybe the light would magically flip on, but it remained off.
    Just when I’d convinced myself to make a break for the light switch, the doorknob clicked and a shaft of light from the hallway sliced across the room. My mother entered. Her solid weight dipped the bed, and I felt her touch my forehead. The right side of her glowed, bathed in the wedge of light from the open door, but the rest of her melted back into shadow.
    She was real; she was my mother. I breathed in the ashy scent of her skin, familiar and reassuring.
    “What did you see?” she asked, her voice stripped and bare. She brushed my hair away, fingers dry and cool.
    Instead of answering, I caught her left hand in both of mine. The diamond ring on her finger sparkled in the light from the hallway. With my forefinger and thumb, I turned the ring around to hide the diamond against her palm. Then I turned it back around the proper way. I turned it around again. And again. The ring loosened.
    My mouth opened and the words to tell her were right there, waiting to be spoken: My father’s ghost lived in this house,