The Threshold by Marlys Millhiser Read Free Book Online

bite along the way. Callie could tell the horse knew all about Bram sneaking up behind it by the way its ears twitched around to find the sound.
    Bram made a sudden move for the stirrup with one foot and the saddle with both hands. The horse sidestepped on its back feet, leaving its head down to graze in the same spot. Bram fell on his face. Callie snickered behind her hand and crawled onto a stump. The horse snorted as if laughing too, and kept shying just out of Bram’s reach while continuing to eat. Finally, tiring of the sport and the meadow, it broke for the road in the middle of a dodge, leaving a red-faced Bram throwing rocks after it, making frustrated sounds in his throat and behind his nose.
    Giggles held Callie helpless until she realized her brother stood over her, fists clenching and unclenching on stiffened arms. The stump was a high one and her eyes were on a level with his throat, where the pulse of his blood threatened to break out of his skin. Bram held his teeth together, tight. His nostrils flared open. His eyes looked remote—as if someone other than Bram were behind them. He kept shaking his head back and forth. “God damn you, Callie girl, God damn …”
    Callie’s last giggle ended in a screech. She dropped the pails. His big hands enveloped her arms and shoulders. Bram shook her instead of his head. “Damn you, don’t you laugh at …”
    Callie heard snapping noises in her neck and little screams in her head before they came out of her mouth. Suddenly Bram stopped and blinked into her face. He stared at his hands as if neither belonged to him. “Oh, Callie,” he whispered. He picked her up and sat on the stump with her on his lap and rocked them both from side to side. “Oh, no.”
    Callie cried tears into the coarse fabric of his shirt while she forgave him, while he blew warmth into her hair as he repeated her name.

6
    “For the unemployed, you live pretty well.” Aletha sat on a kitchen stool and watched Cree Mackelwain chop garlic cloves, plum tomatoes, and fresh parsley. He dumped the lot into spattering olive oil, added whole dried spices by the tablespoon.
    “This place belongs to a friend.” He poured white wine into the sauce and slid spaghetti noodles into boiling water. “He’s … lending it to me for a while.”
    “This place” was one of several condominiums fashioned out of the interior of a brick building which was once a fancy house of ill repute. It had two bedrooms, two baths, a sunken living room, and a seven-foot Jacuzzi. Compared to the interior of a Datsun “this place” was Windsor Castle. Aletha lifted a long-handled spoon from a hook and stirred the spaghetti. “In prison, they didn’t stir it enough. Parts of it would stick together in thick ropes.”
    “And you really stick with that story.”
    “It’s not easy to forget.” But the rumbling in her stomach ruined any chance for pathos. He grinned. The spaghetti lived up to its fabulous odors and Cree served it with wine and crusty bread. “Was the Senate a whorehouse too do you think,” she asked him, “like the Pick and Gad?”
    “The old advertising lists it as a drinking and gambling establishment.”
    “Well, it served meals. Callie and a woman were eating at a table.”
    “You ought to go up to the museum and see if they have much on the Senate. I do know this part of town was considered fit for only a certain kind of woman. There were trunks of clothes, paintings of the painted ladies, furniture, and junk left in this building that had to be moved out before renovation. Most of it went into private collections but some of it found its way to the museum.”
    “I hate to think of Callie on the wrong side of town. She’s so sweet and vulnerable,” Aletha said. “I’d been sketching up at Alta. After my … whatever happened, I couldn’t find my sketchbook. Tonight she told me someone had taken my book and something about a guy named Charles. Do you think she found my