THE POWER OF THREE by Billie Sue Mosiman Read Free Book Online

She went to the grocery and brought in bags of food to put away in the refrigerator, freezer, and kitchen shelves. She set out a skillet on the gas stove and heated olive oil. She threw in chopped vegetables--carrots, celery, mushrooms, onions, broccoli, chunks of fresh tomatoes. She seasoned it with lemon pepper, a little saffron, and salt. She sat at the old wooden table in the kitchen and ate slowly, savoring the different flavors. The crunch of the broccoli and carrots made sounds that reverberated inside her head.
                  Outside her head nothing moved. Nothing voiced an opinion. There was not a sound.
                  "I'm patient," she told the house. "I'm here for the long haul. I'm not going anywhere. And I'm pretty damned old so if you want to try to kill me, be my guest. But I'll give you some trouble with that."
                  The walls were silent.
     
                 
 
     
                  #
     
                 
 
     
                  Linda sat in a rocker in the living room. She had never owned a rocking chair before. She really liked it. Liked the regular rhythm she could set it to, liked the movement of her body back and forth, almost like swinging in a swing. The room smelled like pine because she had mopped the floor with Pine-Sol. It reminded her of the old days, so many years ago, when she was a girl here and her mother mopped the floors with the same product. She breathed in deeply, feeling peaceful.
                  She had owned the house for four months. That it did not speak to her, that it held itself tightly together and stone cold silent, didn't bother her. She knew it would come around. It had business yet to do with her and her with it. If it was being stubborn, she could out-stubborn it. If it wanted to play this waiting game, she knew how to wait. All she had left was time--and her thirst for revenge.
                  She heard a car horn outside and it made her recall that days before she had heard a moving van pulling into a near driveway. She had stood in her front yard watching as a young family moved into the house next door. It was a mother, father, and two children--a girl around six and a boy who was probably nine or ten. She waved at them and they waved back, calling a hello. "Hello! Hello, how are you?"
                  Now as she sat in the rocker in the hours after lunch, thinking of little but how this house was obstinate and impenetrable, a knock came at the door.
                  She rose slowly, noticing her back was sore, but what did she expect, she was going to be sixty-one in a few weeks. She opened the door to find the girl from next door on her step. "Hi there! How do you like your new house?"
                  Linda liked children although, funny enough, she had never longed for any of her own. The little girl smiled to reveal a gap between her front teeth. How adorable! Linda thought, smiling back.
                  You too! the little girl thought back to her.
                  Linda's smile faded and was replaced with a questioning look. "You read my mind?"
                  The little girl glanced down and put her hands behind her back.
                  "You don't have to ashamed of it. Or afraid. Do your parents know?"
                  "No."
                  "Come inside and we'll talk."
                  In the living room Linda now turned on a lamp near the sofa and sat next to the little girl whose name was Diane Blume . "All right, tell me, how often do you read minds?"
                  "All the time."
                  "How long have you been doing it, Diane?"
                  "Since I was little."
                  Linda held back her grin. "About how old when you were