The Disenchanted Widow by Christina McKenna Read Free Book Online Page A

coverlet took center stage. One wall was given over to a hulking great wardrobe and a chest of drawers.Before the window: a dressing table embellished with curlicues, its oval mirror marred by a creeping efflorescence round the border.
    “As I say, I wouldn’t want any of me aunt’s—”
    “Of course not, Mr. Grant! I understand. Completely.” She wished he’d just go and leave them to it.
    “There’s a couch bed in the corner there for the wee boy.”
    “Did ye kill your aunt in here?” Herkie asked, images of Grant the “cannonball” still very fresh in his mind’s eye.
    Grant stared at him.
    Bessie gave Herkie a poke in the ribs. “Now, don’t be saying silly things to Mr. Grant, son. I do apologize, Mr. Grant. It’s his age. He reads far too many comics.”
    The mechanic adjusted his big glasses and stared sadly at the floor.
    “I’m so sorry about your aunt,” Bessie said. “You must have been very close to her.”
    “Aye, I was. But she didn’t die up here. No. She tripped on the stairs and fell on her head.”
    Herkie was suddenly attentive. “Them stairs out there?”
    Bessie coughed loudly. She gave Herkie a look that would curdle cream and pushed him out of the room.
    “I’m very sorry to hear that. Must have been a shock for you.”
    She was beginning to warm to Mr. Grant and his kindness. If she played her cards right, goodness knew what might ensue from the little mishap with her car. The dark clouds were lifting, their silver linings agleam with fresh promise.
    “Now, she was a big age, Mrs. Hailstone. Eighty-nine. So if the stairs hadn’t of tooken her, something else would of. Now I’ll show ye out the back.”
    The back door opened onto a sizable gravel yard flanked by rolling fields. An open shed at the side housed a stack of firewood. A stout nylon clothesline was secured to its eaves.
    “What’s that?” asked Herkie, pointing at a large stone atop a sheet of corrugated zinc.
    “Oh, that’s a well. That cover there has tae stay on it.”
    “Do you hear that, son?”
    “Aye, Ma.”
    “Aye, if ye fell down that well,” Mr. Grant warned, “ye might end up in China, begod, and would nivver be heard of again. So that’s why that big stone’s over the tap of it.”
    “You’ve been warned, son. You keep away from that.”
    Herkie nodded for appearance’s sake. He was eyeing the big stone, already calculating the amount of effort needed to shift it.
    “As I say, I’ll get that fan belt for ye in Willie-Tom’s and have her ready for ye as quick as I can.”
    “It’s very kind of you, Mr. Grant. How can we thank you?”
    “Oh, that’s all right, Mrs. Hailstone. I wouldn’t see nobody stuck—and me aunt wouldn’t, neither, God rest her. She was a good, religious woman. Went tae Mass every day.”
    They followed him round to the front of the house and stood waving goodbye as his truck shuddered off again in the direction of the town.
    “Look what I got, Ma,” said Herkie. He was proudly holding a battered leather wallet.
    “Where did you get that?”
    “On the path, Ma. Maybe Mr. Grant dropped it.”
    “Well, whyn’t you give it back to him then?” She snapped it up and began riffling through it.
    “’Cos I didn’t know if it was his, Ma.”
    “I hope you didn’t steal it, son, for if you did you’ll be gettin’ a warm backside. We can’t be drawing attention to ourselves.”
    Inside the wallet she found a novena to St. Anthony—patron saint of lost objects—two five-pound notes, a couple of stamps, and some hayseeds.
    “Could I get me Action Man with that?”
    “Now, son, are you gonna turn into your da, are you?”
    Herkie kicked the ground and sighed. “No, Ma.”
    “Good. Next time we see Mr. Grant, I’ll ask him if it’s his. If it’s not, then it means Saint Anthony threw it down from heaven to help us out, and you might—and I mean just might— get your Action Man.”
    “Och, Ma…” Herkie kicked a stone, grudgingly accepting her