The Fullness of Quiet by Natasha Orme Read Free Book Online Page A

cross-legged on the living room floor watching television. I was more focused on the lady in the bottom right of the screen who was signing what they were all saying. Daddy walked into the room and told me that Joshua was at the door. I jumped up and ran into the hallway. I beamed at him the moment I saw him.
    “I have something to show you,” I signed. He looked at me puzzled. I took him by the hand and brought him into the kitchen. The painting I’d finished the previous night was still lying across it. Joshua looked amazed. I had painted over the original colors that I’d put on. I had blended all the hues until they were a single blur across the sky. It was impossible to tell where the sun stopped and the sky began.
    Joshua reached out a hand to touch the paper. He traced his fingers across the colors and looked out the window, comparing it to what he remembered.
    “It’s so beautiful,” he signed to me. I shrugged my shoulders and he smiled at my modesty. “What do you want to do today?” he asked.
    I hesitated. “Ive got plans today.” The effect this sentence had on him was incredible. It made me remember how much of a fragile person he was. Sure, he acted like everything was okay, but deep down he was just as fragile as he’d always been. Even after all this time, it still hadn’t changed. It made me sad. “You can come with me though,” I offered.
    “Where are you going?” he asked.
    “You’ll see.” I smiled at him.
    “Okay then.” I disappeared for a few minutes to tell Daddy that Joshua was going to come with me and he nodded in approval. We left the house and walked in the warm summer sun.
    We went down the road toward his house, neither of us speaking. I presumed that Joshua was too busy thinking about where we were going. Whenever he felt uncomfortable and out of place, he always went very quiet and I guessed this was one of those moments.
    We walked for about fifteen minutes before we came to a house on the right. I went up to the door and knocked. An old man answered and smiled his toothless grin at me. He welcomed me into the house and Joshua trailed behind. We walked through the house and into the garden. Joshua stood by the door, watching me. I bent down and picked some of the flowers that filled the flowerbed.
    Once I had a big enough bunch, I stood up, kissed the old man on the cheek and we both made our way back out onto the road. Joshua signed to me asking who he was and I handed him the flowers to hold. I explained that he was a patient of Daddy’s and wasn’t able to afford even Daddy’s lower rates, so instead of charging him the full fee, he allowed me to pick flowers from his garden every week.
    “Why?” he asked. I tapped my nose with my index finger and then winked.
    We walked further down the road and then took a right turn. I looked around me at the blossoms of summer. I pointed to the butterflies and birds and other wondrous things in the trees and around us. I pointed out a cloud that was shaped like a dragon and then another one shaped like a rabbit. I laughed at the little animal that scampered across the road in front of us. I could feel Joshua watching me closely, studying me but I tried my best to ignore him.
    The small church had just come into view down the road.
    “Are we going to church?” he asked. I shook my head. I walked up to the old stone building. The style of it was simple and plain and yet it managed to strike you as beautiful in some way or another. I took him by the hand and led Joshua behind the building to the small graveyard. I loved to sit between the gravestones and learn about the lives of people I never knew. Some of the headstones just said a name and some dates but others had quotes and phrases.
    We walked past the oldest ones that were so worn by weather and nature that you were no longer able to read what they said. All those people that would be lost and forgotten, to lie nameless for the rest of time until even their memorial stone